Did You Think I'd Forgotten How To Type?

It's been over a week since I've made a post here.  Why?  Too darn busy.  Rainy days (of which there have been too many) give us the chance to start catching up on all the inside things we have let slide during the summer.  Plus, there's still some canning and preserving from the garden going on.  Days when we can be outside, we're like squirrels skittering around from one project to another.

With our good neighbor's permission and encouragement, we've worked on cutting an opening through our woods to his land next door so that we have some place to push and pile the snow removed from our back yard area.  On a heavy snow year, we quickly run out of room to push the snow so we're hoping this will be a big improvement and time-saver.

This involved taking out a few trees, nothing big, but of course there were lots of branches and debris we had to pile into the pick-up truck and make a couple of trips back up to the ridge where we have a designated dump spot (in the ravine on the other side of the ridge) that we and our good neighbor share.

This is a view from the other angle with only the stumps to be grubbed out and logs we can use for fire wood moved.  That's now been accomplished and the way is clear.

One other job needing to be done before the snow flies is to finish cutting, splitting and stacking all the wood still in our back wood working area.  (And there's a lot of it!)  The spot is low and with all our recent moisture, it's been difficult to work there.  But it's another location where we pile snow in the winter months so the wood needs to be worked up and moved before then.

Our good neighbor had six huge trees he took down for a client's building site and asked us if we wanted the trees for fire wood.  Of course, we did, so Papa Pea spent a couple of days cutting them up into stove size lengths and then we (with our daughter's willing help) hauled them to the wood working area with our tractor and bucket.  The pieces in the foreground are so big Papa Pea will have to split them up a bit with a splitting maul before we can comfortably lift them up onto our splitter.

Our wood supply is abundant and we've now got an ample supply for about two heating seasons and, boy howdy, do we feel good about that! 

Another big project that was accomplished last week was installing the new (used) wood stove we got for the enclosed workshop part of the garage.  It's going to be a great stove for our purposes (it will even heat our water when that phase has been accomplished) but it weighs in at around 500 pounds so you can imagine the chore it was getting it in and installed.  Those pictures will have to wait for another post as this one is already too long.  (Am I even capable of writing a short post?)