Further firewood and other outdoor adventures

Yesterday Claude Mathis and I spent most of the morning until just after noon splitting wood from the huge oak tree we cut down for the lady near Mineral Bluff. Wow, when Claude said the splitter was 'massive' he wasn't kidding. Wish I had a camera phone so I could have taken a picture of it.

Imagine a two-wheel cart made of steel beams, with a trailer hitch on one end, wheels that look like they were surplus from a WWII jeep, a two-cylinder motor (no mufflers!) that may have been an early motorcycle motor connected with a big chain to a 3-stage pump that came from the hydraulic system of a big airplane. There were two tanks made of stainless steel (the only part of the contraption not rusty!), one for gas, and one for hydraulic oil. At the back of this thing was a HUGE beam, with a hydraulic cylinder that looked like it may have come from a front-end loader like they used to use in the mines near here. (Did I mention that this thing was built in the repair shop at the Copper Company, when the guys there didn't have anything else to work on?)

At the foot of the huge beam was a steel plate that drove itself solidly into the ground and formed a base for the wood you want to split. The cylinder drives a wedge that looked like an execution instrument...and did it ever split wood! Sometimes the oak was a little too tough, and we'd shut the motor down. Then you'd have to wind an old-fashioned starter cord and give it a smart, hard yank, and hope the thing would start. Claude tried to start it for 10 minutes before I got there, and finally figured out that the hyd. pump wasn't cut off--he was trying to simultaneously start the motor and drive the pump! But after that, it worked fine, most of the time. We split some 'rounds' that were 22" high and 32" across!

I really loaded down 'old yeller,' my pickup. When I started up the hill, the back bumper was so low that I dragged the ground when I went over a ditch. Fortunately momentum carried me on over and up the hill.

Claude didn't have good luck with his trailer...it was loaded so that at every bounce, the wheels of the trailer screamed from rubbing against the fenders. And his big Suburban-type vehicle would just sit on the hill with its tires spinning on the pasture grass, trying to pull the hill.

Then on the 4th try coming up the hill, his trailer hitch actually broke! But he did manage to get his share of the wood home by today, and was getting his trailer out of the pasture and fixed.

I drove no more than 30 mph all the way home, since the heavy load really had me swaying. But I made it, and all the wood's now stacked between some dogwoods beside our house.

Today I spent all day clearing low-hanging limbs, burning our pile of brush, and beginning to cut a roadway to my shop I'm putting up in our back woods. One tree fell the wrong way and I had to winch it out of another tree! I've ended up with another pile of branches about as big as the pile I burned.

Almost forgot...I finally got almost all our assorted power equipment to the shop for repairs and maintenance. I'll have to take Mamaw's snapper on Monday or Tuesday. Matt, if you read this, you're probably going to get either Mamaw's snapper or my old John Deere, whichever is worth keeping. I'll sell the other one and give the money to Mamaw. Hope I get the tiller and/or mechanical mule back in time to do some fall plowing for our garden. I've decided that the problem is that our soil is just poor. It needs fertilizer and amendment...just too much red clay! And I'm going to make the garden spot a lot smaller than before, so we can actually tend it. I may even move everything up near the garden I made for Debbie this year.

The junker Ford mower is on the back of the truck to go to the scrapyard. Debbie's really glad!

Must get a shower. I'm really tired and dirty.