My Husband’s Wood is Wet

That’s what she said.

One of my husband’s favorite things to do is build fires. In the the fireplace. To that end, every winter we purchase about three 1/2 cords of wood at a time, $175.00 each. A couple of weeks ago we called for our second delivery of the winter, right on schedule.

Our source has been been great. Up ’til now. This latest delivery has left a lot to be desired. The wood is terrible! It has been a real challenge for my hubby to keep those homefires burning.

Since this is the first time this has happened, we think it is just a fluke and don’t really have the heart to call our wood-source-man and complain about it. He is a nice person trying to run his small business and make a living. I’m pretty sure he’s hearing about it from plenty of other people, anyway. We think that he’ll probably lose a lot of business over this, which is a shame because he has always been so reliable up until now. Poor guy, we really feel for him.

Anyway, if we let the wood sit out there until next year it will be nice and dry and seasoned and good to go for next winter. That’s one option. But we need fires now! It is COLD!

Lucky for me my husband is one smart cookie. This is what he does to get around the problem

Once he finally gets the fire going he puts two pieces of wood standing on their ends to the right and to the left of the actual fire. The fireplace is fairly big so these four pieces don’t catch fire - they just get hot and dried out. So they make a great fire when it is their turn for immolation. Yay! Problem (sort of) solved.

Just as an interesting aside, I noticed from our wood man’s website that a full cord of wood costs $285.00. I asked my husband why he didn’t order that, because it would be cheaper. My husband said he didn’t order it because he didn’t notice it, but he wished he had. This discussion took place before we found out how bad this current delivery was. But it turns out that we’re glad he didn’t order the “cheaper” full cord, because dealing with this crappy 1/2 cord had been a big pain, until my smart-cookie-husband came up with his new technique.

Will we order from this dude again? Yes, I think so. I’m pretty sure this is just a glitch. But if it happens again……