Haulin'

After DH picked up his newly assigned small SUV, he immediately put in a request to 'borrow' one of the fleet trucks because, as he stated on his request form he had "all ready made several plans requiring a truck (his previously assigned vehicle) for the coming week."  Thankfully, that request was granted and, while he wasn't 'given' the EV truck back, he did get to 'borrow' a one ton diesel pickup for a week.

We decided that we had to make the most of having a truck during that time period, even if it wasn't exactly all things we'd planned to do right then (if it needed doing in the next 1-3 weeks, we rewrote the schedule to be NOW).

So, on the first day he had the truck, after work DH hauled: 

• a free treadmill he had found on Craigslist over the weekend,
• a load of free oak firewood.

On the second day he hauled home another load of that free oak.

On the third day he hauled, you guessed it, a third load of that firewood.

On the fourth day, he got up early, got his work computer crunching some numbers and running a data analysis (so he was 'working') then headed up to his Mom's house (which is a 3 hour drive), where (after calling in to a work meeting and setting the computer to running another analysis) he loaded up and brought home:

• about 4 dozen 1" x 6" x 8' roughsawn pine boards
• four 1" x 12" x 8' roughsawn pine planks
• about eight 2" x 4" x 8' roughsawn pine boards
• two of our kayaks he'd left up there earlier in the summer (the ill-fated trip that resulted in a totaled blue truck)
• several milk crates holding boxes of cereal, bags of mini-muffins, a few jars of pickles, a jar of peanut butter, a box of elbow macaroni, 2 jugs of tomato juice, 3 cinnamon bundt cakes, 6 ears of corn and a giant head of cabbage that were leftover from the weekly food pantry delivery that his Mom helps distribute locally.  All of which she wanted DH to pass along to our kids and their families rather than throwing it out.
• a half-bushel of canning tomatoes he picked up from a fruit market on his way home.

On the fifth day he had the truck, he hauled a hay wagon with 68 bales of hay on it that I'd purchased from a local farmer.  After we unloaded the hay into the loft of my barn, he hauled the hay wagon back to its home a mile or so away.

On the sixth day (which was Saturday) he had the truck, he hauled three trailerloads and four truckbeds-ful of more free oak firewood.  

On the seventh day he had the truck, he hauled: 

• another free treadmill (I'm thinking there's going to be a treadmill post appearing on this blog in the next few weeks)
• a pallet of horse bedding
• lumber for the final tack room project (a shelf on each of the two 16' long walls, at about 7' high, for storing the horse-related stuff that is seasonal in nature, or just plain extra. )
• Our mower, back to DD1's house to mow their lawn because their mower died again (mower issue previously mentioned here). . . 

Phew!  It was a busy week. And rereading what I just wrote, it brings to mind The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Except nobody turned into a beautiful butterfly at the end.  They were just very, very tired.  And a little bit sore.  And had a bunch of stuff to put away, redistribute, can, cut/split/stack, and build.  Plus, DH had to give back the nice hefty truck and drive the smallish SUV again.

Free Oak Firewood? Yes, Please!

 Last week was a busy week in many ways.  One of which was DH hauling a truckload of aged oak firewood home after work three days out of five.  Those three days were his scheduled in-office days, and this free firewood just happened to be less than five miles from where DH reports to work.  A good friend of his who lives nearby alerted him about a neighbor who'd had multiple large oak trees cut down about three years ago and recently had come to the conclusion that he (neighbor) wasn't going to use that wood after all.  Now he just wanted it gone.

Now, oak has high BTU value, which makes it very desirable for using to heat our home in the winter.  As an efficient burning wood, it also has a high price if you were to need to buy it.  So of course free oak is something worth our while to go get if it's a reasonable distance away, or, in this case, pretty much on DH's way home from work.

In addition to those three truck-beds-ful, he also spent about 12 hours on Saturday running back and forth with our 16 foot trailer getting the longer and/or larger diameter stuff that wouldn't fit into the bed of the truck.  Unfortunately Saturday was a day of off and on deluge rain and thunderstorms, which meant sometimes he had to stop loading and take shelter for half an hour or so waiting for the rain to pass before continuing to load wood.

