All Logged Out

We are done in, done enough, are done with it.  The logging, aka cutting, splitting, loading, unloading and stacking firewood.  

Yesterday we took the tractor and trailer out with us when we took the dogs for a walk through the bush.  On the way back Larry drove the tractor and trailer down the trail and parked it at the closest spot to the pile of split wood.  Oh boy oh boy oh boy that maple is heavy wood when it's green.  Got it all loaded on the trailer and Larry started along the trail.  When he first drove in there I did think in my head that I wouldn't have been facing that way, but I (unusual for me) kept my mouth shut.  There is a bit of a hill, but with the ground being so frozen, we (or he) didn't think it would be a problem.  Well it was.  The tractor isn't 4 wheel drive, it started to slip on the steep bit, the tires spun and turned the frozen ground into ice.  The trail is just wide enough for the trailer, so he rolled back a bit, but there was no room to maneuver to back up, as the trail wasn't straight either.  So we just left it there because our boy David would be here today and he could pull us out with his landrover 'Gruff' and his wench...er winch. (That one's for you Suzanne!)

Later in the afternoon I walked out there and split the rest of the wood further up the trail, with the help of my buddy Jake.

This morning David and Gruff and his wench...er winch came out.

He didn't use the wench...er winch, he just pulled the tractor with the tow rope and it didn't take much and the tractor and trailer and Larry were on their way.

 I did have to yell once for him to lower the bucket before he whacked it on a tree, and he did squeeze a trailer tire against a tree trunk, but it was all good, not a piece of firewood was lost.

I continued on and gave the dogs their walk while Larry drove back to our wood shed thingy.

David helped us unload the trailer and we got the wood all stacked.  Larry and I went back out to pick up the rest of the wood, and I told him about a couple of good sized pieces I had seen on the ground.  So we drove out to where they were, were able to carry them out to the trailer, and sawed and split them right there.  Then we went and picked up the wood that I had split yesterday, heading the opposite way along the trail, which worked out just fine, and I mentally said 'I told you so'.  Got that stacked in the woodshed with Meredith's help, and felt a great glow of accomplishment, because, added to what we already had, we have enough wood in there now to get us through the next winter.  And then exhaustion set in.

Note 1 - A Facebook and blogging friend was describing a farm vehicle they had just bought, and she said it had a winch but spelled it wench, so I made a joke of of it.  I think of that every time I see winch now:)

Note 2 - How Gruff got it's name.  The Landrover club that David belongs to said his short stocky vehicle can go just about anywhere, like a little billy goat gruff.

A Nice Day

I've never been very good at writing a blog post the day of...or having a blog post ready for a specific day.  Most of mine seem to be last minute, for the day before, and probably by the time most people read it,  it happened two days before.

So this blog post was about yesterday (Friday).  We've had a week or so of cold weather.  I kind of cringe when I say cold, because it is nothing like what a lot of others have experienced, but it's been unusually cold for us, with records broken in our province.  I think the coldest we got was -14C with the windchill overnight.  I know, that's not even below zero for you Fahrenheit people.  But that's really cold for us, believe me...or not!  It didn't even get above freezing during the day, and it was mostly sunny, but the wind was wicked.  Yesterday was one of the warmer days, and there wasn't much wind, so it was really quite pleasant.

Of course I haven't been able to do any gardening this week, as the ground is frozen solid, but we have been outside for part of the day doing other things.

Since we have a bit of snow predicted for Sunday, and then snow or rain on Monday, and rain for the rest of the week, we wanted to get the rest of that wood split and brought in before it got wet.  Larry had been out in the morning to cut the rest of it up, and I wandered out there in the afternoon to split it.  As I passed the north garden, Larry was finishing off dumping piles of the half rotted wood chips/horse manure mix on the last section.  Normally we could never do that in the winter.  The ground there gets quite wet, and even if it freezes,  it doesn't freeze deep enough to stop the tractor from making huge mucky ruts.  This week it did, so we took advantage of it.  So nice that even the driving back and forth to the manure pile didn't churn the ground into a muddy mess.

I got the rest of the wood split, and then decided to do a bit of exploring in the 'Hole'. The Hole is the area between the front and the back hayfield.  That area is called the Hole, because there is a hole there, dah! that stays full of water most of the year.  It is run-off and spring fed.  The water supply for our house originally came from there.  The is a large galvanized water tank buried in the blackberries, and there used to be remnants of a power line to run the pump.  The water seeps away in tiny creek that flows through the field next door, and into their pond.  From there it eventually it runs into Nathan Creek (where we often walk along the dyke with the dogs) and into the Fraser River. See the map on the right.

