How Much Wood Could Two Old People Chuck?

 Okay, so a while back I said I thought Hubs said we had about 3/4 of a cord.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  He never said that and my estimation was totally off.  Turns out a cord of wood is a frickin' lot of wood.  4 foot wide by 4 foot high by 8 foot long.  Umm, yeah, we have a lot of wood chopped up, but it wasn't even close to that when I said it.  NOW we probably have 2/3 to 3/4 of a cord.  (A neat article about firewood can be read here.)

I think the reason I assumed it was a cord was because over the span of my life, I've seen people selling 'cords' of wood that weren't true cords.  'Face cords' and 'stove cords' and sometimes they say 'cord' when they're just trying to sell the pile of wood in the back of their pickup truck.  But it's not a cord unless it fits the above dimensions, so if you're out there buying wood, beware.

We had these old pallets under the house.  They came with the load of paving blocks we bought back in 2015.  He dragged two out and set them under the sun porch (so they're out of the elements) on cinder blocks (for better airflow) and we started stacking.  One pallet was initially for the big cedar that fell over and we chopped up, but now it has all the other cedar limbs/trunks we've found and chunked.  The other pallet was put into place to hold all the other types of wood.  

As those start to fill, he dragged out another one and set it beside the first two.  

I really need to take pics of these things.  

Anyway, the two initial pallets are stacked in three rows about 4 ft deep.  The two closest to the wall are probably 3.5 feet high.  The ones farthest from the wall are only about 2 ft high and contain the smallest in diameter limbs.  The third pallet is a staging area right now, but we're starting to slop over onto it.  

We're cutting the limbs into roughly 14" pieces.  And the cut wood ranges from about 1" to around 9" in diameter.  We haven't split any of it.  We need something called a maul or a wedge or something to do this.  Right now, it's just a bunch of 14" logs.  

Now, you might be thinking we're being all advanced and using a chainsaw for all this work.  We're not.  We started out with a bow saw and a hand saw.  When the old bow saw and the old hand saw started to get tired, I went out and bought another bow saw.  Then I got another one so we could both be sawing at the same time.  We aren't but we could be.  The reason we aren't is because it's way easier to saw when one person is sawing and the other is holding the limb steady.  (I'm usually the holder.)

You might also be thinking we have some way to burn all this wood.  We don't.  Not yet.  We're in the research phase.  Wood stove?  Fireplace?  Wood burning furnace?  And which one would fit our needs and our budget?  :get distracted looking at furnaces:  Sorry about that.  

Anyway, like I said before, it's good exercise for these two old people.  And it's cleaning up the copious amounts of wood we have laying all over the property.  We'll burn it later.  And eventually buy a chainsaw, too, for the really big tree that fell down in there.  For now, it is what it is.

Do you have a woodstove or a fireplace?  How's that working out for you?