Progress!!

Finally, we feel like we're making some headway. After weeks of bad weather or just no time, we have been able to add to our pallet-pile. We have one business giving us 2-4 each month. Considering I'm aiming for 100, I needed another pick up point. I could not wait two to four years to complete my fence.
Looking around the suggested places and continually checking craigslist proved not just fruitless, but frustrating. I was beginning to think that all the pallets around here were already spoken for.
Finally, I had my wife post to some of her local online communities and Facebook, asking if anyone had free pallets. She received two replied within 24 hours! In less than a day we've gone from 4 pallets to 18 good pallets and a couple for scrap pieces. I have another half dozen lined up.

Understanding we have just the family van, not a truck, we left the kids with my mother-in-law as support and headed out. We were told there were pallets behind a local factory and to "pull up and get them." Of course, it wasn't quite that easy.
The factory has one gate to the rear of the facility. There was no one outside. It was barely above freezing… I didn't expect anyone to be outside! Slowly driving around, my wife spied three pallets sitting by a forklift. "There they are," she said. I wasn't so sure. This was a large facility and when I heard they said to "pull up and get them" did not sound like three pallets. I kept driving. We saw two more by a door. I kept driving. We rounded the back corner and saw what I was expecting. Multiple stacks of discarded, various sized pallets.
I backed the van in and we started going through the trove. Being grateful of the gesture, we loaded as many as we could. Some were small. Faith wanted those for our shed. We loaded pieces, to fill in gaps and repair the pallets that needed it, or will need it. Faith saw a couple bigger pieces she wanted. They weren't full pallets, not even half pallets, but she wanted the parts.
So we went home planning to come back. We were able to load the pallets without affecting the seating in the middle section, meaning we could take the kids next time. We went home. We had the kids come out and help with the unloading.
Later, we loaded the kids and returned to the pallets. The pieces Faith had her eye in we're heavy. They were each at least seven feet long, made from three 4x4 poles with 1x6 crossbeams. We were able to load both of them on the roof. While Faith took charge of tying down the big ones, Nathaniel and Aleah shuttled pallets to me, one on each side, calling out "Left-Right-Left-Right" as they collaborated. I stacked them in the van with Garret "helping" from inside. After loading about another half dozen, we came home.
We worked the unloading similarly to loading. The kids took out was small scraps we had, them cooperated to get alleys from the van to the bottom of the yard and stacked.
After we had the van emptied, Garret went inside, while Nathaniel and Aleah played on the stacks. It felt right. It felt good to have made progress.