I mentioned in the last post that I recently had 10,000 pounds of wood pellets dropped in my driveway.   I’ve decided that it’s 10,000 pounds of pain and suffering really.  In the past two days I’ve moved forty bags.

At this rate I hope to finish by the end of the weekend.

This is my third iteration moving pellets into my basement as this will be my third winter in Wisconsin.  Each time I’ve learned a little something.

Our first winter in the Midwest was rather rough.  We arrived in time for the hottest summer in a long while and proceeded directly to the longest, coldest winter on record.  Not knowing how bad it was going to be, but knowing that it would no doubt be much much worse than anything we’d experienced in Georgia by orders of magnitude, one of the first improvements my wife and I made to this house was to install a new wood pellet burning stove in a decommissioned fireplace that was rather central to the house, supplementing the warmth that our furnace put out a great deal.

The lesson for the first year was two-fold:  First, plan ahead and plan to buy as much as you can store.  Second, my wife likes being warm in the winter time.  My first purchase was a single pallet.  I ended up buying two more shipments of two pallets a piece.  Once we discovered what a difference the stove made, my wife DEMANDED that the fireplace run all day and night.  So I ran through pellets much faster than I had imagined possible.

In my second year, I learned two more things:  First, look around for bargains early and often.  Secondly, it’s a lot easier to load up your basement during the summer months than in the dead of winter.  Last winter we purchased not from the local big box store, but from a guy who basically acted as a middleman for pellet delivery.    Through him, I was able to get my pellets for about a third off the price I paid during the first winter.  And since I pre-ordered, I was loading pellets into the basement for storage during the month of August.  Four full pallets disappeared into the basement in three days.

This year, I’m learning still.  The first lesson was that things change.  The guy I bought from last year died, so I was cut off from that source.  And then the housing crisis brought up the price for wood pellets significantly (the dust from sawmills is the sole component of wood pellets.  A lack of construction meant that there was less excess sawdust, raising prices).  The second lesson is that wheelbarrows are a Godsend for moving pellets around.   Things are a little bit easier, but at the same time, I have less energy to move things, so it’s taking longer.

Like I said, I hope to finish by the weekend.

The end of the weekend.

Possibly the day after the weekend.

Or Tuesday.