I’ve been close enough to the finishline on the woodpile for the past few days, that I’ve spent pretty much all day out there. This morning I finished the load of logs on the trailer, and completed the second row all the way to the ceiling. I even had a few pieces to put on the floor for the last row. My last row of wood is narrower and shorter than the rest, so I figured that one more forkload of logs from the woods would just about do it. Instead of driving the Scout and trailer out there, Franco and I walked out with the chainsaw.
We looked things over and determined that there were not quite enough trees down and bucked up for a forkload, so I took down one more tree, and cut up a couple of smaller ones that had fallen over. Then I fired up the dozer and drove to the site. I’m getting quite adept with the hookaroon now, and routinely stab the logs too big to carry with the pick, and drag them to the dozer bucket where I flip them onto the forks. Just about as soon as we got out there, it started raining, but it was gentle enough to mostly escape notice.
Once the forks were packed with all the logs left in the woods, we drove the dozer back home. Dozer driving over long distances is very relaxing. Although I’ve never done it, I feel I could jump off and walk alongside. The dozer cruises down the road at about the speed of a slow walk.
I’d positioned the Scout and trailer near the woodpile, and decided to dump the logs in the forks onto the trailer, and move that over to the woodpile. It is a nice working height for me, and for the past couple of years, have really gotten to like the way it works for me. This year especially, since I modified it to accept the logs lengthwise, rather than sideways.
As I pecked away at this load, the rain came on and off. I kept at it, because the pile was slowly but steadily rising to the finish. My saw ran out of gas a short distance from the end, so I carried it into the garage so I could sharpen and service it. About the time I got in the garage, Alice drove up from work. She said she could wait a while for supper, so I went back out to the garage and finished getting the saw ready, and tackled the log pile. About 45 minutes later, I put the last piece on the stack. Yay!
The weather made me pay for the finishline this year. The last stack of wood is just under the overhang of the garage. Each piece of wood I put on there forced me to stand in the concentrated stream of water pouring off the roof. I was pretty wet but undaunted when the last piece went on.
I thought about taking a picture of the completed pile for the blog, but honestly, it looks like a woodpile. A picture wouldn’t really convey any more information than that. I’ve surely taken pictures over the years… pictures of me putting the last piece on with a grin on my face. But when you’ve seen a few of them, you’ve seen them all.
Now that this project is done, I can think about the many projects that have been postponed while this one was in process. There are many to choose from, but it is nice to have a choice.