One of the boys and I went down to the woodyard on Monday to pick up some firewood and a couple of saw logs. There were a lot of new piles in the dump suggesting that it is cutting season for the tree trimmers. This time it went really well, and we got two big sawlogs right up into the trailer in no time. It was our 26-year-old who came along with, and I thought when we unloaded that it might be nice to show him around the sawmill rather than starting on the log splitter already. We easily got a couple of hundred dollars of poplar boards out of a small-ish log I had sitting on the mill already when we got there. I took mostly 1-inch-thick cuts out of an 8 inch wide by nine-foot-long cant. That left some thick flitches that will burn just fine and saved us messing about with little things.
Missus and I got into the herb garden yesterday and cleaned up from the winter and got some plants in shape for their growing season by pulling grass around them and preparing for some fresh mulch. We also worked the front yard some. Missus put in some seeds in the planters out front and I took out an old planter by the gate. We had intended for me to move that one, but the bottom was rusted out and all the contents stayed as I picked the metal planter up with the tractor. We mowed and edged in the herb garden, and I scythed and even got down on my knees with the sickle to cut around where a litter of kittens have been growing up nicely.
I went down to get something from the tool shed on the front of the chicken coop and noticed a dead duck as I passed the outside run. It wasn’t much of a corpse suggesting the visit of a raccoon. Then I saw two more fresher, slightly more whole corpses in another part of the run. That left only two ducks, a goose, and two chickens in that run, along with the rabbit hutches. I did not get a chance to find the hole a raccoon would have come through, and I suspected that since the electric wire atop the fence is inactive, it may have climbed over. By the time we were done with the day and all the work done, I was in no state to sit up and watch for a raccoon to shoot at, either.
Missus had to redo a wall in her tiny shop trailer that she had tried a paper on for decoration and had come down at the corners. She was fed up with it and decided to paint instead. For her to do the work I had to take some shelves off the wall first. I put them back up yesterday, too. It was a pretty easy reassembly and did not take long at all.
Missus and I will be back at it again today when the day gets started, and we hope to finish the bulk of the work and ready for the season. I put the tiller on the tractor yesterday evening ready to use today to prepare beds for some peas and gourds. I topped the gearbox up with heavy oil, and I will grease the zerks before getting started today. But tilling is a job I will do whenever she is taking a break. It is pretty easy sitting in the air conditioning and driving slow. Also, the tiller is a pretty good counterweight for unloading sawlogs tomorrow when we come back from the woodyard.
It’s coming up to 5:30 in the morning and I have got Garrison Keillor telling the news from Lake Woebegone playing on YouTube. There is about an hour left to get a little rest before it is time to get the kids to the bus stop. Time to get to work on that rest!