It’s a cool morning here on the farm. The storms that flooded Yellowstone north of us barely brushed by and touched our little home on the valley floor. The greatest effect here was cooler weather with a dash of wind. Cooler weather is good for splitting firewood ready for winter, and so I did yesterday, with the help of the girls, stacking it while I gathered a new piece, and hefted it to the splitter, then ran it through. We did a little more than half a cord yesterday, before being distracted by anything that was not work.
The wood is still wet this morning, as is easily seen by the flies gathering on it to drink where the fresh splits were placed yesterday. There was a little water around the top of the aircleaner colver on the log splitter, which reminded me that I needed to cover it before leaving it overnight, which I obviously had already done. It is a a splitter we bought a couple of years ago, before the company that makes it redesigned it and put on a new cover that does not drink all the rainfall if can, and fill the carburator, and then the cylendar. When I started it yesterday morning, the piston barely would move as I pulled the starter cord, but move it did, and I could hear the water squeezing out the exhaust valve. I dabbed up any remaining water in the carb with a paper towel, then pulled the cord till the pison moved freely, and finally dumped some gas into the carb, and pulled again and again till it finally started.
It is not an ideal situation. The solution is not great, either. But it solves it, and with much less effort that pulling things apart. So I’ll take it.
I took a log from in the way in the shop yesterday and mounted it to the lathe and made it into a scepter for my daughter for when she is ruling her “army of darkness,” also known as the barn cats. It is not a particularly useful project, but it is practice, and the log was not what I would have wanted to build something from, and it was just in the way. There is another one out there, so I may do one more.
Writing is done on the front parch these days. I have put on a tab with YouTube open, and Debussy playing. Debussy and the sounds of the birds chirping outside; could anything be lovelier? Maybe the same situation with hand tools on a bench in the shop, working a piece of wood into a chair? That’s the goal.
I have a reading date with my youngest daughter in a few minutes. We are working her through Rascal, about a boy in Wisconsin a century ago, who took in a raccoon. She is having troubles reading, so we are working on getting her some daily practice.