This morning on Facebook I noticed that MM from Multifarious Meanderings has just had her winter wood supply delivered. We on the other hand have been burning the wood that Mario the woodman delivered since the beginning of October. This is a little worrying as winter doesn’t officially start in Italy until the 21st of December and it is doubtful that our current stock of wood will last us through the winter. After all we only bought 26 quintali (just over two and a half tons of wood!!)
When the wood arrives you need to stack it somewhere dry and in such a way that it won’t fall over. When I ordered our wood I gave Mario clear and simple instructions, I asked for dry wood that would fit my little wood burning heater. I also asked him to cut the logs the same size so that a girl in a frock or even an Englishman could stack it.
Either Mario didn’t understand my version of Italian or he has a great sense of humour, because amongst the pile of wood he dumped on my lawn were twigs, sticks and several bits of wood that looked like the hind leg of a donkey.
Mario realised that I was English and had probably never before attempted to stack two and a half tons of wood. To be honest he was almost correct, last year when we needed wood I simply wandered down the garden with my chainsaw and cut a tree down.
The previous two year, I had the wood dropped into the garage and just left it in a big pile. When we lived in Borgo San Martino, we only had a little courtyard and I (with the help of Mrs Sensible) stacked 10 quintale (one ton). I know a wife shouldn’t really help with the stacking of wood, but the delivery man had dropped the wood in the middle of the road completely blocking it to traffic.
Good old Mario showed me how to stack the wood by laying the first four pieces. As he drove away in his tractor I went off in search of a glass of wine.
It took me two exhausting and pain filled days to stack the wood thankfully it didn’t rain on me. I would like at this stage to show you a picture of my wood stacking. This will be valuable information for MM, unless of course she is just going to leave the wood in a heap or dump it in her garage.
MM, look how the wood is all interlocked. It is absolutely amazing!! You will notice that I chose a very small area of my wood pile as an example of my fine Italian wood stacking. This is because the rest of the wood pile is a little like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And please notice how I managed to incorporate an object d art.
I know all of you think I am just a little eccentric as every Englishman should be, or maybe bordering on madness. But may I remind you about the red arrow in the second photograph? It points to a hole in the wall where the scabby cats enter their little house. Yes our cats live outside in a little three by three apartment.
My wonderful wood pile was going to close off their doorway so I inserted a wooden box and a secret tunnel for the cats.
As you can see, it didn’t take long for Headache to find the new entrance to his house. If anyone want’s to adopt Headache please leave me a message below and we will send him via Fedex anywhere in the world.
Mr Sweary ( my sometimes Belov-ed) built a bazzin’ woodshed where we stack just as you do. We buy in wood to be left out in palettes for 2 years worth of weathering before use. Don’t you find the stink rather unpleasant? Lots of our wood has woodworms so we can’t keep a quaint logbasket in the house. All in all it’s dirty work for someone used to central heating as a reliable source of comfort.
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Hi Connie, I love Italy but I do miss warm carpets and affordable central heating. Our boiler is bigger than my car it sound like a jet taking off as it sucks in huge amounts of gas. This year our wood is woodworm free the only danger is coming across deadly biting spiders or wasps that are sleeping the winter off in the wood pile.
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Wonderful little entrance you made. I am just glad that I don’t have to stack wood this year however next summer I will have to go to my parents cottage and there some madness will await me for at least a week of cutting and stacking wood
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Last year I cut down trees from the garden. We lost a couple of walnut trees and some fruit trees. I was under orders not to chop any more down so I bought and stacked the wood this year.
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Your wood pieces look like the crazy sizes, as I have bought here too 😉
Take good care of your beauties .
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The cat is free to a good home or even a bad home
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We already have 3 and a half cats; can’t help- sorry.
We also have walnut trees but the walnuts are rubbish with walnut fly but they do hide an ugly barn so they are staying. I don’t like fruit, fruit is for bats and monkeys.
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Half a cat?? We have 6 or so peach trees which in theory is fab. but who can eat 6 tree full of peaches in a
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3 live with us. the half one is a vagabond that we feed am & pm. Peaches? For the birds. Our neighbour yesterday gifted us 10 eggs, 2 lettuce, 1 enormous fennel, a cauliflower- we just don’t have the time to eat that much before it goes off. I have bottles & bottles of stuff they’ve given us but we can’t get through it fast enough before the next lot arrives (to be secreted away in the boiler room). I do return the favour with romesco sauce, chilli jam, sausage rolls, cake, shortbread, cookies, pate & yorkshire puds. Way too much focus on food.
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We ended up with cats because they adopted us. I am hoping they will decide to adopt someone else.I miss shortbread
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I have a lovely, easy recipe for shortbread. I bet even you could make it. Sorry, it doesn’t come in a tin from Walker’s. But it tastes even better. I can email the recipe if you would like it.;-)
Oh, you want me to snail mail it already made up do you?
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Snail mail sounds good, although Poste Italia will loose it, better E mail it over… please 🙂
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It’s on the way…check you in box.
