Often I say that I don’t care if people learn the hard way, as long as they learn.
Perhaps this is partially because that is the way that I feel about myself. I’ve learned a lot of lessons in this life, and far too many of them were the hard way. Thankfully I have made it out alive, but still.
In this life, we all have limited time. We only get 24 hours each day, and during most of those days we sleep. Each minute that we waste is one that we will never get back, and every time we have to redo something, we wasted some time.
Though this truth applies to all of us, sometimes it is most noticeable on the homestead. Since a lot of what gets done you’re going to have to do yourself, your time is extremely precious. Today I spent a bit of time redoing something, because I did not do it right the first time.
DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN
When 
Just so you know, a log laying on the ground is going to rot. Now I sure do have some uses for rotting logs, since I can use them in hugel mounds and such, but there are plenty of rotten logs out in the woods already. These trees that we cut down will be much more valuable to us as firewood for heating our home.
Ideally, stacks of wood for firewood should be stored in a way that keeps them off of the ground. This will help the wood to be able to dry without rotting. My lame attempt at taking a shortcut was not going to work.
Here you can see that after just a few months the wood at the bottom of the pile was already starting to deteriorate. Time to do it all over again.
NOW I’LL TRY THE RIGHT WAY
Though I’ve still got a few more piles to go, I combined three of my stacks into one earlier today. This time, I put down my metal runners first to keep the wood off of the ground.
I even used some T-posts at the end of the pile so that I could stack it higher without making it longer. It sure gives the stack a nicer look when it is finished too.
In the end, it did not take me that long to complete this part of the project, but I still had to do it twice. Also, I’m still not finished. I still have three big piles to restack. Also, I’ll never get back any of the time that it takes me to redo all of this work. All of the other things that I could have been doing will now have to wait.
Guys, I’m sure that you may have heard this before, but please take the time to do it right the first time. If you need to, even ask how to do it right. If you guess wrong, you’ll just be wasting your time. I’ve got some more work to do on this restacking project, but I can guarantee that I’ll be doing every new one right the first time.
Live and learn… but please do learn!
As always, I'm 
and here's the proof:
proof-of-not-doing-it-right-the-first-time
Until next time…
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