The Craigslist listing read " free cordwood, seasoned, log length, you pick up" The town the listing was in is about 8 miles from me so I called immediately and left a message. A very nice woman called back ten minutes later and explained that she had a pile of about 8 to 10 cord of all hardwood, up to 10' in length that was cut about 1 1/2 years ago right next to her long dirt driveway and she wanted to get rid of it so she could put a horse paddock there. She told me to come by anytime, her only request was that I didn't block the driveway. I left work early the next day, drove over and found a jumbled pile of mostly black locust with some sugar maple and a little white ash, ranging from 6" to 20" diam, all grown over with bittersweet. The bark fell right off the black locust, but the wood was very hard. It was kind of a mess, really dirty work, being all wet from the recent snow and rain, but there was a huge pile of great wood. I went to work with my chainsaw, cutting it into pieces I could lift and took home three very overloaded loads in my 1/2 ton van that day. One other couple showed up with a pick up from about 25 miles away and took a load. I went back and got one more load the next day and saw another couple with a pick up load. Since it was only one day after the listing, I figured a lot of people would clean it up over the next couple of days. We did get 8" of sopping wet snow two days later, so wood gathering wasn't all that great. I called a buddy of mine and told him about it and he went by over the weekend and picked up some. I went back a few days later and the woman there told me that quite a few people had stopped by but many of them just left! Much of the pile was still there. One guy even left her a voice mail message telling her that she should pull the ad from Criagslist cause she was mislisting it, that the wood sucked and must have been on the ground for at least three years! She told me they had called the state highway department 18 months ago cause the trees were blocking their view out the end of the driveway. The state came out and cut down a bunch of large trees for them and left them in their field. They had already cut up about 10 cords, their neighbors had taken all they wanted, and these people just wanted to get rid of it before it started to rot. Last night I went back (its been 10 days now) and cut up and loaded about 30 rounds of avg of 15" diam or larger. They must avg 75 pounds apiece! My poor van has been groaning under the loads. The woman stopped by again while I was loading and said that despite all the calls, nobody else had come by. I must have brought back close to 4 cords of nicely seasoned hardwood now, one van load at a time, 85% black locust (which splits really nice!), the rest sugar maple. I can't figure out what all the people who stopped by and didn't take anything were thinking! Were they were hoping for cut, split and stacked on a pallet with a fork lift to help them load? All I know is I'm glad they didn't figure it out! There is one last 1/2 load left that I hope to get over this coming weekend. I haven't really been scounging wood all that long but I can't believe this happens very often. Oh yeah, and on the way there, the road crews have been cutting back trees and there's a good 1/2 a van load of 3-4" diam oak, black birch and maple plus a whole van load of a large sugar maple they cut down and left in a ravine. If I get all this stuff, I'll have about 4 years of wood ahead now but it's hard to pass up. I still have to process it all though and get it under cover. This has been so easy over the past couple of weeks I'm wondering if this is more typical than I think and I should stop trying to grab all I can.
