Working with and drying Japanese yew (shrub) wood

Hello all, This weekend we finally pulled out some overgrown yew shrubs. I remembered that Philip Weber (http://www.weberboxes.com) uses pacific yew in some of his boxes. So when I cut through the trunks I was even more pleasantly surprised to see that the heartwood on these shrubs is a beautiful redish-orange, almost like a paduk surrounded by a yellow sapwood. I want to save the small amount I have and use it on some projects but need to know what is the best way to dry the wood. I figure the trunks are about 4-6” in diameter and between the root balls and the upper couple of feet I have about 12” of length on either side of the cut. I was thinking of cutting some bowl blanks and the flatsawing some pieces.

Here is a picture of one of the trunks: (It isnt clean, but you get the idea)