Aug 4,5 - two days

Yesterday got underway before I had time to do any writing / I forgot ! 

Trees and Fish, that about sums it up.

Fish: 

On the 4th, David, Kim and I went fishing in the a.m. and p.m.  David and Kim saw most of the action, pulling in some nice bass and crappie.  I went along as chauffeur and minnow-attacher, it seems :).

Yesterday a.m. it was just David and me.  David pulled in four nice bass and I caught nothing. 

Of course I did the cleaning and we'll be doing the eating. 

Trees:

On the 4th, David helped me drop the dead hemlock   It was a big tree, but dead.  The bottom 15' or so was good wood and the pieces are now up by the barn awaiting splitting.  After that it was infested with carpenter ants.  I expected that -- all the woodpecker holes in the tree a dead giveaway.

Yesterday we dropped the big maple beside the barn that was almost done-for.  That was trickier, since a) I certainly didn't want it to drop on the barn and b) the only logical way of dropping it was towards the road and there was a 15' rock cliff in that direction.  We attached a rope as far up the tree as possible, running that to the road.  David then attached the 4-wheeler to a tree on the other side of the road with the trailer hitch and, using the winch, put tension on the rope to the tree that we were falling.

I notched the tree, which took a while.  Further complicating the work was a large dead limb lying across a notch in the tree way up there.  I fully expected that once the tree started to move, that dead limb would upend itself and drop down.  I'd have a couple of seconds to move out of the way; the hard hat might help ...

Anyway, once I had a notch almost all the way across, of course there was traffic on the road.  David took the tension off as I stepped far away.  Re-attaching, he added tension until the tree was clearly pulling in that direction and I cut about 1" off the far side ... down she went, with the bottom of the tree up-ended on the cliff.

There was a fair amount of brush.  I cut while David hauled to the end of the road using Jason's bike and trailer (it has a 1 7/8" ball; I've got a 2" on the bike).  I then started cutting firewood, some of which is now piled by the barn, most of which is now at the bottom of that cliff for later retrieval.  I'll get it all to the barn in the next few days and David will help me split it all on Labour Day weekend, fittingly named.

We've been eating well, naturally.  Cedar plank salmon was the treat on my arrival on Saturday; Sunday we had Sandy's lamb ribs and last night deep fried chicken wings and legs.

David and Kim headed home around 5pm yesterday.  Kyle and Barrie left Jason's yesterday afternoon.  Everyone else, except Kylie, leaves this morning.  It will be quiet !

That's about it.  Today I hope to go for a bike ride, but we just had a little sprinkle, so who knows.

Onward !