In the middle of the tree felling exercise I've gone and damaged my left foot. The fifth metatarsal is fractured near the tuberosity and I'm not able to move about very well. It doesn't matter much because it's only March and I can go on cutting until the end of April. But the snow may be gone by then making it more difficult.
The clear-cutting on our border has been done and the story is here:
http://edfwill.jalbum.net/scratch3/
The machine is GPS controlled and was able to work very close to the border. The position of each tree cut is logged, for research purposes I suppose. The three deer that had taken up residence in our tiny forest have not returned. I guess the noise and activity was too much for them.
The huge stacks of logs are still lying in the field and unless they are taken away soon the ground will become too soft for the trucks.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Today I started my wood cutting. Each year I fell and cut up enough birch trees to last through the next winter. There is a batch, cut last spring that is already dry and will be moved to make space for the next lot. It's a nuisance to have to move the wood but it's the only way it can be done so that it can be easily loaded, in carriers, onto a sledge for transport to the house some 60 metres away.
Cutting the trunks into the short lengths to fit the stoves is easy when there is snow on the ground. The trunks can be cut up quickly and easily without needing to be lifted and supported so that the chain won't run into the ground by mistake. If this happens it will cut nothing more until it has been re-sharpened. A task that takes me more than half and hour and uses up one file. The chains are hard (some makes harder than others) and the files don't last long.
I cut down five 25 metre tall birches today and cut them up -- but somehow my chain went through the snow into the ground and it's sitting in the garage ready to be filed in the morning before I can start again.
Cutting the trunks into the short lengths to fit the stoves is easy when there is snow on the ground. The trunks can be cut up quickly and easily without needing to be lifted and supported so that the chain won't run into the ground by mistake. If this happens it will cut nothing more until it has been re-sharpened. A task that takes me more than half and hour and uses up one file. The chains are hard (some makes harder than others) and the files don't last long.
I cut down five 25 metre tall birches today and cut them up -- but somehow my chain went through the snow into the ground and it's sitting in the garage ready to be filed in the morning before I can start again.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Introduction
Some time ago -- when I was rather busy with other things -- I started a Blog. This Blog has vanished. I suppose not in reality, but virtually, because I don't know how to get at it, or even where it was created. And so I start again; this is not the first time I've started doing things over again.
To start the ball rolling I'll tell you about my morning. I looked out at about 06:00 and saw very little, but enough to observe that the three white tail deer, that usually come to feed on the oats my wife leaves for them, were not there. I was not overly surprised because there is a lot going on around us right now. We've had deer in the garden for a few years. On 20th of December 2007 there were a dozen of them outside the kitchen window at about noon. Since then they've come and gone regularly. I don't know if the local hunters group -- who shoot moose each season -- have killed any of them, but I hope not.
The reason I say I was not surprised is that a few days ago a local man was roaming around in our tiny forest with his Alsatian dog. We saw snowshoe tracks and the tracks of the dog as it followed the deer from the place they usually spend the night, into the nearest neighbor's land. And also another of the neighbors is felling trees -- on a large scale -- many hectares of mixed forest are being clear-cut and the noise and activity may drive the deer far away in any case.
This is a link to some snapshots of the deer taken through a rather dirty window:
http://picasaweb.google.com/don.donwilliams/OutOfTheKitchenWindowThisMorningDec202007#
To start the ball rolling I'll tell you about my morning. I looked out at about 06:00 and saw very little, but enough to observe that the three white tail deer, that usually come to feed on the oats my wife leaves for them, were not there. I was not overly surprised because there is a lot going on around us right now. We've had deer in the garden for a few years. On 20th of December 2007 there were a dozen of them outside the kitchen window at about noon. Since then they've come and gone regularly. I don't know if the local hunters group -- who shoot moose each season -- have killed any of them, but I hope not.
The reason I say I was not surprised is that a few days ago a local man was roaming around in our tiny forest with his Alsatian dog. We saw snowshoe tracks and the tracks of the dog as it followed the deer from the place they usually spend the night, into the nearest neighbor's land. And also another of the neighbors is felling trees -- on a large scale -- many hectares of mixed forest are being clear-cut and the noise and activity may drive the deer far away in any case.
This is a link to some snapshots of the deer taken through a rather dirty window:
http://picasaweb.google.com/don.donwilliams/OutOfTheKitchenWindowThisMorningDec202007#
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