Contest Winner! Best Wood Pile Picture

Welcome back to RuggedMade. I'm Jared and I'm Joe. We hope everyone had a great long weekend. We recently ran a contest for best wood pile. It finished on May 31st [2021], which was Memorial Day and we hope everyone was able to take a moment and reflect on what that holiday means.

But now we'd like to take a look at some of the great submissions we had for our first contest. The prize that we've been offering is one of these pick-a-roons. And, we're really appreciative of all the people who sent in these great pictures. Let's start by looking at this one from Alexander Tolles. So, Joe, what do you think? I think it's a good pile. It's a good picture. He's got an energy drink there and his work gloves, so obviously he was worked pretty hard today. I like it. Yeah, I think when it comes down to staying hydrated during a splitting session, [it] comes down to either the hydra, the energy drink, or the obvious alternative. Yeah. So, yeah. Definitely give some points to Alexander, who’s got safety in mind with the gloves. We like to see that.

Next, we have David Smith, who is from Indiana. All right. Well, David, thank you for your submission. First thing we see is one of our log splitters, so brownie points for putting one of our splitters in your picture. We like that. Yeah, it looks like he's got a lot of machinery in the background, that too. Yeah, the green thing is obviously a tractor. The thing on the left, the yellow thing, we'd love to know what that is. So, David, if you want to send us a note and tell us what that is - was that, like, something you cobbled together or is that a standard piece of equipment, some sort of backhoe? But, it looks pretty cool and looks like you're splitting some pretty big rounds. Oh, yeah. It’s a 37-ton. Yeah. All right.

Next, we have Tommy Allen from Connecticut. Someone up here in the northeast, not too far from where we are. Huge pile. Massive pile. Yep. I think Tommy took the description of the contest as wood piles a little bit too literally. We were hoping to see more stacked wood, but we definitely give Tommy credit for just a monster pile of split wood and it looks like there's a whole bunch of, you know, 8-, 10-foot trees in the back waiting to be split.

All right, who do we [have] next? All right, now next we’ve got Jack “Islander” from, we presume, the island. The mystery island somewhere. Yeah, it's, this may be a made-up name, I don't know where they got the picture from but there's no information on Jack Islander except that he has a nice looking dog and he tried to use the puppy as brownie points for us. So, yeah. Jack, that's always going to win with us - a cute German Shepherd puppy is always going to, you know, get you an honorable mention.

So, next we've got Jason Berry who is in Maine. And, so, we got a nice nice pile here. Neatly stacked. And, what we really liked about Jason's picture was he's got these 90-degree stacks that obviously make that pile a little more stable and, I think, with the piles of snow that are gonna be on that, come winter time, that's a pretty good way to stack. Yeah, I think, probably easier to cover it up, too, with the tarp there. Pull it down over those other stacks and keep the rain and snow right off of everything. So, yeah. I like the way they set that up. We know when we get a submission from somewhere that far north, that would, I mean, that wood’s probably barely get through, you know, part of a winter up there. Yeah. All right, so, Jason, great job. Honorable mention for you.

All right, next up we have Penny Wakita. I really enjoyed this picture. Yeah. Just the whole fire in the foreground of it with the massive round in there that's already lit up. Great pile of wood and obviously someone who worked too hard that day, who’s now taking a nap on the pile. Yeah, Penny, we've been there. That's pretty much the standard pose after a day of splitting but we love this because you've got so much going on here. You've got just a monster pile of wood neatly stacked. We like that. But, there's a nice aesthetic here. It's always nice when you can bring in some nice cinematic, photographic kind-of-effect here. And, if anyone's seen our recent video for our Father's Day event that's coming up, we actually had Joe and his family in front of the fireplace roasting marshmallows. So, we love this. And, that's why, Penny, you get an awesome honorable mention.

And now for the grand prize winner of our contest. Michelle Short, who hails from Wisconsin. Wisconsin, yep, and Michelle sent us a great picture with a massive pile of wood. She has our log splitter there that she's been using and it looks like she's still working in this picture. So, we loved everything about it. She's got split wood. It looks like she's still actively working there, and just a monstrous stack of wood in the background, which we thought was really cool. Yeah, she's got the trailer to move it around. This looks like a big lot. Also has a RuggedMade [log] splitter in the picture. That's always going to, you know, warm our hearts and we'd love to know how many cord you have stacked there, Michelle. Actually, [she] submitted multiple pictures, so extra brownie points. Are you trying to game the system? Normally, it's one submission only, but in one of her other pictures you can see that this pile just goes on and on, wraps around the corner, and it's about four, I believe, it's four four rows deep. Yeah, this picture here, that's hard to tell from this angle, it's four rows deep, so a monster amount of wood. We're not sure if Michelle is just burning this herself or selling firewood, but we'd love to hear more from you, Michelle. Thanks, again, for the submission. You are the winner of our contest. This will be sent out to you and we'd love to hear more about how you make out with the splitter, the pick-a-roon, and all your splitting.

Thanks for all your submissions and be sure to check out our Father's Day sale going on right now. It's $10 off all logging tools, including this picaroon, and $100 off all log splitter models.

So, thanks, again, to everyone who submitted for our contest. Congratulations to our winner, Michelle, and everyone else. Please stay tuned for the next contest, which we'll be running soon.

Thanks, again. Catch us next time at RuggedMade.