Chapter 157...Cutting The Barn Wood

Just a quick story about some things we do around our property.  As you know we have been trying to clean out the barn.  First we had to get rid of the bales of hay in the loft, next we took out the extra lumber and finally we can clean up the ground.

But first a another cool view from our front door:

And:

OK...time to start working.  We brought all of the tobacco poles and extra old lumber up from the barn and stacked it on our driveway.  Since we have no use for it, building wise, we will cut it up and use it to burn.  I know some of you think that is crazy but whenever Mike and I wait around for people to come and take things they don't show up fast enough, lol.  Basically...you snooze you lose.


Mike uses the back of the trailer as a cutting table:

Uh oh...while Mike is doing that I notice that we have bees flying all around us.  They are carpenter bees.  I researched them and found some interesting information about them.  First the males don't have stingers...at least that is good:)  The females can sting but they very rarely do unless they are highly threatened.  The carpenter bee drill holes into wood to rear their young.  They like untreated wood best.  Once the holes are drilled, which are an almost perfect 1/2 inch round circle, they drill in about one inch and then turn right and drill some more.  They create tunnels in your wood.  In the winter they will live in those holes.  "They mate in the spring and set about to clean out and enlarge the old tunnels or to excavate new ones as brood chambers for their young. Each chamber is provisioned with a portion of "bee bread", a mixture of pollen and regurgitated nectar, which serves as food for the larvae. An egg is deposited on the food supply and each chamber is sealed off."
About Carpenter Bees

Anyway I found that interesting...although I am not happy about the holes they drill: 

OK...back to the cutting.  We have a another system:)  I stack the wood on each side of the trailer.  Mike goes back and forth between the sides and cuts the wood:

Nice clean cuts of wood ready to be stacked:

Mike stacking some of the wood:

Almost done with our pile:

Mike cleans up:

Back to the barn.  We still have a lot of loose hay on the ground:

We take some garbage bags up top and get to work.  Mike starts stuffing the bags:

18 bags full and that will be good for future seeding jobs:

Mike cleaned up the rest of the barn and blew it out with the blower:

Next we clean up and clear out the back building.  Now that we have the top of the barn cleaned out we can store some odd ball items down there and make more room in our storage container:

First load going down the the barn:

Mike is in heaven.  He has a whole big shelf to spread out his things:):

And on a last note.  The carpenter bees were just the beginning of the problem.  Since the bees add nectar and food to the holes other birds want to eat what is in the holes.  Unfortunately we have a big woodpecker that wants that nectar.  Not good.  We really have to fill all the holes before our whole post falls apart:

That's all for now.  We have just been doing the normal routine maintenance around the property.  Most of our time is spent working on the store:)

Have a wonderful day and I will write again soon:)

Chapter 125...Turkeys, Deer, Snow and Mountains

Off Grid...Chapter 125 It has been a wonderful and very mild winter. Mike and I have been super busy in March so I better finish up with February February was mostly about cutting wood and cleaning up. Fortunately we didn't need all of the wood we cut. Before I start that let me tell you about the new RV refrigerator in case anyone else runs into this problem. We had trouble getting the freezer to get cold enough and the refrigerator was too cold and freezing things like celery and lettuce. We called our supplier and they sent us a new thermistor. Mike installed it and it fixed the problem. It now runs fine and I can switch back and forth from propane to electric with one button We should have done this in the first place OK...onto some pictures. We had a trailer full of wood from the buckeye tree to bring down to the house. Mike is cutting it up into smaller chunks to fit our wood stove. Stacking it up in front of the house. We will have to come up with a better place for our wood for next winter. Our turkeys are back....I am so glad they made it through the winter alive And another trip down to the pond to clean top the old buckeye mess. Mike drags out vines that we stored in the barn. We have to take these to the burn pile. Once the trailer is loaded we take them to the burn pile and I start to unload the vines. Yay..the vines are done. Now it's time to clean up the wood and shavings around the buckeye site. Mike can't stand looking at that "bright white" stump so he wants to cover it. He shovels up some mud and throws it on top of the stump. And then he smears the mud around. Yup...that should work Niki loves...and I mean loves the wood stove. Unfortunately she thinks she can lean against it so we had to come up with a way to protect her. Here she is enjoying the heat but blocked off from the danger of leaning against it. 2-15-12 Wow it is a beautiful day. Mike, Niki and I go out back behind the house to cut some more wood. We have so much down on the back hill and it's pretty easy to get to Mike cutting up some wood. The hill I have to throw it down. Sometimes it takes me 3 throws to get it to the bottom of the backyard As you can see Niki must be tired that day. She did not follow us "up" the hill. She decided to wait for us in the yard. I think she may be the smart one, lol. After we get the wood thrown down the back hill, it's time to load it into the tractor bucket to bering it to the house. Mike loading up while Niki supervises. And the next two days after such beautiful weather we got snow The second day. I may not like it but it sure is pretty. After it all melted we got back to our beautiful weather and more wood cutting We went back to the section behind the barn where a big tree fell a couple of years ago...or was it last year Anyway, this huge tree fell on top of briar bushes...not fun to cut and clean up. Mike worked on cutting while I had to throw the wood into a gully. Then I had to get into the gully and throw the wood back "up" to where the trailer was. That day was one heck of a workout Now I will leave you with the deer that we saw right outside the front door. That's all for now. I really had only wood cutting pictures for the whole month and it is just not that exciting, lol. I hope you enjoyed the story. Right now Mike and I are building a big shed with mega shelves. I will write about that in a couple of weeks. Lisa