Tired Today

I am sore and tired, so I will keep this post short. I had a load of firewood delivered and have been stacking it for the last four days. The first day, it was steady, constructing the racks to hold the wood as I went. The dump truck that brought it was a tri-axle. I asked the driver and he told me that there was between three and four cords of wood. It was dumped in my yard and the task of stacking it falls on me.

Over the many years that I have bought, stacked, and stored wood, I did learn one thing as I aged, keep the wood closer to the house. I have stored wood in about four different places in my yard. The first place I used was a spot about fifty yards from the house. I hauled the wood when I needed it from the place from the back of my property to the basement. It was a chore, especially in the winter, when there were snow drifts to my knees and pushing the loaded wheelbarrow became a Herculean task. Day after day it was necessary to have wood for the wood burner so I could help heat the house. After several years, I abandoned the wheel barrow in the winter and used a child’s plastic toboggan sled, so now I only I had to trudge through the drifts while the sled rode lightly in the snow. I did have to be careful that it didn’t tip over and spill the wood.

After about ten years, I moved the storage place closer. Only about thirty yards in the side yard. The snowdrifts were slightly less. That lasted two years.

The next place was on the other side of the house, only twenty yards away. There were still drifts and I got tired of that after one year.

The last five years, I have been stacking it right outside of my basement door. I still have to shovel out a path in the snowdrifts, but the furthest I have to go for wood is about twenty-five feet. I’m not sure whether I’ve gotten wiser with age or whether age has made me less willing to exert myself, but it certainly been easier on me.