It was warm and protected where I was, so I had a bit of a wander around.  When we were younger and full of energy, we used to keep this area relatively cleaned up, but now it is rather overgrown with blackberries and underbrush.  Since there are no leaves, it's easier to see a way through.  About 10 years ago David constructed quite a set of ramps and bridges and jumps to try to kill himself on ride his mountain bike on.  I went out to watch him once, and that was enough for me, it was too scary.  A lot of the ramps bridges are still there, I got brave and walked on one, and it wasn't rotten enough to collapse underneath me.

There are remnants of the rainforest this whole area used to be.  That log is four feet in diameter, and it is just on the other side of it that Calli got stuck the other day.

It was so peaceful and quiet, I was out there by myself.  A couple of Stellar's Jays were squawking in the trees, and a woodpecker was pounding away on a tree branch. Okay, I guess it wasn't quite that quiet.

Then the logger appeared.  He didn't see me at first, and I could tell that he was wondering where I was. He said there was some wood he wanted to cut further up the trail.

 I wandered back and checked out the piles he had dumped.  It will be my job to spread them. Some of it could have been done with the tractor, but there is a row of rhubarb growing up the middle of that section, and I didn't want him to drive on it.

The work keeps piling up.

Logging With Larry

When we walk through our bush in the morning, we always keep an eye out for potential fuel for the wood stove.  The easiest of course is a large branch that has broken off, or a tree that has lost it's head in a strong wind, or even better,  a tree that has fallen over.

A lot of years ago a maple tree fell over, but the roots were still in the ground, so it continued to grow.  It didn't really destroy one of our cross-fences, but sort of bent the wire down a bit, and then became a convenient way for the coyotes to cross over the fence.  They just jumped up onto the log, walked out along it a ways, and jumped off on the other side of the fence.  Just recently, Luna had started doing the same thing, and it was getting annoying.  So I mentioned again that it sure would be nice to get the log sawn up to get rid of the bridge.  There was a couple of problems though.  Two branches on that log had got pretty thick and grown up like trees.  One of them was leaning into another bunch of trees, and the other one was leaning towards the neighbours and wanting to fall on the property line fence.

It's the tree in the middle of the picture, already cut off and some of it split.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the truck got called into service, since the tractor didn't want to start.  Have I mentioned before that Larry is not mechanical?  (Thank goodness our son is....He got the tractor started on Saturday)  A cable was fastened  up the vertical branch/tree as far as could be reached, and then a few chains were fastened to that, and then to the truck.  After a few attempts of cutting partway through and putting tension on the cable with the truck,  it all came together and the first branch came down, sort of.  We did get it down and in a position to cut up eventually, and then we did the second one and got it to fall the opposite way to how it was leaning.  We managed to NOT get the truck stuck, NOT crush the property line fence and nothing went drastically wrong.  It's always a little nerve wracking though.  There's the potential for a lot of things to do wrong, badly wrong, and it's always a relief when it's all done.  Larry is the logger, I'm the truck or tractor driver, the worrier and the 'TIMBER!' yeller.  I stand there and visualize every possible scenario of how things can go wrong.

Jake gives you some idea of the size of the log.  There are still more rounds to be cut off behind him. You can see the bent down cross-fence in front of him.

We got the logs down on Friday.  Monday when we went for our walk in the morning, we carried the splitting maul out with us.  I think it's because of something in Luna's former life, but she was not happy about me carrying that maul.  She didn't want to come with us, was all wimpy and wiggly and we had to coax her most of the way.  Once I left the maul at the pile though she was fine, and ran off ahead.

On the way back, we let the dogs through the gate near the end of the bush field, because Luna also doesn't like any pounding, like the pounding noise from the maul hitting the logs.  We were hoping that Calli would meander her way back towards the house.  Larry positioned the log rounds, and I started splitting.  It split relatively easily, but even though my shoulders can handle the splitting motion better than Larry's, I can only do so much.  The rest was left for another day or three.  

Thank goodness that I looked back to my left as we went through the gate ourselves.  Instead of heading towards the house, Calli had decided to do some exploring and figured that she had got herself stuck.

Larry went down to help her, he said she didn't seem to be stuck, but I guess in her mind she was.

We'll just keep picking away at the wood, until it's all cut and split, and then take the tractor and trailer down the trail as close to the pile as we can.  It will be loaded up and brought back to be added to the wood pile, and will be burned next winter at the earliest, and maybe the winter after that.

Oh yeah, add some repair to the cross-fence to that project as well.