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because your supplier doesn't have to go to the trouble or incur the cost of splitting it themselves.  While it is a bit cheaper to purchase firewood this way, you'll have to split it before you can burn it.  If you're fit enough to do this yourself, it can be great exercise.  If not, you'll need to purchase firewood that is already split. 
    A good tip is to arrange to see the wood you are interested in purchasing before you have it delivered.  Check to make sure that the wood you are thinking about buying has been seasoned and stored properly.  This means that it has had plenty to time to dry out.  If you buy green wood that hasn't been adequately seasoned, it will burn very poorly and you'll be really frustrated with it.
    Some firewood suppliers they to cut corners (no pun intended) and the wood will be split but it won't be split into small enough pieces to actually use.  If you order a shipment of wood before looking at it, you may find out that you'll have to do more splitting to make the pieces of wood small enough to burn well in your stove.
     

Making Sure That You Have a Way to Cook Your Food
    Much of the food that you put up in your food storage will already be cooked and preserved but you and your family will enjoy eating it much more if you have a way of heating it up.  If you've stored wheat or corn for grinding into flour or cornmeal, you'll need a source of heat to make bread or cornbread out of it.
    One option is to cook on or in your wood stove.  If you thought ahead, you would have purchased a wood stove that has a cooktop.  This will mean that your wood burning stove will be able to act as both a heat source and a cooking appliance.  In order to be able to cook inside of your woodstove, you can make use of cast iron Dutch ovens.  These heavy cast iron pots are designed for cooking when they are placed in the coals of a fire.  You can cook everything from stew in a Dutch oven to bread which is one of the reasons they are such versatile and useful items for preppers to have on hand.
    If you find yourself without electricity or gas during the hot summer months, you aren't going to want to fire up your wood stove just to cook a can of beans.  Sure, you'd be able to warm your food up but your house would become so hot that you'd be absolutely miserable.
    A better solution would be to cook your food in a BBQ grill.  You can pick up used BBQ grills for very little at yard sales during the summer.  You can either use a propane grill or one that is designed to burn charcoal.  A propane grill is fine if you have plenty of propane stored away but propane can be quite expensive and depending on how long you're without power or gas, you may run out of the supply of propane that you have stored.
    Perhaps a better solution would be to use a BBQ grill that is designed to burn charcoal.  You don't have to burn commercially manufactured charcoal briquettes in these grills.  Instead, you can burn the same wood that you have stockpiled for your wood stove.  This is an ideal solution for cooking when the utility grid goes down because it's a cheap and easy way to warm your food or even bake bread if you use a Dutch oven.
    Another alternative is to use a solar oven.  There are plenty of free plans on the Internet that will show you how to construct a homemade solar oven.  You can also purchase commercially made solar ovens that are lightweight and easily transportable.  These ovens are a bit more limited than cooking in a BBQ grill with charcoal or wood but they are still quite useful.  One advantage that they have over a BBQ grill is that they don't require any fuel.  All you need is the heat from the sun and you're in business.  However, if the sun isn't shining, you won't be able to cook anything in them at all.
     

Know How to Make Fire Before You Need It
    You may be one of those people who are going all in and you might stock up on a pallet full of matches.  Regardless of how many matches you