I got to chat with the owner today and he is a really nice guy. He and his wife are just tickled that this wood is not going to the landfill. This was a huge tree - probably close to 100 years old. He said that they bought the house 40 years ago and the tree was old & large when they bought it. It's canopy was at least 150' in diameter and the dominant tree in their back yard. The tree has been in slow decline since the great Texas freeze of 1989. Here in Alvin, the temperatures did not get above 32˚F for 5 straight days.
I remember that freeze... I was living in Humble at the time, worked at a company on the west side of IAH... My old beater Chevy in those days didn't have a working heater and half way through the airport, it started to rain.. my windshield was covered with ice until I reached the Mobil station at the south entrance...I scraped and bought de-icer and went on to work... 2 1/2 hours after I got there, I was still the only one in the office, until the sales manager got there from Magnolia and the owner arrived from Kingwood... all those that lived close "couldn't get out of their driveway".. even the Gen Mgr who lived only 5 blocks away didn't make it in. We were all sent home and half way through the airport on my way home, I blew the radiator... nursed it through the airport and then stopped to call my son to come get me.
BTW, I had your problem for a while... if someone offered me wood, I would take it.... behind my shop I had four or five piles of wood stacked on pallets... just couldn't get to all of it and since it was not under cover, just tarped, a great deal of it rotted and I started burning it... I now have half a walnut treed stacked out front that I don't plan to let rot, another half of a Hackberry tree and a couple of logs I got from down the road of Royal Paulownia stacked at the end of the shop.
I'm having to be more selective on what wood I accept now...