Still, he managed to bring home three trailers full plus fill the truck bed each time.  His friend came along to help unload at this little place here, and so when DH took the friend back home shortly before dark they unhooked and left the trailer here and just filled the truck bed for a fourth load.

That's a lotta wood.  The photo above is just the three trailer's worth and two truck-beds-ful.  It doesn't show the truckloads from earlier in the week (or later on Saturday) that were unloaded into a different spot closer to where we stack our split wood for the winter.

The picture below shows the truck loads from earlier in the week.  That was smaller stuff that mostly won't need to be split, just stacked.  Or maybe cut into the correct length and then stacked, as some are branches as thick as your arm but six or eight foot long.

DH estimates it should be almost the entire winter's worth.  We'll see. . . once it's split and stacked and we can see how many rows we get on the base made of pallets he and Toad prepped the weekend before, we'll have a better idea of how many heating months of wood he just got for the cost of fuel in the truck and his time.

Nothing Says I Love You Like. . .

. . . Spending several hours on Valentine's Day working in the woods together.

At least, at this little place here it says "I Love You."  Spending a warm sunny winter afternoon cutting up blow downs for future firewood is about as frugal and loving as you can get.  LOL.

A nice maple tree, lying on the ground

That nice maple tree, cut into 8' lengths and stacked on the tractor forks.

After taking the logs from that maple tree up to the wood boiler area, we returned to the woods and cut up several more 'small' (ie. skinny-ish) trees to make a second load of logs.  Some I loaded, others DH had to carry from where they were cut to the tractor to put on the forks.

He's not just good looking, he's strong!

(No picture of me, but I can carry logs about 2/3 that diameter--note the ones all ready on the forks.  I'm strong too!)

Another tree we tackled together was a huge beech that came down in the big storm we had at the end of March last year.  (You can read about house/outbuilding damage here.)  The busted off stump is about as tall as I am.  Unlike me, it was quite rotten inside. 

It is also quite big around; neither DH nor I could get our arms around it.  Maybe if we'd tried joining our hands together we could have spanned it with our arms.  Maybe.

The stump end of that big old beech tree.

If you look close to the left side you'll see a bit of burgundy. That's DH in a t-shirt about 3/4 of the way to the top of that beech tree.  It was huge in life.  In death it will be several weeks' worth of firewood.

That one was too big to cut into logs and put on the forks.  Instead, DH cut each chunk into firewood lengths and we stacked them into a couple of piles right there in the woods.  They'll age out there for about a year before being hauled in and split to use in the 2027/28 heating season.

We didn't just work all of Valentine's Day.  Well, actually, we did, because cooking counts as work in my book (it's a daily chore so that's work, right?  Not like going out to eat and being served. . . )  For dinner I made a big salad and baked potatoes while DH grilled a big ribeye steak (from the 1/4 beef we bought last fall).  We had ice cream for dessert.

Weekend of Trees

 Last weekend, the theme for DH seemed to be cutting down trees.  On Saturday, he decided it was time (more like he had finally gotten enough more pressing tasks crossed off his to do list) to cut down two standing dead trees in the north fence line.  The removal of those trees had actually been originally slated for last winter, but it wasn't urgent and he never got to them.  

Now, however, it still wasn't urgent, except for the fact that he didn't get a whole lot of wood split and stacked near the boiler for this winter's heating.  Since those trees had been dead going on two years they were nice and cured now and could be put into the wood boiler for heat.  So, he grabbed his chainsaw and the tractor and made short work of cutting down those trees and hauling them up to the vicinity of the wood boiler while I was cleaning stalls.

Some of the larger pieces will need to be split before he can fit them through the door of the wood boiler, but most of the wood just needed to be cut to length, which he did later that day.

