Focused and With a Purpose

I have been single-mindedly splitting and stacking wood with a purpose, and it sure feels good. Last year I feel like I made a couple of stupid mistakes, but the hard lessons you learn in life sure stay with you. First off, I split some really old pieces of wood that had been sitting around for literally years. They were either too big or too knotty to split by hand, and I finally managed to procure a splitter from our friends, the MPs. I split the pieces big, though they were moldy and covered with mushrooms. I should have either split them sooner, or let them rot.

These big pieces made the wood pile look ugly (I know it's no big deal, but it is when you have firewood OCD), and take up a lot of space. I ended up pulling them out, figuring I'll burn most of it in a bonfire. They amounted to about half a cord, so their absence left a gaping hole in the pile. I am in the process of filling it with properly split pieces, and I feel better about the whole endeavor.

The second blunder I made was that I got complacent and didn't complete the year-2 pile, even though I had the wood. I was lazy, though in my defense, we're busy people over here, and summer is brutally busy, especially when you're trying to build a barn. Couple that with a stacked pile of big, ugly wood that's too crappy to burn, and you have your work cut out for you.

This past winter was long and cold, so we dipped heavily into year-2, which again was aggravated by having such big pieces. By the time the snow melted and spring had arrived, we had almost no wood left in the pile. What a sad sight to behold. This time around, I'm determined to get both years stacked. I'm bummed because I missed out on an entire year of drying. Oh well, live and learn. I've been pretty focused thus far, and this year is almost done. I feel like we're in a good place, though complacency can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

Best of all, we still have a lot of log-length and un-split blocks, so my dream scenario is to get this year done and then have enough to complete year-2 without having to buy more, or rather, we'll buy more log-length, there just won't be an urgent need to cut and split it.

Wishful thinking? What else is new?

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to keithj5000 for the pic.