How do I sell firewood — and what's a cord, really?

Start here, because it's where trust is won or lost: a full cord is a stacked pile 4 feet high, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long — 128 cubic feet. That's a real, defined measurement. A "rick" or a "face cord" is not — it's a stack 4 by 8 of whatever length your splitter felt like, which means a face cord of 16-inch wood is about a third of a cord.

So sell in a unit you can say out loud without wincing. Tell them the length you cut, tell them what fraction of a cord that stack is, and stack it where they can see it. Every firewood seller who lasts more than two winters does this, and every one who doesn't gets talked about at the co-op.

The rest is timing and seasoning. Orders taken in July burn in October; wood that hisses is a refund and a reputation. Price it on your splitting time, your saw, your fuel, your delivery and the wood itself — and take deposits, because the person who's out of wood in January is the person who didn't book in September.

We build the business around the wood — the name, the site that takes the order, the phone that answers. The stack's honesty is yours.