Many Hands Make Quick Work...2

A lot has been accomplished this week thanks to the three extra pair of willing hands. They finished laying out the two layers of insulation and re-bar, and Isaac and Peggy have tied more than 2,000 wire ties to hold the re-bar in place; they have a few more to do and should finish them tomorrow. Troy wants to add more reinforcements to the forms and he’s hoping to call the inspector on Monday. If things get done on time, we’ll be pouring cement on Saturday. (Ready, troops?)

When most of that work was wrapped up (we ran out of ties over the holiday so work on the shop was halted), we started on firewood. Last winter we “filled” our five racks and burned through about 3.5. So we have 1.5 racks of dried wood to start us off this year. But of course we still wanted to fill the 5 racks again to be prepared. Troy and I got a start on it about the middle of June, but only managed to fill half a rack. Warren started splitting the stump pieces Troy had already hacked off and finished off that rack on Tuesday. Then when the shop work was held up, Troy and Isaac got serious about making wood to split.

First they tackled the debris of the walnut tree and did about half of the wood there. Then they moved on to a hickory tree that had split during a storm. Several loads with the tractor (bucket in front and trailer behind) and Troy thinks he has removed maybe half of the side limbs and branches. That’s not including any of the wood from the main trunk that fell that he hasn’t touched. Warren split it and Peggy stacked it and today we filled the fourth rack. And this time I mean fill and not “fill.” In other words, the height of the piles this year is much higher than last year. We are going to have a lot more wood. We started filling the fifth rack this afternoon but Troy has had trouble keeping up with the efficient Warren/Peggy splitting/stacking machine. Sorry, no pictures of our wonderful stacked wood (and you know I love pictures of cut and stacked wood) because we got them tarped up pronto (and pictures of tarps are not so lovely).

This is all for now because I have to go to bed and try to sleep. Try to sleep though the neighbours are loudly celebrating the Fifth of July. Someone should send them a calendar.

-christina