The next day after lunch, we headed out despite the cold snowy weather and brutal wind, to a local tree farm owned by a family we know and cut down a small spruce to use for our Christmas tree.  It was kind of a now or never thing, as it was the last day this tree farm was going to be open for the season (same with several other tree farms in a 30 mile radius of this little place here), and we knew we didn't want to get a pre-cut and wrapped-tightly-before-shipping to a box store/commercial tree lot tree.  

Buying a tree this year was something that actually took a conscious decision and a bit of discussion between the two of us.  Last year, DH cut a 'wild' one from the family cabin up north near where Mother-in-Law lives.  It was 'free' if you didn't count the cost of gas to drive there and back, which he didn't since he'd been planning to go visit his mom anyway.  The two years before that, we'd cut a spruce each year from a clump of three we'd planted in the early 2000s that needed thinning now that they were 10-ish feet tall.  So, free Christmas tree those two years also.  The thought of paying $70 or more for a tree this year kinda stuck in our throats.

What we both agreed we weren't ready to do, was have a fake tree.  In terms of financials, it made sense to invest in an artificial tree now that we'd use for at least ten years.  It definitely would be cheaper than paying year after year after year for a live one.  In terms of personal aesthetics though, neither of us want an artificial tree.  We agreed we'd rather forego one in the house and just put lights and ornaments on one of the spruces lining the backyard than have a fake tree.

Anyway, we went to the tree farm owned by a family we know (where DS2 had spent a couple of days one summer in high school planting trees with his good friend and soccer teammate).  I told them were looking for a "not tall, not bushy tree that we can fit 20 people into the same room as" for our Christmas tree.  The patriarch of the family pointed us to a couple specific plots where the remaining trees had some deer damage and told us to pick out any one of those and cut it off as high up as we needed in order to make it the height we wanted.

I love that they don't try to upsell us a tree that we will take home and need to cut several feet off plus prune the branches back to make it skinny enough to fit a corner of my living room.  They immediately offered trees that would be overlooked by the person with the "must be magazine perfect" mindset, which was a win for us both.  They made a little cash off a tree that would otherwise be considered undesirable (and therefore unsaleable)  by most, and we got to take home a tree that was only as tall as we needed.

At home, DH popped it into our Christmas tree stand, then we set it on top of a wooden folding table we have, and I decorated it.  Festive, yet still lots of room for presents underneath; plus, unless you count the toybox that normally sits in that corner, no furniture needed to be moved in order to make room for the tree.  Exactly what we'd been looking for in our Christmas tree.

Free Oak? Yes, Please!

 On Friday afternoon, DH found that he had no work meetings scheduled.  And then, he was contacted by a friend who lives near where DH works, and was told that there was free oak firewood available. A tree service had been contracted to remove some very nice, very large old oak trees from a neighboring homeowner's property and that if DH could come that afternoon while they were there, the tree service would even load it onto his trailer for him.

Well, you don't have to ask DH twice if he wants free oak.  It makes great firewood, lots of BTUs for those cold mid-winter days (and nights!).  He quickly decided to take the rest of the day off, hook up our 16' trailer, and head over to where that tree service was giving away wood.

When he got there, the guy in charge loaded the trailer up with some huge chunks of tree trunk, as well as some 'smaller' logs --about 12"-18" across-- from limbs, and told DH that if he wanted more, the guy would be working for several more hours trying to finish the job that night so he didn't have to come back on the weekend to do it.  So DH picked up his nearby buddy, brought buddy and the wood back to this little place here, and they unloaded that trailer with the tractor, a chain and the log tongs as fast as they could and headed back for more.

By the time they had the trailer reloaded, the tree guy was just about finished, so DH knew he would be gone by the time DH drove the 40ish miles home in after work traffic, unloaded, and drove back a third time.  So he thanked the guy, gave him his phone number and said that we'd gladly take more oak if the guy had future similar jobs in the area.

I had a late dinner waiting when DH got home the second time (buddy didn't come with DH as he had family plans for the night), and then I manned the log tongs while DH operated the tractor to unload the second load of wood.  It was dusk by the time we were done, but I took a picture anyway before DH moved the truck and trailer.  I wanted them for scale so anyone who views the photo can get an idea of just how much wood was in those two loads.  It's quite a large pile.

