Thanks! If you look closely at the last pic you'll see grates for a drain cover at the entrance to the basement. The drain handles all but the most torrential downpours. In those cases I do get a little bit of water in my basement by the door, but not much. I live on a ridge about a 1000 feet overlooking the town of Huntingdon, so my drainage is pretty good.
I've always tended to only sort out the oak, simply because we don't have a lot of it. That gets burned during the nights in January-February. Sometimes some gets thrown in during late December but the other 2 months are the most important. Last year was a big change for us as an extremely helpful group came to our place and brought wood up to and by the porch simply because I was unable at the time. Boy was that a big help for my wife who had to tend the fire for about 2 months or more. Also, Redneck brought over some of the totes and those got filled; about half with oak. Fortunately we did not burn all that oak last winter so we have one full tote to start with this year. I'll probably put in 1/2 oak and 1/2 ash in one tote and all ash in the others. We'll see how all this works out and go from there. The first picture is with Redneck. The second is Barcroftb. Those were pretty heavy for our tractor to move. He put the tiller on for ballast.
Ash, ash and more ash. But that will be coming to an end soon. Then it will be soft maple, elm and cherry along with enough oak to burn in Jan-Feb. There are a few others we cut as we go, like sassafras, blue beech, ironwood, birch, etc. Sometimes I'll even cut a popple. I like to shy away from the cottonwood and willow, etc.
I am weird but I usually just grab some from the popular pile to get the fire started, then pull a mix from ash, maple and oak piles. There is some elm in one stack that I have. I tell the boys what piles to pull from and they do pretty well.
For shoulder season it comes from the ugly pile and what ever is in there is what gets burned. Then for when it gets cold I burn half pine and half hardwood all dried out splits.
Where I live our west we don't have the variety folks back east have so we break it up into soft (pine and cedar) and hard (mostly oak and some eucalyptus). The softwood is so plentiful that we burn that primarily and use the hardwood for night burns. I'm planning on dedicating a pallet of hardwood this year just to keep it seperated.
I keep all my pine stacked separately because it dries so much faster and it is easy to pick out what I want.
I try to stack outside for 3 or more years then bring in what I plan burn the next season to my undercover or inside stacks. My building has an overhang of 14 feet so those stacks get lots of sun, air and no rain. One stack is mostly oak and hickory, the other is softer stuff. Here's my under cover stacks and garage stacks.
Yes, there are 2 kinds of wood groups. Group 1; wood that's seasoned. Group 2; wood that's not seasoned. I start with group 1 wood. I bring in about a cord at a time and stack a mix of oak on the north side of the stove room, Oak on the south wall, and fill a firewood ring on the east wall with nice mix of oak. I throw all the shorts and unstackables in a pile in front of the ring and burn them first to get them out of the way. In about 6 weeks I watch the weather very closely and pick a day when there's no ugly weather and bring in another cord.... In about 6 weeks, I'll look closely at the weather and pick a nice day to move more group 1 wood in. Usually about a cord... In about 6 weeks I'll start watching the weather and compare how many weeks are left in the winter with how much group 1 wood I have left. If it's getting close, I'll start eyeing up my group 2 wood that's getting dangerously close to becoming group 1 one...
