There isn't really an efficient way to season that kind of volume well. Unless you're in a very dry climate, wood at the bottom and middle of a big pile will basically never dry out. Encourage your customers to buy their wood early so they can stack it and let it season.
what happens if you let it sit on the ground in a shaded area ?
It won't dry out and will rot.
The problem with this is that people aren't willing to pay more for the better quality of wood that you're producing by going through these extra steps. At least that's how it is where I used to sell firewood. My wood got processed onto a conveyor and then onto a pile, where it sat till the customer bought it. There's no way I could have justified the time required to stack wood to dry.
For just plane ol firewood and depending on the climate you are correct. But I get complements on the quality of my firewood and have a lot of regular customers that tell me how good the quality of my wood is. Where I live it's cooking wood that is king and not plan ol firewood. Even though my prices are higher then everyone else in my area, I have people that will only buy from me. Every customer mentions the quality almost every visit. Some of them tell me they have tried other dealers and always regret it. At least this is the reports I'm getting from them.
It will rot and the insects will be all over it
Don't know about that. Very few professional firewood operations stack wood to dry. I don't think that's because they're all amateurs. It's because the time involved doesn't justify what little extra money they might get. How long does it take you to stack a cord of wood and how much more do you charge for it than what others are getting?
Don't focus on the pro vs lazy and focus on firewood vs cooking wood.
Just reading what you wrote. But yes, for cooking wood that you're selling for 50-100% more $, stacking makes sense.
I used to cut and split my wood green in the spring stack it on pallets and cover the top of the ranks with a forming fabric that was water resistant.
Yes any ground contact will result in loosing the bottom layer. Your basically sacrificing the bottom layer like it was a pallet, but with a pallet you get some air flow under the bottom. I use t post 4 feet apart with treated 4x4's and crisscross two layers of 4x4's. Down here the fire ants are real bad so if you don't get the stack up off the ground the ants take over the stack bringing dirt that causes rot. I don't cover my stacks until they dry for a few months and I have found a sheet of tin to cover just the top works best. It dry's faster after a rain and it gets hot in the sun and radiates the heat into the top of the stack.
