drewsome said:
Wood Duck: great advice on the splitting! Now I know what to tell my kids to get me for Father's Day. One other dumb question if you don't mind: I know people often use a big tree stump to place the wood that's about to be split. But I don't have any stumps -- heck I don't have any trees in my little backyard. So... can I just place the wood on the grass and start splitting from there?
Even frozen ground isn't really hard enough for splitting, say, rock maple or the like, where you really need to give it a major whack to get it to give. Ask your firewood guy if he's got a good round he can throw in for a splitting platform. I got by my first winter by stacking a couple of large flat rectangular "splits" and using that as a splitting platform.
Also, get yourself some Supercedar firestarters. Put that into the search box on this site and it should turn up their offer to send a free sample to Hearth.com members. They ship very fast, they starters work great and the price is very good. They're much better than the widely sold and advertised "fatwod."
Lastly, when your wood is delivered, it's likely to have lots of splitting debris in with it, and those make terrific kindling. If the wood is truly dry, you won't really need much. I've been burning some kiln-dried wood recently and although I haven't tried, I bet I could light it directly with a match. But one quarter of one of those Supercedar thingies is all I need.
As a very last resort, the Aubuchon hardware stores where I am sell good-size bags of very dry kindling-size wood for about $6. Those take off quickly and a half dozen burn long enough to get the fire started. They're also great to have handy when you're learning how this all works. If you screw something up and end up with a smoldering fire, you can just poke a couple of those under the reluctant firewood and get things going properly quickly. Don't know if anybody will have them in your area, but it's worth a look around at what the chain hardware stores have.
I think you're going to have fun. Keep us posted on how it's going, OK?