Ok, here's an update to my original post yesterday...
The truck came today and dumped two very large piles of wood in our turnaround. Ughhh... It was a VERY big pile! This was the maiden voyage. So, I coerced the wife to come out with me to acclimate to our new life. She was not pleased. As we loaded the wheelbarrow with piece after piece, she grumbled and groaned and found every conceivable argument as to how this whole wood thing is going to drive me/us crazy, and how we're spending all this money on a stove and wood, when our barn is leaning to one side and our garage has more water on the floor than the Charles River. She declared that she had little value for the ecological advantages of wood, or the tradition and sentiment that I valued that were connected to burning wood. This went on and on... I was just crossing my fingers and toes that this experimental project was going to turn our house into a sauna. If not, my ... was grass, if you know what I mean!
Then, things started to change... We began to chat while we worked, and we were beginning to see the nice stacks of wood begin to take shape. We both working as a team, with an assembly-line process thing happening. We both had a little bit of sweat building, as we saw the pile get just a little bit smaller. As we finished our 3hr. chore, we only really got about 1/3 of this really big pile done. I was expecting her to have the 'tude about that, too, but instead, she turned to me with a little bit of a smile and said, "You know, that wasn't bad, it was actually kind of FUN!" Hooray! I was certainly beat. She was beat too, although she's in better shape than I. BUT, there seemed to be a bit of hope that this pursuit might actually bring forth new family adventures, as well as a warmer house this winter!
Also, I am guilty of doing exactly what everyone on here said NOT to do, and that is to accept a delivery of wood without truly inspecting it. Not sure how impressed I was with this wood. It did have the baseball bat sound when hit, but wasn't grey or splitting at the ends. It was apparently cut last December around the time of our big ice storm. Well, live and learn. If it doesn't burn well, I know another place that you can see from the road that has wood that "looks" more seasoned from the road. Maybe we'll get a cord or two of that for this year, and save the stuff I got this year for next.
It will still be a couple of weeks before the stove is delivered. I'm still building the hearth, which has the framing done, then I have to have the chimney installed. One way or the other... things are in progress!