Work on a trail loop

The brushcutter (weed wacker with saw blade) and trimmer (same tool with spool of plastic string) are used to sculpt several areas for walking. The primary trail is a loop that begins at the house, goes north and west, then loops back. The loop's total distance is about 2,200 feet. The trimmer did some work this morning to keep grass and weeds down. Note the large number of young paper birch along the loop.

After making your way back to the house, these trio of white ash appear to stand guard over the trail.

The many small paper birch visible doesn't mean everything is small along the trail. There are big rocks and trees, too!

Great berry season means time for jam!

We've had a great raspberry crop this year. The plants grow in many parts of our forest. Five pints of berries were used to make some jam:

Berry plants get wacked by the brush cutter to make trails and help trees, but plenty remain. After raspberry season ends, blackberries will be ready. Picking our own berries for several weeks is one of the great parts about the season we know as summah. Both saws also got some work this weekend, as did the brushcutter. Some rainy days limited solar production, but we were still minus 17 for the week.

Two days nearly completes wood shed

The team building our new wood shed put in a lot of work Saturday and Sunday in hot, sunny weather. The first pic is a before shot of the shed's location.

Our next pic shows the nearly complete shed, which will hold more than three cords of wood. Above the big wood, shelves will give us a place for kindling, the all-important small stuff that gets the fire going. The shed's siding and trim match the house. They've done a great job on the shed, which is a much better storage option than using a bunch of tarps.

We continue to add to our future heating inventory. Some forest thinning provided many branches this weekend!

Two new panels add to solar production

We filled up the rack on the roof by adding two new solar panels. The new panels have a bit more power in them than the previous 20. We had a new net meter installed just after the two new panels were put in. The meter shows minus 100 as our usage since install 16 days ago. Overall, the solar panels, since first production in May 2013, have created 11,660 kilowatt/hours of electricity, about 77 percent of our total usage.