Call them on a weekday morning and chances are you’ll get their machine telling you that the “Wood Guy” and the “Wood Gal” are “probably out splitting wood.” You wouldn’t expect that of 81-year-old Rodney Belcher and his wife, 76-year-old Candy Inglis, but it’s true.
Around this time of year, Monday through Friday, the retired Saugus couple is out at 8 a.m. on a piece of property they rent off San Francisquito Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, splitting wood to sell once the summertime temperatures begin to drop.
On this particular day of the week, Belcher fondly called for his wife, “Inglis!” The two were wrapping up a day of splitting wood, and Inglis was getting some shade in the driver seat of the couple’s sedan. Belcher was all too happy to brag about his wife, saying she not only splits wood, but handles it like a pro, and then, if that wasn’t enough, she’s still looking for ways to get in more physical activity. She does so with the Santa Clarita Striders walking group.
“Well, I’ve done the walking group longer than I’ve done this,” Inglis told The Signal once she joined Belcher near the stacks of chopped firewood they had on the lot. Inglis said she’s long been involved with the Striders, which the city of Santa Clarita described in their Seasons magazine as a moderate- to fast-paced walking group that meets at different locations throughout Santa Clarita each week.
Inglis started walking with the group in 1997, loving the opportunity, she said, to get in some steps and socialize, and then she began organizing it when, about a year later, the previous organizers resigned, and the group was on the verge of ending.
She’s since continued to be a contract worker with the city, leading these walking groups on a weekly basis, and has become quite good acquaintances with many of the participants.
“I love it,” she said. “They pay me to walk and talk.”
Inglis is a former juvenile probation camp teacher. She did that for about 22 years and retired in 2012. The firewood business was something that came along after she married Belcher. The couple met late in life, each of them having been married to others before.
Belcher once was an insurance man. He called it quits in 2009, and around that same time he found himself in the firewood business — not as a job, but really because he’s just passionate about it.
“I enjoy it,” Belcher said. “I thoroughly enjoy it.”
And it’s as simple as that. Seeing him out in that lot, splitting wood and sorting it, you could see he loves it. He said he actually enjoys the wood-splitting machine. He enjoys burning firewood in his own fireplace at home. And he enjoys providing wood to others.
“I get all my wood for free,” he said, then spelled it out: “F-R-E-E. So, my cost of goods is zero. I get it from tree trimmers.”
And why would tree trimmers just give away the wood? Because they’d have to transport it and dump it somewhere, which would come at a cost to them and to their paying customers. Instead, the tree trimmers call Belcher, and he comes to their job sites and hauls the wood to the property he rents off San Francisquito Road, where he and his wife split it and stack it.
It’s a win-win-win: The third win, he said, because he also keeps all that wood out of the landfill.
Belcher delivers the firewood to his customers himself. Sometimes Inglis comes along. Belcher enjoys that part of the job, too, because he loves hearing from his customers, who are, he said, typically happy to see him.
“I did 265 orders last year,” Belcher added. And many of his orders come from repeat customers year after year.
And even though he and his wife are technically retired, the firewood business keeps them constantly busy. The couple picks up and splits wood during the spring and summer months, and then they sell it in the fall and winter.
“My oldest son says, ‘Well, Dad, this is March. You had a good year, sold a lot of wood. You can take off until September now,’” Belcher said. “I said, ‘Son, where do you think the wood comes from in September? You’ve got to work and you’ve got to split the wood during the summer. It doesn’t grow on trees like that.’”
And what’s most popular? It’s what Belcher calls his combo 50-50 half cord.
“This is the way I burn firewood in my fireplace, and it works out perfect,” he said. “About 70% of what I sell is this package: It’s a half a cord of wood, and that’s four feet tall and eight feet long. Now, half of that will be mixed wood. It’ll be ash, sycamore, cypress, pine — the softer woods. That burns real good, real hot. Then the other half will be a combination of eucalyptus and oak. Those are the hardwoods.”
