Chopping Wood

The art and science of burning wood is rare today because relatively few people heat with wood and information is not handily passed around. To be sure, woodstoves can be hazardous when improperly operated. On the other hand, there is the warm heat and the comfort of knowing you will be warm despite any power outages, not to mention those great stovetop stews and boiled dinners. I'll get to the food later but here’s my woodburning routine:
I do not like to handle wood any more that necessary so it is brought in whole and piled undercover. Wood is not split or stacked until I am ready to use it.
I enjoy splitting wood on a cold winter’s day when there is not much else to do, it is cold, and I need the exercise. I used to split wood with a double bit axe but now use a six or eight pound splitting maul - power wood splitters just deprive me of a good workout. When splitting big or knotty rounds of wood I work around the round taking six inch pieces off the edges, unless I feel lucky enough to go for the middle. Usually a wedge is not needed using this method, although I keep one nearby. Tough rounds get the wedge. Really tough ones get set aside for zero degree weather splitting and super tough ones get cut with a chainsaw - these are very rare. The wood is then ready for the stove so I haul it to the house in a wheelbarrow.
The fire is started, first with paper followed by very dry twigs or wood chips from the splitting process then one or two inch diameter sticks. Larger pieces of wood are added as the fire progresses. Once started the fire is given as much draft as possible to get a blazing hot fire going. It is important to have a hot fire to combust the wood gas so it doesn’t form flammable creosote in the chimney. I modified my older stove slightly by adding a steel plate to force combustion gasses to flow to the top of the stove where it is hotter and the gasses burn more readily before going out to the chimney. Cold smokey fires are inefficient because the unburned wood gasses go up the chimney and distill into dangerous chimney clogging creosote instead of burning and producing heat. If you do not need much heat on a warmer day burn a small hot fire by keeping wood in one section of the stove rather than shutting off the draft. At night after the fire dies just a bit, a large whole wood round is placed over a couple of smaller pieces of wood to keep fire for the night.