Here's a picture in the light of day on Saturday morning.  Without the truck behind it, it doesn't look quite a big, but it is.

This pile we'll let age until next summer before we cut, split and stack it.  It's a good start on firewood for the 2026/2027 heating season.  Gotta love free oak.

Life's Too Short

A random collection of thoughts for a Friday:

Life's too short. . .

•  to wear uncomfortable underwear.  In recent years, I've slowly been switching both DH and my undergarments to more pricier brands than we've worn the 50+ years we've been out of diapers.  Shopping for comfort, not price, makes a world of difference in the underwear-wearing experience!

• to not have music while you work.  I've been looking, for almost a year now, for a radio to put in my barn so that I might have music while I'm doing chores out there.  Being that I don't subscribe to or stream music, my target is just a good old plug-into-the-wall AM/FM radio.  Finding one proved to be way harder than I thought it would be.  Most non-streaming type radios that I found for sale ran on batteries.  Now, anything that lives in the barn aisle, like my radio is intended to, is going to get dang cold in the winter months.  And we all know (at least, I think it's common knowledge) that cold drains batteries faster, even when not in use.  So I didn't want anything that was only battery powered.  I needed a grid-tied radio!  Last week, I finally found one on a chance trip to the local Goodwill.  For only $7.29 plus tax, I now have an old-school radio that plugs into the wall and doesn't stream a dang thing, LOL.  Bonus, it has a CD player!  I gave it a test run out in DH's shop while painting some more ceiling boards for the tack room on the day I bought it.

• to not have fun with work.  DH's sister and brother-in-law recently had an old, large hard maple tree cut down next to their house.  They offered us the trunk and large branch pieces for firewood.  DH went and got them on Saturday.  Big and heavy, they required use of the tractor to remove from the trailer he'd hauled them home on.  DH operated the tractor (and forks) while I was in charge of wrapping the strap around them and hooking each end of it to the tractor forks.  I also snuck in a few pictures while we worked.

• to not bring flowers into your house.  I have irises blooming all over the place currently.  Some were so heavy that the stalks were falling over.  Those, I cut and brought into the house.  Now my kitchen smells like root beer, yum!

• to not take time off now and then. My daughters and granddaughters and I are heading off to Shipshewana for a day and a half next week.  We're all looking forward to it; the granddaughters mostly excited about swimming in the very nice pool at the place we stay when we go to Shipshe and eating at the buffet at the Blue Gate, the adults have our shopping lists ready (birthday and Christmas gift buying ideas as well as household goods and a can't miss trip to E&S for groceries) plus are just savoring the thought of not needing to take care of our homes for a bit.

Frugal Accomplishments, April

 Here's what frugal wins we had in April:

We worked some more on the barn finishing project in April, and used another $25 off Home Depot promo when we bought electrical supplies and one last bucket of stain.  Now all the stall walls have been stained/sealed, and I have lights, switches, and outlets on the entire west side of my barn!  It is so nice to not have an extension cord hanging down from the rafters anymore.

I found the Yarn Thief's chosen cat food on sale for $2 off per box at the farm supply store one week and I bought both boxes they had in stock. Then the following week the grocery store had the same food Buy One Get One 50% off plus I had a $3 off coupon at that store!  So I saved enough on four boxes of food (nearly 2 month's worth) that the 4th box was almost free.

Using a 30% off code I had at an online tack store, I was able to cover the cost of shipping on some oversized barn supplies I needed but weren't available locally.  (Okay, I didn't exactly need hunter green water buckets for the newly finished stalls, any color will hold water, but I wanted to match the buckets I all ready had--which were purchased many years ago.)  I did also add a portable saddle stand to that order and it cost $20 less than I could get it at any of the local places.  

DH sharpened our lawn mower blades himself.  He always does that, rather than taking somewhere and paying to have them sharpened, so I almost forgot to include it in the money-saving list.