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recipe recieved many thanks, I might task Mrs S with the cooking bit
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Hmmmm, I don’t think so. Have you seen more to your white beauty?
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I am really sorry. Scooby Doo the scabby white cat picked a fight with a car and lost. 😦
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I’m very sorry to hear that 😦
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We are also sorry. We went to visit Luigina, the old lady who lived next door to us and she told us the bad news.
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At least your beauty had a good life.
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The Machiavellian cat enjoyed purring and then scratching people 😉
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That is so sad. But he is waiting for you in kitty heaven.
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Do scabby white cats and black sheep go to the same heaven??
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I bet they do. I’ve seen a sign (to put on one’s wall) that says “Heaven is where I’ll see all the cats I’ve ever loved” and considering you and Scooby had a love hate relationship he’s sure to be there.
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He really was a strange cat, I now have 2 strange cats Mishmash and Headache. The cats that are under the ownership of Mrs S seem almost normal in a cat sort of way, apart from the ginger minger
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Thank you so much for the helpful guide to wood stacking, PN. I am most impressed by your skills and think you should come here and stack it with PF. Last year I stacked it myself. I was very proud of it, it took me hours. PF came home from work,grunted and cast a dubitative eye over it. Apparently I don’t have the knack of not leaving any gaps. The following morning he took it all apart and did it again. I put this down to an unhealthy addiction to Tetris – he plays it on his phone on the bus every day. I have therefore decided that it is better to leave the wood where it is (currently in a huge heap in the rain) so that PF can play quietly for a few hours this weekend, with the added bonus of no tools being needed.
You cat looks much cuter than mine. If mine was human, he’d be a teenaged Goth with a ring in his nose.
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PF took it apart and re built it? I need to go and have a sit down! Tell him he can come over here and rebuild mine if he wants.
The ‘cat’ looks cute but he is the son of Mishmash and therefore missing a few brain cells after some of the stunts he has pulled he is lucky to still be alive. Mainly because he can run faster than me when I am carrying a rather large broom.
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Maybe you can karate chop him 😉
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I am working on karate kicks, but he is too fast.
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First of all, those hinds of donkey legs, in just the right craftsman’s / woodworker’s hands, would make marvelous cutting / presentation boards …and secondly, I hope this cat apartment of yours, in which their passage way, which is rather ingenious I might add, is not blocked when it does indeed get truly cold and is free of bugs and snakes as it looks very snaky…what with all that wood lying about—I would take “Headache” but I already have two precious lambs, who are mostly inside rather than outside and I fear I would lose my husband should I add one more to the brood–especially one who only meows in Italian as my husband only knows english meows of which already irritates him 🙂
And don’t feel too badly for Mrs. S stacking wood–I’ve stacked many a load—great exercise to firm up ones biceps and other ceps 🙂
Happy stacking—have a little vino break, you deserve it 🙂
cookie
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Headache is bilingual as both Mrs S and I talk to him.
I think the bugs and snakes are afraid of the scabby cats also I think it is relatively warm in their home, they have blankets boxes and winter fur coats
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No doubt 😽
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Headache is ADORABLE and you are a genius tunnel builder.
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Hi Donna,
Headache is not adorable he is a major headache. He may look good looking and he is not afraid of Mrs Sensible’s Ginger minger of a tom cat but I promise you he didn’t get his name by accident.
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I once had a cat named PITA….for Pain in the ___, Not the flatbread. He earned his name also.
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They are a menace, Mishmash is ok in a strange cat like sort of way
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i love your lovely mosaic collage art statement. and i love the new cat secret entrance.
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Hi Beth, It’s a pity you don’t love the cat, I could FedEx it to you
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Heehee ! Brings back memories ! I have a Roberto here in Spain. In my previous house he backed his wood laden truck into the garage, emptied the load onto the garage floor. After emptying my wallet, he gunned the truck out of the garage demolishing 2 strip lights and the top frame of the garage door, forgetting that without a load of wood the truck was 2+ feet higher. 😦
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Hi Ralph,
When we ordered the wood he said it might deliver a little less or a little more than we ordered. An extra 600 kilos seemed a bit extreme to me. Especially when I was stacking it. Having said that I am sure we will use it all.
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Wow ! A Christmas bonus ! Keep warm PN !
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Not really, he wanted paying for the extra 600 kilo of wood 😦 I had to give him the money I had hidden away to buy some more wine. 😉
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😦 A sobering thought !
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Here in Brandizzo, near Torino, we have a “stuffa,” which burns wood pellets. It heats only one room – the rest of the house is brass monkeys.
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Our stuffa burns logs and just like you the rest of the house is freezing. We move little portable heaters around when we go upstairs.
The first year hear we used the gas central heating, well until the first bill for € 987.00 (Oct & Nov) fluttered through the letter box. I thought it was an estimate, but it wasn’t.
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I’m so impressed PN. You are a master wood stacker and that secret door for the cats is also pure genius! 😉
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🙂 🙂 Thank you.
The cats were a little confused to start off with.
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