Its October 1st seems pretty late in the year to be cutting down trees for firewood, my experience has been you need to be cutting down the trees in June, July, August, to give it time to dry out and cure.
As a kid, we use to cut down 1-2 cords per year plus some fat lighter for starting the fire, we always cut and stacked the wood in the summer so it would be ready when it got cold.
We finished cutting next year’s fire wood two week ago.
Yup—I would expect to see a lot more home fires as wood stove newbies start learning lessons the hard way.
I know one house that burned to a cinder because the wood stove newbie crammed it full of wood, opened up the flu all the way—lit it before leaving for work in the morning—and returned to an empty lot!
They’ll need access to a drying kiln in order to burn green wood cut today.