November 20, 2023
Cayenne, our beautiful Australian Shepherd jumped on the bed tonight because of the lightning and thunderstorm. She doesn’t do this often, should I push her off the bed or not? I say no. She is my baby and favorite dog. She deserves a hug and security.
This then begs the question, what is my job?
I know my job is to protect and provide for my family. How far does that go? If a burglar enters the house it is dern sure my job! Besides watching for burglars I also work outside.
Moving on, cold here today. Expecting freeze this week. I have hired a young man to help me. his name is Garideth. I decided to call him GT, I told him it was because he is so fast. GT went with me to get some round bales today. Definitely not the most efficient use of his time but we got to talk. Trailer only holds three round bales.
Needed to make some solar power today. What you say? Solar power allows stuff to grow. Stuff growing means purchasing less hay. Purchasing less hay means less expense. So we cut a few trees. Less shade, more solar more grub for the cows.
GT and I went to the east side of the lower pasture and picked a couple trees to fell. The larger of the two, about 35” diameter was a nice fell. Dropped where we aimed it. But due to our lack of experience GT and I spent a good deal of our time pulling stuck chain saw blades out of awkward positions. But, fortunately we made it through the day unscathed physically and with a lot of wood to split.
Next day GT and I go out for the “east dead tree”. Wow, did we miss that one. On closer examination, the tree still had green leaf growth. We picked the fell direction and I made a beautiful wedge cut. GT started the fell cut but he missed the wedge cut by 4”. OK I’m a fair man, I saw he was low but figured we’d be ok. Figured wrong I did. We ended up with a nice wedge cut and a clean cross cut 4” low. No problem I thought. We pounded five wedges into the cross cut always expecting the tree to fall where we aimed. Phooey! Phooey! This day I brought my grandson Gabriel to watch. As a normal 9 year old he was full of suggestions, at one point GT told him, ‘Gabriel, you have interesting suggestions but most of them are high risk and could get us killed!’. Getting smashed by a old tree wasn’t in our plans so we proceeded slowly. Gabriel was standing on a log cut from the tree yesterday. Concerned for his wellbeing I asked him ‘how fast can you run standing on that log?’ He said, ‘faster than you’! GT doubled over laughing, 'he is definitely your grandson', he added.
We finally assumed our pounded in wedges were working against us. With some effort we got them out. Last wedge out and we heard two things. First the tree cracking and second Jeff yelling 'RUN!' We all cleared the debris field and cursed the tree that should have been a 20 minute job that took 3 hours, but safe we were.
