Weekend May 4 and 5, 2013

The first item of business this weekend was to take a pile of tires Down Below to Sedro-Woolley to get rid of them. There were 45 tires in all. I don’t know if these were a natural accumulation or my dad had been saving them for some purpose. At any rate they had to go.

Marblemount is not completely isolated but it is a pretty good investment in time and gas to get Down Below (Sedro-Woolley, Burlington, Mount Vernon). So most times when we go down we have a list of things to take care of. On this trip, I got rid of the tires, got the oil changed in the farm pickup, picked up a tractor part, got a haircut, got some items that I couldn’t get at the grocery store in Concrete, picked up some new underwear, visited with an old friend for a few minutes and stopped in Concrete at Albert’s Red Apple to finish my shopping.

I still had time to go up to the farm, walk the dog with my wife and daughter and put the tractor part on the tractor. We also attended a fundraiser potluck dinner and dance for the local radio station KSVU 90.1 F.M. Unfortunately by that point, I was pretty tired so was probably not very good company for some folks. We only stayed a little more than an hour before going home to find one of the chickens had died probably due to heat stress. That was the end of the day.

I got started early Sunday, partly because I had a lot to do and partly to beat the heat. Between a small burn pile to dispose of some weedy debris and helping Sacha with her grapes, I went to work splitting the last two 3 foot diameter maple rounds.

The first maple round was easy but the second was really tough, taking me about 2 hours to split. It was after 1:00 in the afternoon when I finally finished with it and my forearms and lower back were beginning to cramp and I had a headache. The headache and cramps may have been due to dehydration though I tried to make sure I drank plenty of water. This was the first really hot day of the year and I would ordinarily save jobs like this for cooler weather. But my time is limited this year, so after finishing with the big rounds, I bulled on through, cutting and splitting some more of the maple. I called it quits for the day at about 4:30 p.m.

At 5:00 p.m, I finally remembered to look at a thermometer. Actually I looked at two, both of which were in the shade. One said 90 degrees F and the other read 84. I had survived with a few cramps and a blister on my little finger. Hopefully this will help me start to get ready mentally and physically for haying season.

I finished the day by walking the dog up to the Stump Farm and watering the cows. The creek was up a foot or a little more from snowmelt. After dinner, I helped Sacha put up some chicken wire for a fence around her garden.

Farm pickup with pile of old tires in front of old chicken coop waiting to be loaded. 

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Start of the day Sunday.

The two remaining large maple rounds each about 3 feet in diameter. The pile of wood to the left is the large round I split last weekend. 

One down. One to go. This round would take me about 2 hours to split. I ended up having to use the powersaw to cut through a lot of the large knots and cross grained wood. 

Finis, finally. Now on to some of the smaller stuff. 

Some more, smaller logs from the same tree. 

Cut into stove length rounds. 

Split and ready to be stacked in the woodshed. The smaller rounds split very easily.