lumberjack day

Each fall we gather together at the farm on a Saturday to cut firewood.  It is great fun, lots of good exercise and it serves a good purpose.  My dad heats his shop with firewood so a lot of the firewood after drying at the farm for a year will be used in town at his shop.  My brother has a  fireplace and some of the wood will be burned there.  My sister and I and my kids have the occasional campfire or fire pit fire and some of the wood will be used there.  But even more important, the trees are getting old and many are near the outbuildings and house and there is worry that one might fall on a building or do damage to a building.  So the last few years we have moved from us choosing a tree that we can drop safely to having a pro come in and take down the trees that are most threatening.  This year we had them cut down a tree near the garage that we use for wood storage, a tree behind the chicken coop, and several trees that were leaning on the roof of the granary.  When the pros cut down the trees they start at the top in a manlift and remove the branches and then cut the trunk into chunks and drop them on the ground.  After they are done we have our lumberjack day.  We cut the trunk pieces to length and then the ones that are a large diameter are split into narrower pieces and they are stacked to dry.  The branches are piled and after they have had a chance to dry they will be burned.

Some pictures from the day the treetrimmers were at the farm.  In the first picture you can see the trees that have grown too close to the roof at the granary. 

 This second picture is the tree trimmer in the man lift cutting the trees, starting at the top.

This picture shows the granary after the trees are down.  This building needs the roof reshingled or a  new  metal roof put on and the trees were preventing that from being done.

 the picture above is the chicken coop.  The tree at the end of the building is still there is this picture but gone in the one below. 

According to the tree trimmer their man lift can reach reach 55 feet when fully extended and it was pretty much fully extended in this picture and the one below that was taken when they were working on one behind the garage.  

 

A few days later we had our lumberjack day.  We had a good crowd of the two legged variety and a good crowd of the four legged variety.  We had 10 people and 8 dogs.  We cut up brush.

 We cut up logs.

We hauled and carried the logs to the splitter where we started a pile.

We played some fetch.

Honey.

 We ran around.

Indiana (front) and Willow (back)

 We laid in the sun.

Greta(front) and Reese (back)

Elke

 Sadie and Codie seem to have evaded the photographer this year.

We split some wood.

And some more wood.

We stacked the split wood in the garage.

 We had a few laughs.

And at the end of the day we had a well deserved adult beverage.

I did rescue a few branches for a craft project or two...

All in all we had a great day.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect--a beautiful fall day.  We had great food at our potluck lunch. 

We had another couple of hours on Sunday but sadly no pictures were taken.  We did watch Robb blow up a huge pumpkin.  There will be one more done over the Thanksgiving holiday.  Fun stuff. 

Look at the fruits of all of our hard work.