What to do with a BIG dead tree?

We moved to our happy hillside  3 years ago, a half-acre wooded lot on a suburban street just up the hill from a goat farm. Unfortunately we had a number of hundred-year-old oak trees near the house that were sharing too many of their branches with us at random times. They had to be cut down, which we found out is not cheap, but is a little bit cheaper if you dispose of the wood yourself. That left us wondering what to do with literally tons of wood and unsightly stumps.

We still think keeping the cut wood was a good choice. It saved us thousands of dollars in clean-up fees, and gave me an unexpected but not unwelcome workout schedule for nearly a month. We used the timber to fashion terraces on our heavy clay slope, backfilling the spaces with branches, leaves, and organic debris. We now have a series of five new garden beds that are still moist and green even after three weeks of drought.  

We're encouraging the stumps to decay in their own time as hugelkultur beds. One has become a productive dewberry patch, and another a small multipurpose garden.

Definitely a 'problem is the solution' moment. One might even say a nice problem to have!

Seems like it might be time to consider investing in a woodstove!  Especially if you have more old trees fixing to come down or need dropping!  Is there no demand for firewood in your area?  And a big, sound oak, (judging from the look of the logs in your photos), might find interest among woodworkers.