Thursday I took the afternoon off to go and cut with my Dad, as he had no wood last winter and I didn't want to have that happen again. I had fixed his 455R and the chain was razor sharp. We had planned to drop a standing dead ash, but it was too windy and too close to a power line, so we went up to the woods.
I had commented in another thread about how I have lost some wood that was downed in the Halloween storm of a few years ago, as I was unable to clear all of it fast enough and it got embedded in the field (which gets muddy) and overgrown by Japanese stilt grass. By now most of it is pretty punky when I pry it out with the tractor.
We were up in his woods bucking up some trees downed in those same storms - and the woods was pretty darn clear in the understory. It was easy to walk though and you could see a pretty long way, just like I remember from when I was a kid who spent a lot of hours playing there. There were few briers except at the edges, and no stilt grass or autumn olive. Mine is near impenetrable, and we're about 20mi apart.
Still, it's only a matter of time, as the stilt grass is on his property, as is the oriental bittersweet.
We got him a nice stack of hard, dry ash that's ready to go now, and some oak that should be burnable in his stove towards the end of winter. When you split an ash log and it sounds like bowling pins dropping, it brings a smile! Naturally he dropped the tip in the dirt and bunged up the chain a bit, but I fixed it the best I could. I am getting a bit nervous with him running a saw these days - he's in good shape but doesn't have the strength he used to. I made sure to cut where I could keep an eye on him. Fortunately he does not try to do too much that is overly ambitious. Some of it may just be that he was never very good at it or too careful, and I'm just more aware of it now!
My Mom is a painter, and I finally got around to taking a picture of one she did (probably) around 1980. She has taken many classes since then and is quite a bit more skilled now, but I like this older one as it includes me carrying an axe back down from the woods. That is one of my favorite memories of the time.
I had commented in another thread about how I have lost some wood that was downed in the Halloween storm of a few years ago, as I was unable to clear all of it fast enough and it got embedded in the field (which gets muddy) and overgrown by Japanese stilt grass. By now most of it is pretty punky when I pry it out with the tractor.
We were up in his woods bucking up some trees downed in those same storms - and the woods was pretty darn clear in the understory. It was easy to walk though and you could see a pretty long way, just like I remember from when I was a kid who spent a lot of hours playing there. There were few briers except at the edges, and no stilt grass or autumn olive. Mine is near impenetrable, and we're about 20mi apart.
Still, it's only a matter of time, as the stilt grass is on his property, as is the oriental bittersweet.
We got him a nice stack of hard, dry ash that's ready to go now, and some oak that should be burnable in his stove towards the end of winter. When you split an ash log and it sounds like bowling pins dropping, it brings a smile! Naturally he dropped the tip in the dirt and bunged up the chain a bit, but I fixed it the best I could. I am getting a bit nervous with him running a saw these days - he's in good shape but doesn't have the strength he used to. I made sure to cut where I could keep an eye on him. Fortunately he does not try to do too much that is overly ambitious. Some of it may just be that he was never very good at it or too careful, and I'm just more aware of it now!
My Mom is a painter, and I finally got around to taking a picture of one she did (probably) around 1980. She has taken many classes since then and is quite a bit more skilled now, but I like this older one as it includes me carrying an axe back down from the woods. That is one of my favorite memories of the time.
