Timber!

Bailey is a wonderful guard cat. It will be a quiet night here at Dusty Acres; we will be snuggled on the couch with our blankets watching TV with Bailey curled up sound asleep and snoring on our feet. On occasion she goes from a deep sleep to a tense, frizzed, growling beast. This is our clue that something is out there.

We heard a 'whump' one night and Bailey did her guard cat thing, growling at whatever was threatening us. Seeing as how the roof didn't come crashing down, and cause it was really dark and cold (probably around -20) we didn't check it out any further. Next morning Gary discovered that one of the pines about 50 or 60 feet tall on the east side of the house had come down. Good thing it missed the shed and trailer! I hate to see trees come down (or get cut down), ironic cause I love my log house and wood furniture. Gary and his cousin Lorne have been known to start up the chain saws, stand at the base of a tree, grinning wickedly, and just rev the saw up so they can watch me come charging from wherever I am to save my trees.

On this fine sunny Saturday my very own Paul Bunyan dug out his chainsaws and ropes (I guess that makes me Babe, the blue Ox) and announced it logging day. I quickly got ready; I wanted to make sure only the dead trees were marked for falling. The trees came down without too much trouble; one had some spikes in it which didn't bode will for the chain saw and one we roped up so that I could pull it in the direction it needed to fall just in case it decided to fall towards the shed. Damn, Gary is good, it fell right on the fire we had built to burn the branches.

Of course, all this hard work made us hungry and we had a good hot fire going so out came the weenies and roasting sticks. We haven't roasted hotdogs over an open fire since we took the kids camping...oh so many years ago. No s'mores though.



The rest of the afternoon was spent peeling the logs so that we could use them to build the railings for the shop or whatever. I suggested to Gary that he could use the bigger logs to build me an outdoor kitchen where we could house the BBQ (and beer/wine fridge), perfect for the summer bbq's that you can share with us if you just make the short drive to Dusty Acres. Hint, hint.


As you can see Gary looks very happy and I managed to save a few of our trees. It was a great day spent working together, getting covered in sawdust and dirt and smelling like woodsmoke. Just like a firefighter to cut down seven trees to have a wiener roast.