The wood pile...

Most days, this is the view behind our house. Some days, the valley floor is greener... some days not so much. Some days there will be puffy clouds in the sky... and some days the sky will be completely gray, when it's going to snow. Every once in a while, we'll get one of those crazy sudden summer thunderstorms....

So, when we go stack wood, this is what we stop to look at.... when we're not looking at endless piles of almond wood. Ok, maybe "endless" isn't quite the right word. When we first had it delivered, all TWENTY cords of it, it certainly looked close to endless.

These piles (two of them) were each well over 40 feet long and 6 feet tall... and probably 10-12 feet wide. They were delivered in two trips in a LARGE truck and then dumped at our place. Here Dad parts the firewood sea under some of those puffy clouds:

The wood was delivered at the end of October last year - literally days after our stuff was moved up. We began stacking it immediately but then early snow put a stop to it. We've recently begun going back out, now that there isn't snow on the ground and the wood and everywhere else, and trying to finish what we started last fall. Usually a bout of wood stacking lasts a couple of hours, three if we're really feeling good about it.

Here are before (left) and after (right) shots of the progress made today in a couple of hours. What you don't see are the HUGE rounds we have to set aside to be split later. We have several piles of these that we'll have to work through some day.

Not sure if you can actually see the difference. Today we were working on the fourth row. It was about halfway to the top and now we're within the last foot or so. Each row is about 30 feet long and 7 feet tall. You can also see Dad's chair... For the most part his job now is to supervise. He does get in on the act when we get close to the top - he'll stand on a step ladder and we'll hand him wood - that way he still feels like he's getting to do some of the work around here but doesn't end up hurting himself.

I'm grateful that the ground is mostly dried out. It can be VERY muddy up here after the snow melts. We've had a couple nice sunny, dry days so I didn't have to sport these puppies.

Notice there's still snow behind them? That is where it slides off the roof & piles up four or five times as deep as everywhere else.... so it's always the last to melt off.

When there's 18" of snow and you have to shovel a path for the dogs though it so they can go outside, well that's when these are lifesavers!!