Bring in more firewood the easy way.

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I once found what I thought to be a dead tree on my land. It was about 4' tall and 3" in diameter. It wasn't a tree but a fence post. It was made of black locust. My property was once a dairy farm. The farm started in 1890 and was defunct by 1930. That fence post had been in the ground for at least 50 years and it looked like it had been put there yesterday. Good stuff that locust.

 

[TwinWillows]

I too like your baskets & hope to come across some - but that has not happened yet.

 

[sugarmaple]

My solution to the firewood pallet was to build a PT pallet with inch and a half deck material with 3 spaces to center on my 18" wood. I had scrounged a small mountain of pipe from a wood operation that used it for the same purpose by boring into a non PT 6x6 and tying the tops with banding metal to prevent spreading. I am doing it a little differently, building u shaped pipe structures to fit into the spaces in the top of the pallet and are lagged into the 4x4 PT sides and 2x4 PT middle frame member. I lift these from the open end rather than notching and weakening the sideframe members. So far the tops have not needed bracing. These pallets should last a long time, and when stacked outside, placing them on stickers/blocks/bricks/stringers to keeps them from freezing down. Scrounged roofing metal covers the drying firewood over the summer and the spaces between pallets allow air circulation.

My splitter is vertical and I built a trailer hitch that the extended wedge holds in place so I can bring a trailer with pallet/s into the woods(one trip) with me and palletize the material straight off the splitter and leave the organic mess in the woods. I put one pallet on the porch as necessary and raise it on blocks to minimize bending over. A Northern Tools large wheeled firewood carrier brings it in the house effortlessly. All in all a great labor/back saving operation.

 

[sandman2234]

As far as your bell ringing problems in strong wind, the first thing I thought of was a diffuser to slow the wind down, but probably not possible with the bell hanging like it is. Also adding a light duty wall to slow the wind probably won't work. So, another way might be to add a plastic cup, spring loaded under the bell with a small string to pull it down before starting to ring the bell. If you use a knot in the rope for the spring to push against and use a plastic cup that will cover just barely over the halfway point of the ball that is the pendalum, it shouldn't be hard to get out of the way and shouldn't affect the sound of the bell.
Just a few thoughts,
David from jax