We continued to eat from the freezer, cellar, and pantry.  

And a big frugal accomplishment was that DH tracked down who to talk to about trees that are being cut down on the road behind the church we attend. The entire several-block-long road is having work done and there are many really large old trees marked for removal.  He told the guy in charge of trees that if the wood was unwanted by the homeowners and the tree company was in need of somewhere to dispose of it, we live just outside of town and would gladly take any hardwood.  A handful of days later, this happened:

A semi-trailer load of free wood!

Since then, we've received several more partial loads of wood.  Probably about the equivalent of an entire winter's worth of heat.

Also wood/tree related, and a huge savings if you look at it from a We Did It Ourselves Rather Than Hiring It Done perspective; DH rented an aerial lift and cleaned up several trees in DD1 and Honorary Son's yard that had been damaged when the tornado went through there last August.  Those trees had branches broken off and hung up or not quite broken off but dead, more than 30 foot in the air.  Because there had been nothing actually fallen on their house from the tornado, their homeowners insurance wouldn't pay for a tree service to take care of the damage (and make it safe by removing the risk of those high widowmakers coming loose and falling on someone).  So, although we spent about $300 on renting the lift, to hire it out would have cost over a thousand dollars.  And now DH isn't worrying about things shifting in storms this summer and coming loose and falling on any of our descendants squashing them to death.

Where Have I Been?

 I just realized it has been an entire month since I posted here.  Oops.  Certainly not what I intended.

Where have I been?

Well. . . 

. . . I've been to a horse show, but I'm going to post about that next week in the upcoming horse-related update.

. . . I've been in the garden a lot, and have no photos to show for it, but trust me, it's looking great. We've eaten asparagus, radishes, and the first green beans so far. Peas were late, but should be coming on soon.  Harvested a handful of hot peppers yesterday, and the first zucchini is plumping up in today's rain.

. . . I've been knitting very little, and obviously didn't post a knitting update for July.  I finished Toad's hiking socks, and started on the second Christmas stocking (of the 3 I need to make by December)

. . . I've been sewing a bit, but didn't quite get my Fourth of July banner finished an hung in time for the holiday.  It still needs the hanging tabs sewn on. I also didn't post a sewing update this week because, well, busy.

. . . I've been strawberry picking,

and mulberry picking--using the tractor to lift Toad and K3 high into the tree--and making mulberry muffins and mulberry pancakes.

. . . I've been selling hay off the wagon (90 bales) and putting about 125 more into the hay loft. First cutting yields are way down all over this year.  We've had a lot of rain since the fields were cut, so hoping second cutting will be a bumper crop.

. . . I've been to my parents' house to load and haul home some box elder trees they had cut down (that I used to climb as a girl and sit way up in the top of, reading a book while swaying in the breeze.)

. . . I've been raising some broiler chicks, and took them to the same Amish processor that I used last year.  Another batch of meat chicks are due to arrive at this little place here next week.

. . . I've been in the chicken coop, taking care of my hens, and letting one try to hatch a few eggs of her own. (Mainly because she is aggressively broody and I got tired of her pecking my hands every day when I gathered eggs).

. . . I've been driving the trusty rusty Suburban to over 278,000 miles--only 22k to go until I hit my goal!

. . . I've been hanging out a little with Rascal, the busy, curious 2 year old;

and a little with Faline, who is crawling and pulling herself up and beginning to furniture walk (and just turned 8 months this week);

and with K3 and Toad, whom DH and I took on a vacation to Colorado this month (and why I didn't post a knitting or sewing update).  That trip will definitely get it's own picture-heavy post.

In short, I've been really busy!

Quality Time

DH and I spent some relaxing time together on Sunday afternoon.  The sun was out, the wind was not, and it was just a beautiful day to get outside.  So we did.  We went to the woods and cut (DH) and stacked (me) some fallen trees and widowmakers.  This probably isn't what most couples would call quality time, but for us, it was perfect.  DH loves cutting wood.  And I really don't mind helping out with that task, as long as I'm not behind on my own tasks. 

