Two years ago my neighbors boyfriend decided to drop about 20 large red oaks on her lot. He bucked them up and split by hand. then stacked them around a steel shed. She does not burn wood and it has been sitting there behind her house for two years, i drive by every day looking at it just sitting there. So one day this summer a for-sale sign appeared in front of her house. I figured i would ask her what she was going to do with all that wood. So i asked her and she said take it all. in exchange for doing a couple of dump runs for her. Bingo. The only thing was a lot of the wood in the middle of the pile was saturated with water not getting proper air circulation. As far as all these discussions about weather to cover your wood stacks also depends on how you stack it . the wood on the outside of the stacks was good and dry but the stuff on the inside around the shed was wet. I brought the wood to my house and sorted it according to how dry it was. The semi dry wood was stacked in the back of the woodshed for next year. The really dry wood was stacked in the front of the shed for this winter and the really wet stuff i stacked out side in single rows. The wood i stacked in the back of the shed about a month ago seems already dry. The stuff outside that was saturated looks like it needs a other year. Overall it looks like i got about six or seven cords