I've heard here and other places that if one leaves elm in the round for a year or so it will split easier. Got to test this over the weekend. The summer before last I dropped off two loads of Siberian elm for the neighbor across the street. It sat there in rounds until Sunday morning when I finally wheeled the splitter over and split em up. If anything it split harder than siberian elm does when green. The only thing that split easy was the rounds in direct contact with the ground and were well on there way to being junk.