2021 Feb/March Island Trip – Day 3

Today my AN, his son and I started processing the wood he took down last fall. 35 alders ranging in circumference from 6“ to 30”, and generally 10-15’ in length. We started with the bigger logs. Bucked to 18”. The guys estimate they weighed at least 150 pounds a piece. There were a lot of them. Dry wood was bucked and set aside for me to take home.

AN got the biggest ‘slash’ pile burning, and used the trackhoe to feed smaller piles into the fire. It’s still burning, and here I am breaking the law by sitting in Stella, after a shower, rather than woman-ing the fire… I spent significant time adding alder scat to the fire. This area had so much dead wood under the four-foot grasses that is was essentially unsafe to walk through. Ankle injury risk was a Thing. Uncovering the hazards and tossing them on the fire was a big part of my day. It is also a goal to mow this area. Clearing this area of all wood that could trouble the mower blades is beneficial.

AN used his trackhoe to load my truck with the bucked up wood. We moved the wood to an unused shed that used to house fire wood. The litmus for what went into the shed verses what went into the split-pile was: Can we handle the round safely? If not, it got added to the split pile.

After six hours of log loading/unloading/stacking, fire feeding, raking, wood tossing… I am a very tired girl. Time to hit the hay.