February 22-23, 2014

It was a very pleasant weekend. With temperatures in the low 60s Saturday we staid in town for a bike ride and didn't get out until late afternoon. Overnight it dropped just below freezing, and with clouds in the morning it was slow to warm up -- rather gray actually. But it cleared early afternoon and with temperatures around 50 it was very nice.

Cedar Dangler

Right after arriving Sally walked out back and immediately noticed this cedar limb down up the hill from the house. She asked if I had cut a cedar? Upon inspection I could tell it had been dead a long time, and looking up I could see it was from the top of one of the cedars. I believe it was broken off during the 2009 ice storm but had been dangling up there for 5 years. I got the Poulan out, cut it up, and stacked the limbs on the wood pile.

Fire Wood

Sunday morning I filled the Stihl with gas and headed down to the SE corner. I wanted to pick up the wood I had cut the previous weekend (tornado downed) and get some more. It continues to be very dry and so the low section of the road was solid, so I wanted to get as much wood back to the barn as I could.

I pulled up by the pile I left the previous weekend and loaded up the logs to take to the barn. I then started cutting on two other downed trees. One was a long straight red oak, not quite as big as the one from the previous weekend. Then I started on two others, some kind of oaks but not red oak. I never got to the base of these as they were criss crossed and I ran out of gas. There were some limbs, but most was splitting size. I then carried the cut pieces out to the edge of the wooded area where I could load them -- some I could barely lift. I made two trips to the barn and then took a break for lunch.

Sally came back with me after lunch. We loaded up more logs and made another barn run. Three truck loads of logs is going to translate into lots of splitting. But now I can do that even in bad weather. We then made one more trip for the limbs and the pieces I had split the weekend before. They didn't quite all fit. This load we left in the truck, and hauled them directly back to town.

I counted at least seven more downed trees in this corner. Just as I burned up the firewood from the 2009 ice storm I'm given lots more wood by the 2013 tornado.