Do you know Jenga?

What I do after chopping wood is similar to Jenga with a difference: I don’t want the stack of wood to come down!

The other day I asked my daughters to help stack wood while I chopped. I really appreciated the help because bending down to pick up the wood over and over gives me a lot of back pain. Also, doing any activity together with others makes for a nice time. There’s conversation, laughter and the pace is not as busy.

But after the wood was stacked I noticed how unstable it was and I had to re-stack all of the wood. I liken wood stacking to a puzzle, in that each space can be filled with the proper size and shape of wood. Put in the wrong size or shape and you create instability which will eventually mean that your wood stack will tumble.

My wood sheds provide a base and sides for the wood to rest against, so it is difficult for the wood to fall over. Years ago I cut and stacked wood in Mugi, then after it had dried sufficiently I brought it back to Naruto. In Mugi, I chopped the wood in an open field (I brought the wood from a nearby mountain) and stacked it in the open. As such, I had to stack the wood so that winds and storms would not tip over the wood. When stacked well, wood will not tip over even in typhoons (at least when I did it years ago).

So stability is important but another reason for stacking wood well is that more wood can fit into an area. Stacking wood as opposed to just dumping it as a pile allows you to put more wood in the existing space. Considering that I don’t have a lot of space in my yard it’s important to use the space as efficiently as possible.

My goal now is to get my daughters to chop the wood, leaving the important stacking job for myself. Once they’ve mastered the chopping part, I’ll have them work on the stacking part.

More realistically, it looks like it’s going to be me and only me cutting, chopping and stacking. Oh, well.