Tetris, Tons, and Tomatoes

Ever stacked olive wood?  Yeah, me neither.

I have, however, stacked a lot of wood since moving to Italy.  Not to brag or anything, but I'm pretty good at it.  It's like doing a puzzle.  Or rock climbing. Actually it's a lot like a life-sized, heavy, dirty game of tetris.

Which would explain my advanced skill level - I went through a tetris phase. I'm going to toss out a little theory here that says just about anyone who was in middle school in 80s would be a good wood stacker.

Wait, I'm a little off topic here, we were talking about olive wood, stacking OLIVE wood.

Maybe some of you have stacked Elm wood

or  maybe a bit of Oak wood

This would make you amateur wood stackers.  Babies.  Half-stackers. tee-ball stackers. Wanna enter the wood stacking big leagues?  Cut one of these gnarly bad boys into stove-sized pieces and start stacking

All I can say is.....who's your mamma?  I am.  I am your wood stacking mamma.

Ok, it's not so pretty but  it is 10 quintale (half ton) of olive wood in 4' x 3' x 6' stack.

David thinks that should keep us warm for about a week and a half.  So he picked up a little backup

Those would be small pieces of Brier wood from our pal Mimmo who has a business treating and cutting brier wood into pipe sized pieces to sell to people who make pipes - pipes for smoking, not tubes. I bet you never thought about where pipe makers get their wood, did ya?  Well, they get it from Mimmo.  And we get his left-over bits, in easy to stack bags.

Speaking of stacking, here's the stack of veggies from today's harvest.

As I type David is making our 3rd, THIRD, batch of sugo for jarring.

Umm, that doesn't look like much, it was just one batch.  Anyway...

Winter.  Bring it on...

Any of you ever cut and stacked wood?

Yeah? So then you guys know how hard it is.

No? You guys, it's really hard. First, you have to fell a tree (or get a really nice guy like Augusto to do it for you). Then you have to cut the tree into bite-sized pieces with a rather scary piece of loud machinery that requires protective eye and head gear (unless you want to cut a 6 inch slash in your head...that's another story). Then these pieces, depending on their girth need to be chopped into halves or quarters with a tool that isn't loud but requires a better than minimum level of skill and muscle. Now when you have a nice pile of hard earned potential heat source, you want to stack it so it doesn't rot away on the ground - that and so that your neighbors will think you are organized, prepared and just very cool in general. For you non-wood gatherers, I have to tell you that the stacking part is the most difficult. Ok, maybe not, but that's the part that I do so, for me, it's the most difficult.

Now that you all are sufficiently knowledgeable about the art of wood collection...CHECK THIS OUT!



Wanna see it again?



Yeah, ok. That's my boot in the photo but I'm just posing by the neighbor's pile. I have wood envy. Actually, I have wood stacking envy. Now that the weather is warm, I've quickly forgotten the heat value of a nice pile of wood. Right now, I'd just like to have a beautiful pile like that sitting out front of my house - you know, for the cool factor, not the heat factor.

After rereading what I just wrote there, I'm thinking that I'm probably not a real country girl.

No. You can't see a photo of my stacking ability.

To be fair (to myself) and because this is supposed to be a knitting blog I'd like to say that cool-wood-stacking-neighbor-pal probably can't do this***...



I wonder if he'd have wool envy?

***I can't show more of that knitted garment because it's the surprise piece that I'm working on ... so don't tell anyone.