The training has begun

Woodsmens Games!

I'm trying desperately to get caught up here before the summer ends.  The weekend before Mom and Dad came to visit was a busy one.  Nathan came down, Sarah met Livia for the first time (her international student-friend), I rented an "Electric Eel" from Home-Depot to snake the clogged main drain from the house, and Sarah and I took Zhora to her first lumberjack competition.

These first few are gratuitous and self-indulgent shots of my own small forays into lumberjackdom.

Jonas loves to go to Pat's to help me work the horses, mend the fences, and process the trees.  He does get a little tired after awhile... or lazy; it's hard to tell.  Anyway, he loves to ride on the tractor.  We do this a lot, but since I'm normally the cameraman, I don't have any pictures of it, so I asked Pat to take this shot.

I took this one because I wanted a close up of Jonas and myself.  I just trimmed my beard yesterday and, looking at this picture makes me miss it.  It was a good beard, but it was getting a little silly.  Anyway... that was Friday.  On Sunday we got up early and headed to Boonville, NY for the last day of the games.

We were surprised (at least Sarah and I were, Zhora seemed to take it in stride) to see A. how big the event was and B. how many vendors there were.  Usually this kind of blatant commercialism bothers me, but apparently when what is being sold splits logs into 8 sections in one step, my punk rock attitude takes a back seat.

There were several food huts, but not as many as you might think.  There were smoothies and hot dogs and cheese steaks, lots of fries, pizza, and of course ice cream and funnel cake.  This one sold all things elk.  We were all pretty impressed with the size of the antlers.

The size, quantity, and variety of the machines was surprising.  These were what our fore fathers had in mind when they wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; cut from the original document was Jefferson's eloquently written, but questionably placed prose on the TW-Pro MP XL Firewood Processor.  "The tree of liberty must be felled and split from time to time with the sweat and blood of lumbermen and there is no better machine that I can think of than Timber Wolf's Pro MP Firewood Processor."  Franklin argued that the Declaration of Independence was no place for Jefferson's proclivity for lobbying and self interest and the sections about Timber Wolf, Coca Cola, and Monsanto were all removed from the final document.  Still, the Pro MP is a heck of a machine.

So, after we wandered around for a little bit, got some salted potatoes, ice cream, and thick fresh cut fries with malted vinegar, we settled into our bleachers for some competition.  This is my favorite event, called springboard chop.
 

The competitors start on the ground, chop a bite into the trunk, throw in a springboard, jump up and repeat that, then jump up again, and from what is essentially a pirate's plank, chop off the top foot of the pole!  It is very exciting and cool to watch.  The guy on the right is Mr. Waterfield.  He is one bad lumberjack.  We rooted for him all day, and although I don't think he won, he was awesome in all his heats in all his events.  I'm not real knowledgeable about the whole scoring of this thing, but there were a couple events he didn't compete in, and he got DQ'd in the open hot saw event (probably for going faster and more hardcore than was acceptable).  Anyway, we had a good time choosing someone to cheer for.  Zhora still talks about him... so does Sarah.

Here you can see Nathan Waterfield  relaxing and waiting for his competition to catch up.  He placed two springboards and highballed up the pole in 66 seconds.  He could have lit a pipe while he waited for his heat to wrap up... and done the whole event again before the last man finished!

Zhora was  in the minority, being neither overweight nor attired in flannel or truckers cap.  She made up for these deficiencies by cheering, clapping, rooting, and generally being more enthusiastic than most of the people around us.  She even yelled at me a couple times for taking pictures when I should have been shouting or clapping.

The materials of the games have been standardized in the last decade or so.  Apparently until very recently betting on the games wasn't especially difficult; bet on the guy with the smaller log with less knots.  Now they take pains to make sure everyone gets a fair shake.  The posts in the front are for the springboard competition, the horizontal posts were used for the crosscut competition and for the hot saw, and the tall tall posts in the back were used for the tree felling competition.

Between events we walked around some more.  There was an great little tent filled with raptors and this beautiful lady vulture.  I've really come to appreciate turkey vultures of late.  They are impressive and under-appreciated birds.  This one was in a playful mood and flew off the handlers glove and scared the crap out of several small children.  It was pretty funny... once I knew the bird was ok.  The woman who told us about all the rescued birds was very nice and brought most of the birds out for everyone to see.  There was a barn owl and a barred owl (who don't like each other), a peregrine falcon, a Harris's hawk, a kestral, and two screech owls.  We learned that the odd calls we've been hearing at dusk lately are screech owls.  The evening campfires feel more exciting somehow.

This is a hot saw.  It's like a snow mobile and a chainsaw had a baby.  It is a very exciting animal.


Also, it is loud.  Speaking of, I had my hearing tested in a booth at the show.  Turns out, according to the test at least, that I have great hearing.  So now I really don't know what my problem is.  Probably something in my auditory cortex.

