A day in the life of….

SAM & I spent the day from sunrise to sunset splitting the wood from the dead Ash trees we were forced to cut. To me it is so sad to see a tree that has weathered many a storm standing dead. I love trees and wood and lumber. My grandfather was a lumberman and had a lumber yard and mill operation. I spent my childhood roaming the mill and remember quite vividly laying on the pine boards smelling the pitch.

I also remember getting a box car of lumber packed to the top with all sorts of boards. I will not bore anyone with the types and dimensions nor with the smells inside the car when we opened it on a hot summer day. However, I will tell you of the pleasures and terrors of a little kid, maybe eight years old or less who because of his size, had the pleasure of sliding down the lumber with his back to the top of the boxcar and stomach to the wood clear to the front of the car. I would then push out the boards so “the hands” could get a hold of them. In a short time there was enough space to turn around and I could breath again. Of course, there were the hands that wished to terrorize the kid and would push boards back on me to trap me. I remember them well but they are all gone now.

Tomorrow will be a very full day in the cold weather. We will cut some new logs that are 16″ or less and then split them to fulfil a customer complaint of too long firewood. We thought we were doing him a favor since were selling by the rank and not the cord. So basically he was getting a 22″ wide stack instead of the 16″ stack. However, he is returning 1/3 cord that was over 20″ long. More on this tomorrow.