Norway Maple Firewood Processing Update - March 2023

Back in last October (2022), we had the large Norway Maple tree taken down in our front yard.  The guys who removed the tree chip'd a bunch of the smaller stuff and then hauled all of the larger material back to the far reaches our yard.  I had them put as much of it on the rack that I had back there to begin to dry out.   You can see what the original pile of rounds looked like in this post if you scroll all the way down to the bottom.   Almost as soon as the tree was taken down, I began to split some of the rounds.  Here's a post from November showing some of that work.   I was curious about the moisture content and how long Norway Maple would take to season - as some online suggest it is 'fast'.  

By December, I had blown through most of the kiln-dried firewood that I had delivered, so that free'd up the racks by the side of our house.  I decided to move some of the recently-split Maple firewood up there.  

Now...five months later (October --> March), what's the current state of the Norway Maple firewood?  I've been splitting a little bit at a time every few days when I find 15-to-20 minutes.  I also burned a little bit of the wood that I split in November.  Let's look at the racks.  First...the side-yard rack that I filled in November/December.  It is *mostly* full and the wood is changing color and getting darker.  Have a peek at the white-ish color of this wood in mid-December compared to the grey, browning color you see below:

As for the pile of larger rounds in the far back, I've been doing them one-at-a-time.  And I've (so far) mostly been working on the harder-to-split ones with knots, elbows, etc.  I recently took ALL of the rounds off the rack and filled a bunch of the 'bottom' with the split wood.  I was running out of space for the split wood, so now I'll focus on the stumps that are NOT on the rack (the ones that are susceptible to rot since they are touching the ground) and then I'll move on to the rounds ON the rack.  In the photo below, you can see my splitting based, much of the split wood on the rack on the left and the remaining rounds that need to be processed on the right.  These (on the right) are stilling up on 2x4's - but are close to the ground.  Thus...I want to get through those FIRST, then move on to the ones that are drying on the rack.  Some of them are 'too long' and will need me to use a chainsaw to cut down to the right length.  Also....of note...you can see a yellow-handled maul in the photo.  I picked that up on the curb down the street on garbage day and...it has changed my log-splitting life.  It needs a new handle, but I'll get to that soon.

I've also been filling one of the original racks back there with this firewood that you can see below.   The freshly-split wood on top that is lighter in color vs the wood that was processed in previous years.  

My plan is to keep working this pile while the weather is still cold and I can't get working in the garden.  I'd like to finish up this pile in 2023 to get it split before Fall - in fact...I should put that on my 2023 to-do list to force the prioritization of this garden task.