Belcher often teaches customers how to use the mixture of firewood, beginning with the softer woods to get the fire started and the harder woods to keep it going. To hear him explain it, you could tell he’s more than passionate about it. He doesn’t just love helping people, but he said he also really takes great pleasure in having fires in his own house when it’s cold outside.
And that’s kind of how it all began, Belcher said. He and his wife just loved having fires in their fireplace. He said he’d find wood on Craigslist for free. People would have their trees trimmed, they wouldn’t want to pay to have the cuttings hauled away, so they’d leave it on the street, snap a few pictures of it, then post it on Craigslist for anyone who wanted to come by and get it.
“Well, I got carried away,” Belcher admitted. “I probably had 10 cords at the house. I had firewood every place you looked, literally. So, my wife said, ‘That’s it. You’ve got to get rid of it. You’ve got too much here.”
Belcher took out ads in the newspaper, offering up firewood with free delivery in Santa Clarita.
“The phone started ringing off the hook,” he said.
Eventually he enlisted his wife to help with the business, and she really got into it. In fact, the couple is so into it, their picture in their church’s directory is one of Belcher with a chainsaw and Inglis with an axe. And that picture isn’t just for looks.
“She’s pretty stout,” Belcher said. “You don’t mess with her. She can throw the wood. She can lift the wood.”
Belcher and Inglis met in 1999 at the American Cancer Society Discovery Shop in Saugus. Belcher had long been buying books there and selling them back, and the manager of the store asked one day if he could help move some items in the back for her. While moving the items, Belcher came across Inglis, a weekend volunteer who was sorting clothing.
The two got to taking about dancing, which they both did regularly, and Inglis told Belcher that she was going to a dance that night in the San Fernando Valley, asking if he’d meet her there.
“I went,” Belcher said. “She didn’t show. That’s OK, no big deal. So, I danced the entire night.”
At one point in the evening, a woman came over to Belcher and asked him to dance. They danced, and when the song ended and the two had already turned away, it hit Belcher. That was the woman he’d met at the thrift store, he said, the one he was supposed to meet at the dance.
Neither one of them had recognized the other because they met for only moments.
“She’d had a headband on,” Belcher said, “a sweatshirt and sweatpants. So, I says, ‘Do I look familiar?’”
Inglis added, “‘Oh my gosh, you’re the guy from this morning.’”
The two got to talking, arranged to meet again at another dance, and it was at that second dance, Belcher said, the two kissed for the first time.
The couple married in 2002. Inglis didn’t switch her last name to Belcher because of the hassle of legally changing it again. She said she even asked before getting married if that’d be a problem, and Belcher said he didn’t care one bit.
“I actually don’t even call her by Candy,” Belcher told The Signal while on his to the back of the property toward his wood-splitting machine. “I call her by Inglis. I started doing that when we first married, and I don’t know why, but I do.”
Belcher proved again that he does, in fact, refer to his wife by her last name: “Inglis!” he called, then asked if she would come over to the wood-splitting machine with him so the two could demonstrate how they operate it. Soon after, they were both at work.
Asked how long the couple would keep this kind of work up, Inglis said she wanted Belcher to be done with it. But at 81 years old, 5 feet and 7 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds, taking no medication at all and with the heart rate of, Belcher said, a 45-year-old, he just couldn’t see why he’d do that.
Inglis admitted that she herself had no plans of giving up the walking group.
“As long as he keeps doing this,” she said, motioning to the stacks and stacks of firewood on the property, “I’ll keep doing it. I might retire in the next couple of years.”
A short time later, the Wood Guy and the Wood Gal posed for some pictures. Then, as if they hadn’t missed a beat, they were back to work, finishing up their morning of splitting wood.
For more information about The Wood Guy firewood service, go to SaugusWoodGuys.com. For details about the Santa Clarita Striders walking group, go to SantaClarita.gov/Seasons or call 661-250-3700.
