Never too late to learn

File this one under ‘the things you learn when you least expect it’ and hallelujah for that!

See this picture?

This is a detail of a photo I ran across last night in a Vermont newspaper (while reading my energy blogs). This is a picture of a simple woodpile...with a difference.

For as long as I’ve been stacking wood, it just never occurred to me to add a balanced woodpile ender to my woodpiles, like the one in this picture. I’ve tried hammering stakes in the ground or wrapping my woodpiles with ropes or depending on luck to prevent my precariously balanced ends from tumbling down. My luck runs about 50% on that score. Although I’ve gotten rather good at balancing the ends of my woodpiles, there is still such a thing as gravity and it quite often wins.

This morning I tried that woodpile ender idea on one of my stacks and what do you know. It really works. It seems to make gravity work for me instead of against me.

It has only taken me eight years to discover this elegantly simple idea. Better late than never.