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Bartering Skidsteer Hours for Firewood
Ever use the barter system? If not, you are missing out. Living in a small community people often barter for services. Case in point, we saw an ad for local firewood that sounded too good to pass up and after contacting the owner, turns out it was someone we knew. See, we have enough firewood for this coming winter but would really like to have a head start for next winter so we don’t have to scramble in the spring.
Hardwood for firewood -
Back to the Sawmill
Why does everything take so long to do? Or is that just us? The week long heat wave finally ended and with logs piling up waiting to be sawed, we headed out to try and make a small dent. First things first, we had to build another pallet. We used tamarack lumber for the job and to get that lumber, we had to saw tamarack logs on the mill. That meant half the morning was gone just to make the pallets, never mind the pile of logs we are trying to get sawed. But, first up was changing the blade on the sawmill.
Putting on a new blade -
Hemlock Headaches
Just to get to this point of saw milling sometimes a lot of little things have to get done.
Hemlock timber cant. -
Getting Out the Ash Logs
With one large ash tree cut and hauled to the road, we spent another afternoon doing the same with an even bigger ash tree. This one was located just down from the first. This time we decided to try a slightly different approach.
Cutting the second ash tree -
Milling Up Spruce For Lumber
The other day Jim told me he talks to the trees!! It might be time to make him an appointment 😉 Probably only a concern if he thinks they answer. Before we could start milling the hemlock and pine logs we got a few weeks ago, we had to mill the spruce we got earlier in the year.
Spruce logs -
Kiln Shed: Siding
I had to look back through our posts to see when we last worked on the kiln shed. Apparently my memory is not what it used to be. I thought it was just a couple of weeks ago. Turns out, it was back in April when we put the metal roof on. How time flies. With the good weather this week we plan to get the siding started and finished. There I said it. Here is the shed when we last finished working on it.
Looks familiar -
Chipping Slabs and Mulching the Flower Beds
Every spring the flower beds need to be spruced up. When we first moved here we had a dump truck of mulch delivered and that lasted for a couple of years. But with all the extra slabs we have around since we got the sawmill we decided to make our own mulch the past few years.
Loading up the cart -
Digging a Garden the Easy Way
One of our neighbours is actually a cottage on the lake. They have recently done some winterizing so they can spend more time there. This year they decided to expand on the little garden that was in place but it was more work than a shovel could handle. They asked Jim to go over with the skidsteer and loosen things up for them. Here he is speeding down the road at a whopping 10 kms an hour. At this rate we should be there by tomorrow 🙂
Slow down -
Wood Chipping at Two Locations
I think we have turned the corner into spring, finally. The temperatures are rising and it’s the perfect time to work outdoors. We spent another afternoon chipping alders at the first location, across the lake. This time the wind worked in our favour and all the chips fell where they were intended to fall. Not on the neighbours driveway like last week. So we still had to do a final cleanup.
Tasked to clean up wood chips on driveway. -
Wood Chipping and Dog Sitting
That about sums it up for our weekend. We got a call to do a chipping job on the weekend so first things first, we had to get the chipper out of winter storage.
Time to get to work
