Monday, January 2, 2012

Time to look forward...

Hope y'all had a great Christmas and Happy New Year.  We are still in crazy weather Down East.  Things are open at the moment and the ground has froze and thawed  a few times.  This has been to our benefit, cause I'm way behind in the winter wood complement.  So two days ago, when the ground was solid as a rock, I scampered to the other side of the large pasture pen and dropped a large deadstand maple tree.  I've been waiting for the freeze, cause lets face it, who wants to slug wood through pig goo and burn it indoors?  Anywho, the tree is just about to go and we're talking about a "can't reach around tree" in size.  I look up one more time to see Redmin the boar standing right where the tree is gonna land.  I dropped the saw and yelled at him to get out of there, while I looked for something to throw to him as a redirector.  Well I tossed a piece of the tree's wedge I just cut out.  He could care less.  Then I spied a ball, you know a kids kickball.  One I had purchased say nine years ago for our first piggies.  They loved it and so there it was still round and setting right top of the frozen goo, almost clean looking as I could still see clearly Spiderman; climbing and spraying web.  With one reach and heave I launched spidie to the opposite end of the pen and Boar Boy saw it and did a hop skippedy skitch and a jump to check it!  Now understand the anxiety present, waiting for the freeze, not enough wood in the bin, tree in the pen, boar in the way,  a puff of wind and she's going.  This "project" has been in my head for well too many years.  Simple because I knew when the pigs had access to any tree, that tree is history.  Pigs love to root and eat bark; trees hate that, but wood heaters love it.  Soooo, I reached for the running saw hit the cut at full throttle, not looking up cause I knew boar was outta there and TIMBER!!!  As the tree hit the ground, BOOOMCRASHCRUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! all the pigs came off the ground and flew for just a moment as seen through my perefferal vision.  Now wood heats you several times in the coarse of burning it...  Lets see there is the cutting time when you sweat, the luggin time, the splitting time and the stacking time and oh yeah, when it in the woodstove.  The carbon foot print of a tree rotting in the woods or burned in your stove is the same.   May peace, happiness, joy and prosperity be with all of you in the new year and the rest of them!