So, we went to the woods and spent over an hour working together, assessing leaning and hung up trees (the widowmakers) and discussing which way each would fall once DH started cutting it.  He's really good at aiming trees as he cuts, and I'm getting better in my knowledge and input ability in that area.  For stacking, we relied on my expertise in the area of how that part of the woods floods for about two months every spring and where the woodpiles should be located in order to not be partially submerged--which way the water flows and what is actually the high and dry ground.

What do you think of when you look at this picture?

I think of firewood, of heat, of a cozy house in winter.

One fallen tree cut; many to go.

Fresh sawdust on snow;

can you see where the tree used to lie?

A fresh stack

Now, I'm guessing the majority of women wouldn't count going out to cut and stack firewood as quality time with their husband.  But I do.  If there's a task that you both enjoy doing, go do it together.  That's what quality time is all about: a shared enjoyable experience.  It doesn't have to mean spending money or even leaving home.

Beauty in Damage

By and large, most of the wood we heat with at this little place here is long dead.  Very rarely do we have a tree that was cut down live, then cut into firewood.  If we do, it's because DH is doing some trimming or tree removal for someone we know.  At home, we just cut up the trees that have died and fallen over.  Because the emerald ash borer went through the area right around the time we were buying our property and building our house, most of our dead wood is ash. Someday we will probably run out of dead ash to burn, but after 11 heating seasons, there are still plenty of dead ash standing in the woods. 

Because I'm tuned that way, I tend to notice things that most people overlook.  Which is why, when I'm out helping DH with firewood, or am stoking the wood boiler myself, I get distracted and have to dig my phone out of my pocket to take pictures such as the ones to follow.

Pictures of insect damage that is revealed when the bark falls away from a piece of long dead wood.  The insects themselves were a negative, yet the trails they left behind I find somewhat beautiful.  Some look like patterns, some like fingerprints, and some even remind me of the petroglyphs we saw out west on vacation several years ago.

Big Tree Goes Down

The really big dead tree that DH and I had wanted to take out of our north fence line (originally talked about in this post) has finally been cut down!  DH got his chainsaw running smoothly, put a freshly sharpened chain on the bar, and we set out to cut down the big sore thumb between our field and the neighboring farmer's field.

The felling took a while.  The tree is so old that it had grown around (and enveloped) the old field fencing that runs between our field and the next.  This happened sometime prior to us buying the property in early 2002, and wasn't really a problem while the tree was living.  Now dead and needing removal, though, that wire hidden inside the wood was a matter of concern.  DH definitely did not want to hit metal with his chainsaw.  That's always bad news.

So, before he could start cutting, we had to find the remains of that old farm fence (long fallen down in most places), follow it to the tree, and try to estimate at what height in the tree the wire might reside.  Then translate to heights on DH's body on both the side to which we wanted the tree to fall (where he would make the notch that would guide the tree to fall in the desired direction) and on the side where he would cut straight and level to the center of the tree. Because of being in the fence row, there was nearly a foot of difference in height--on DH--from one side to the other.

figuring the height

making the notch

tree down

That tree had been dead at the top for so long that the upper branches were brittle and pretty much exploded when it hit the ground.  While DH cut the good wood into firewood sized pieces, I used the tractor bucket to scrape the debris out of the (still frozen) hay field.  Other than moldy hay, the other thing I really hate is hay with sticks in it!  Good horse hay, and a good hay farmer, makes bales that are both mold- and stick-free!

Now that the tree is gone, it seems like there is a huge gap in the fence line.  I can see all of the neighbor's house and outbuildings across the road a half-mile away.  When the tree was standing, you could sometimes see a little red of the edge of the barn on one side of the tree, and a little bit of the house on the other.  Now I can count four entire buildings, LOL.

Oh well.  Better to have taken down that standing dead wood on our terms (in the winter when it won't damage the hay field) and use it to heat our house than to leave it rotting away until some storm blows through and knocks it over to crush either my hay or the neighbor's corn.