03/10/14

I had a productive weekend, which is definitely a nice change of pace.

In preparation for the weekend I took the RTV tire that has been going flat to the repair shop in town. Strangely the couldn't find a leak, but I had told them it was leaking around the rim so he went ahead and cleaned it and replaced the valve stem. He ended up not even charging anything, since he didn't find a problem. That's service you only get with small, local businesses.

Andrea also stopped at a hardware store in London and picked up a new chainsaw for me. I had been planning to get one for a while, and decided now was the time. I went with the Echo CS-400, which seemed like the best fit for my  needs.

On Saturday my Dad came down to help me cut some trees. The original plan was to just cut the trees in the way of the garden expansion, as well as some of those casting shade on the garden and the black walnuts close by. It went quicker than expected, though, so we went ahead and cute every tree within the actual garden area. I'm left with a huge mess to clean up, but it is going to be a big improvement once its all done.

I spent yesterday working on the cleanup. I'm stacking the logs so they can season, in hopes of using them for a cordwood construction project down the road. So the cleanup consists of trimming off the branches, piling them up to be chipped later, then moving and stacking the logs. Andrea helped me after lunch, and we managed to get about fifteen logs stacked. I suspect most of my free time during the month of March, when the weather permits, will be spent trying to finish up that project.

It seems a little strange to me to cut down so many trees, since I've been looking at potential house sites with an eye towards not having to cut anything except the smallest of trees. Most of those in the garden were over-crowded, though, so had grown incredibly tall, without putting on much trunk size. That's one thing that should make them great for cordwood, because they are tall, straight, and relatively slender.