New brushcutter in action

The FS131 fired up this afternoon.  The new unit takes over the for the retired FS250.  The FS131 has a bit less power, but weighs more than two pounds less.  The drop in weight makes work easier for sure.  Here are two pictures: a closeup of the new saw blade followed by a shot of the entire FS131 looking toward the Vermont hills.  As our fans will recall, we use the sawblade to thin areas overgrown with weeds or too stocked with young trees.  We put a traditional weed wacker spool on to cut the grass in our trails and around the house and driveway.  More pics of the FS131's work later this year!

Lots of splitting progress

Some quick work with mauls led to a great deal of split wood since Sunday's cutting.  This first picture shows a stack of some of the spring pole that was taken down with the bowsaw on New Year's Day.  This wood isn't far from our big stacking pile and shed.

The two trunks cut first on Sunday were several hundred feet away.  Most of that wood is halfway to the stacking spot after being moved uphill.

Saw season has begun

Both chainsaws worked hard this morning.  We cut several trunks, with the biggest being paper birch downed over the winter with the bowsaw.  Here are several pieces from the largest trunk, with splitting as the next step.

A great deal of work remains to split and move the piece cut today to the stacking spot.  But today was a wonderful start to the 2017 saw season.  The big saw hadn't roared since October, but started and ran beautifully.

Every great work day starts with an excellent meal on Hardwood Hermitage.  Today was oatmeal bread French toast with berries.  The raspberries and blackberries were frozen last summer.  Growing your own heat is the best, but picking berries on your land might be a close second!

Snow Monster put away

The Abominable Snow Monster was put away today.  He goes into hibernation on the first day each spring when you can't see snow from the house.  Mr. Abominable will come back out with the first snow this fall.  Although we received a lot of late-season snow, it's all gone now!  Here's a pic taken during this year's hibernation ceremony.

Spider on snow

Something new can be seen with each trip into the same woods.  Today, a small spider was pictured while running across snow. 

With lots of sun today and temps finally in the 50s, the snow is melting quickly.  We will likely reach 70 for the first two days of next week.

Here is a pic of another rock wall recently exposed to the sun after snowmelt the last few days.

 

Sun and a spring pole

We surpassed 50 degrees on a perfectly clear day.  The panels produced more than 40 kw/hrs of electricity today.

Out in the woods, a really big red maple spring pole succumbed to the bow saw.  The bending tree seemed quite ominous before the work began.

The side of the tree with the bend (the right side of the trunk in the pic below) receives a small cut, followed by some intense cutting on the other side.  The energy in the bend from the weight of the tree causes the second cut to grow as the tree leans toward the fall.

After the big break, the impressive amount of big wood and kindling is shown.  We will start about a week of mid-winter fires with the kindling on this monstrous spring pole.  Although a few small paper birches were lost in this operation, many more young ones will benefit from the extra sunlight the downed red maple will no longer block.

April Fool's Day storm

Eight inches of snow to start April! Only fools live in such a place, you say? But are you in as pretty as spot right now?

The snow blower came off this morning.  Removing really wet snow is difficult because the blower gets clogged with sloppy snow.  We got rid of much of the driveway and road snow with the blower yesterday, then switched to shovels.  We used the bucket on the tractor today to remove lots of snow from in front of the house.  Rain expected Tuesday.