Strong like Mr. Waterfield!  Check out the size of the wood "chips" the woodsmen were chopping!  Incredible!

I have no idea what happened here, but got a real kick out of imagining that somebody just got overzealous and defoliated everything that resembled a tree in the area.

On our way out at the end of the show.  A lot of big wood had been turned into smaller wood.

Life is good.

Getting ready for winter.

On my first real day of summer vacation Jonas and I went out to Pat's to make firewood.

Jonas did some great supervising, as usual.

Man, it feels good to see the fruits of your labour.  Sick tree standing.  Sick tree felled.  Felled tree bucked.  Bucked wood split.  Split wood stacked.  Done.

Now, who deserves a vanilla milkshake?

Perfect

This from Jenn.

Life is good

These pictures are from a few weeks ago.  Jonas and I went out to the ranch to convert a few sick trees into firewood.  Here you see the inside of the ol' truck.  Still goin' despite the rust and the electrical issues.  The truck, not Jonas.

Happy dog, looking forward to a full day of supervising.

A pretty good indication that what proceeds will be fun.

The canopy before we begin.  Note all the odd bends and angles.  By some strange coincidence, the trees I cut never grow straight or have a clean fall line.

Look at that hinge!

Makin' a clear fall line.

Jonas likes to supervise.

The primary target.  I'm pretty proud of my problem solving skills here.  The tree was rotten (as you can see) from the roots to about half way up and posed a real challenge to a controlled fall.  Using a humboldt undercut allowed me to take advantage of the worst of the rot, and cutting high increased the "good" wood to help control the fall.  Plus the stump makes a great end table now.

Paul Bunyan's pick up sticks.

Rest.

Supervision duties have concluded for the day.

Nothin' like a well earned hammock ride... 

does that tree look a little crooked to you?

Sharin' cashews with my buddy...

after an evening of workin' outside. Life is good.

hand forged in sweden

A few pictures to share

So we're having the normal Ithaca spring weather.  Growing up in Northeastern Ohio prepared us for this, hardening our souls to the prospects of sun and predictability.  We started gardening a couple weeks ago in spite of cold temps, grey skies, and snowflakes.  I was not thrilled to begin with.  Dressed as Nanook of the North it was hard to get into the spirit.

But Sarah "dug right in" and her enthusiasm and smile warmed my heart, and soon the day itself began to warm, if ever so slightly.

In addition to our almost 200 garlic plants that are already coming up from last fall, we planted two rows of beans, a row of spinach, two rows of lettuce, some carrots, some onions, and some green onions.  For better or worse, our available space is full, so I grabbed one of my favorite tools, the mattock, and went to work pulling up sod on another 12x12' section of lawn.

Sarah mentioned, as I stretched my back and then collapsed onto the ground, that "this is why people have bigger plots and then use horses to plow".  That is my new goal in life.

Cold grey mornings make the coffee taste better.  I love standing in my backyard and looking out at the trees, and am looking forward to this scene with buds, and then leaves.

Saturday morning I got up early and went to cut some more trees.  These are the four pines that were in the middle of the lawn.  They shaded the whole lawn and one side of the house and were where Rob wants to put his garden.

I cut a couple trees in the morning, then Sarah picked me up and we took our first trip to the Farmers Market for this season.  It was surprisingly crowded with both people and produce.  In addition to veggie dumplings and breakfast burritos, we picked up some carrots and some fresh beef for a minestrone soup that Sarah mad for dinner.

Then it was back to work, and down they came.  I'm really proud of this one.  It's overall lean was toward the house, and had a really large branch coming off the trunk that pulled it awkwardly 90 degrees to the direction of lean, but still away from where I wanted it to fall.  With some careful planning, wedging, and a good cut, I dropped it 3' left of the marker I'd put down, 180 degrees of the lean.

The yard as it stands now.

This is another awesome scalloped potato dish that Sarah made.  It has eggs and broccoli and tomatoes and bacon on top.  It's a great take on the traditional eggs and hash browns breakfast.

We went for an incredible ride Sunday morning.  Sarah rode Rambo who hasn't been out in awhile and they did great!  Rambo was so happy and alert; he nearly ran half the ride and Sarah had to try to slow him down!  I rode Bodie in a new snaffle bit bridle.  I've wanted to get him out of the mechanical hackamore for awhile and this was the opportunity.  He did great and had no major freak outs.  We've been working on his gate more, too and trying to keep him in his gated walk for longer periods of time (partly his laziness and partly my lack of ability to communicate clearly).  He did much better on Sunday.  As you can see, the sun was out for a bit, too.

Just some of the ingredients that go into my trademark macaroni salad.  Maybe I'll make up a big batch for the wedding this summer.

On my quest to expand my wilderiness, I cut down a tree with my knife.

I was successful in both cutting down the tree and in learning to bring an axe whenever possible,

After school Tuesday I cut trees until 8pm...

Then I rocked out in the truck on the way home, which makes me happy, healthy, and free.