Broken Oak

I was hiking up the hill to an area of our land where I hadn't been for a while when I came upon a large oak tree that had recently fallen over.  I don't know exactly when it happened.  It could have been during the heavy wet snow we had back in October or it could have happened more recently during one of the windy winter rain storms.  In any case it must have been at a time when no one was around, otherwise we surely would have heard it.  It was a large but weak tree - the base was rotted hollow from insects and fungi.  We have a number of such damaged trees on our land.  Our long term plans for managing the forest is to remove the worst of the infested trees and try to halt the decay of the others.

There wasn't much of a base to the tree and what there was split in a spectacular way.

As can be seen, it did not fall all the way to the ground but rather hung itself up in a neighboring tree.
I don't know how I will safely clean this up.  However, since it is not near any of the current activities on the land, I will probably leave it be for now.

Storing Tree Trunks

Since last summer we have been cutting down trees on our land to make a clearing for our building project.  The fact that we are not done with this process this many months later is a good indication of the extent to which we underestimated the magnitude of this task.  Perhaps all this exposure to fresh country air has made us a little crazier than we were when we started, but we recently decided that we should make this task even more challenging.  Up until now, when we fell a tree we have been cutting it up into short sections suitable for firewood.  We got a great collection of firewood by now.  It's mostly oak with a little bit of maple and poplar.  Actually at this point we have years of firewood stored up; we really don't need any more.  Also, most of the wood we have been cutting up into firewood has been really nice timber, worthy of fine wood working.  So we decided that rather than cutting it up into little pieces, we would try to save it in long lengths which we could later mill into planks for woodworking projects.  We don't want to mill the wood immediately since we have as yet nowhere to store milled lumber out of the elements.  Logs can be stored for future milling if you are careful how you handle them.  They have to be kept off the ground and the ends have to be sealed so that they dry more uniformly so as to reduce cracking.  We decided to cut all future good trunks into 11-13 ft sections.  This will be tricky.  Some of our larger trees have trunks  12 to 15 inches in diameter.  Such a log can weigh as much as 900 pounds.  This is near the upper limit of what our equipment can handle.  It is interesting to think that people used to handle such logs before there were diesel engines.

This is a maple log being prepped for storage.  We started with some of the smaller trees to get the hang of it - this one is only about 6-7 inches in diameter.

We cut the ends square and remove a stripe of bark along its length to promote uniform drying.  We put it on some cribbing to keep it off the ground.

A small oak log being prepped for storage.
These smaller logs are relatively easy to handle.   The tractor pulls them easily.

The last step is to paint the ends of the logs with a sealant. 

We sealed the ends of the three oak logs immediately.  We will seal the ends of the maple log in a couple of days once it has stopped dripping sap.

Winter

O, wind, if winter comes,
can spring be far behind?
        Percy Bysshe Shelley




Of winter's lifeless world each tree
Now seems a perfect part;
Yet each one holds summer's secret
Deep down in its heart.
        Charles G. Slater




I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape.  Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.
        Andrew Wyeth




Now is the winter of our discontent.
        William Shakespeare

Some of our equipment at the partially excavated build site during a snowstorm.

It's either cold and frozen or thawed and muddy this time of year.
Either way, progress is made at a reduced rate.

We call this road the "West Boulevard".
Completed this Autumn, it is now the main access to our build site.

Tyvek

Tyvek is a great product and I use it on all my wood frame constructions.  It's basically a spun polyethylene  paper which is normally applied over the sheathing of a structure but under the final finishing such as siding.  It provides a moisture barrier as well as improving insulation by reducing drafts.  I had a 15 year old roll of the stuff sitting around which I decided to use up on this little shed project.  I got three sides of the structure done but did not have enough to do the fourth wall.  I bought a new roll at a local building materials supplier.  I find it interesting to note that in the years between my purchasing of the old roll and the new roll, the Dupont company thought it necessary to change the labeling on the product from "Tyvek Housewrap" to Tyvek Homewrap" as you can see in the picture below.  I think this is a brilliant move on the part of Dupont.  I am much more likely to buy a construction material with the word "home" in it rather  than the word "house".  Indeed, like most Americans, when I hear the word "house", I can only think of stark structures with lonely, cold rooms haunted by the disembodied spirits of deceased child molesters whereas the word "home" brings to mind bucolic fantasies of fresh baked desserts and puppy dogs.  Of course the real estate industry discovered this many years ago.  It has been decades since anyone has bought a house in America but a large number of homes certainly have been purchased.  This has even extended into the rental side of things in that now one doesn't rent a mere apartment, but rather an"apartment home".  As a nation we have to continue this semantic crusade of felicitousness.  Consider how much better we all would feel about the government if our congressmen were to meet in the "Home of Representatives" or if the president were to inhabit the "White Home".  This concept could even be extended to entomology.  Why, you surely would hardly be bothered at all if the insect buzzing around your head while you sit in your family room watching the ball game was commonly known as a "homefly".

The Shed Enclosed

I continued working on the shed exclusively since Thanksgiving hoping to get it water (and snow) tight as soon as possible.  

It still needs finish work such as siding but with the roof on, the tyvek applied, and the door installed it can be used for storage.

This is probably the last time this space will be this empty.

Holiday Help

Our shed was supposed to be finished in July.  Of course it was never the main event of our build project but it would be very useful to have a storage shed especially with the colder weather coming on.  To move us along, my wife's sister Susan, her husband Doug, and their daughter Liza came out for a day after Thanksgiving to help with the framing.  The weather was pleasant, we all had a great time, and a lot got accomplished.  Thanks guys!

Kathryn and my niece ride up to the build site with a load of tools and supplies.

Doug, Sue, and Liza team up on some framing.

Doug and Liza deftly handle a sheet of plywood.

The B21 Rolls Again

It took nearly three weeks but we finally completed the repairs to the B21 tractor.  We had to remove the front axle and disassemble the left side bearing box to get at the bearing that had failed.  In the process we discovered that at some point in the tractor's past someone had replaced this particular bearing before.  We could tell this from the grind marks on the inside of the bearing housing.  Evidently during this earlier event the technician had difficulty removing the bearing from the housing and resorted to grinding it out.  We found this repair history a little curious for two reasons.  First was the fact that the bearing had failed before.  Now bearings do wear out with time but this particular bearing is not the typical fail point - far more likely would be one of the main axle support bearings.  These, however, were fine.  The second thing that was funny was that the bearing had to be ground out - they should just slide out from the recess in the housing where they are located.  Indeed this time I had difficulty removing the old bearing.  I didn't grind it out, but I had to build a special pry tool in order to pull it out of its recess.  Once the old bearing was out we realized that the new bearing would not fit nicely into the recess.  At this point we decided to go ahead and replace the entire housing.  Perhaps the bearing failure in the past had distorted the housing or perhaps the housing was never quite in spec and the bearing had never seated properly.  In any event it was for us more delay as we ordered the part.  When it finally arrived we went ahead and assembled the bearing box and the rest of the front axle.  Everything went together well and I am confident that this particular bearing will last a very long time.  While we were at it we replaced the front tires.  The previous owner of the tractor had for some inexplicable reason put on front tires that were too large in diameter.  The result of this was that when the tractor was in four wheel drive mode (which it is 95% of the time) the front and back tires rotated at slightly different speeds which tended to tear up our new roads a bit.  On the day after Thanksgiving we finally had everything back together and the tractor rolled again.