Making it through another year '21-'23

[Old Greenhorn]

On dry or muddy ground, it works super. In 12" of snow, we are pushing the limit. Better now then when it had the hard skid steer tires on it, then it would just wallow and spin the tires. It's a 6,000# machine.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   Remember the proper term is "Cerebral flatulence". ;)

[Old Greenhorn]

So noted, I stand corrected.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, catching up here a little. I left you off on Monday when I pulled 25 logs to the landing. Tuesday was just perfectly gorgeous weather wise and I am sorry I didn't pack a lunch and a stool or something to sit on and enjoy the day. I can't think of a nicer day in fact, crisp temps, bright sun, and fluffy snow. I did get the toolcat bogged a couple of times, but I wormed my way out and muddled on. I pulled 35 logs that day. The sun did make it just a tad mushy and I was getting concerned about getting around further into the afternoon.

 Wednesday I brought my trailer down and loaded all the logs I had piled, plus another 35 or so. Then I had to head home and put on DRY clothes and go do that show. Between getting home and leaving I got a call from a local logger doing a land clearing job for a house and he dropped some beautiful white oaks. He was thinking of me and rather than skid them out, he picked them up with the excavator and placed them where they were out of the way and I could take the topwood for mushroom logs. He asked me to come by and see if I wanted it. So I ran over there quick and sure yeah, I ant them. That would finish off my order and then some.

 SO today I overslept again after staying up too late last night trying to negotiate a truce that didn't happen. It was raining lightly and I figured I had better get my trailer out of there before the road turned to ice. Well I had no trouble getting in, but the mud had thawed a little and the trailer jack settled in and would not get it high enough to clear the ball on my truck. So I hiked up the hill fetched the toolcat, drove it down and lifted the trailer onto the ball. Then I drove the truck out, walked back and drove the toolcat up to the shop, walked back down and took the trailer home, then headed over to the clearing job and cut top wood. I worked at the until I filled the order at least and then the rain got steady and I was getting soaked. Ever notice how you can't even tell it's raining if you have on a hard hat and ear plugs? ;D My only indication was a soaking wet jacket.
 
 I knew the guys were having lunch at a local watering hole/pulled pork joint, so I joined them for a bit and had a burger and beer. I was done with work for the day anyway, they had a long way to go yet. While I am waiting for my food, I check my voicemails and I have one from a gal at a farm on Long Island who wants to buy mushroom logs. SO when I got home and returned her call. She wants 60 logs and will come pick them up with the farm truck. Sounds good to me. I gave her all the pricing info and discussed the basics. Now I am just waiting for a confirmation before I start on that order. Last year I had to work really hard to sell 100 logs in the winter and that one order didn't come in until mid-March. This year I haven't lifted a finger and they are coming out of nowhere. I am running out of marked trees much faster than I thought.

 Tomorrow is the monthly Chiro tuneup and I have some things he can work on, but no real issues, which is good considering all the logs I have been moving. Anyway, the day is shot unless that first order client comes for his pickup, which I doubt. The weather looks pretty miserable anyway.

 We will figure out what we are doing tomorrow when we get there.


 

[aigheadish]

Good job on the shroom logs, Tom, you are the market for them!

I hope you guys up there are making it through the storm ok!

[doc henderson]

funny you should mention it.  Bill and I have received confidential super-secret information  that Tom is without power and working to clear his drive and road, and working to keep his phone charged, working to keep wood heat going for the house and shop.  It will be good to hear from him, hopefully soon

[Old Greenhorn]

Well your intelligence is correct. 13 hours out now. I am not a generator nut. If it gets bad, I will dig mine out....tomorrow. I miss the forum most of all. Heat is ok. Tree damage is everywhere and we still have some state roads closed due to trees. Even the local cell tower is running on backup power so the signal is barely there. So keeping this short. Anxious to clear the tree off my garage tomorrow and see what damage I have. Some neighbors in worse shape.bthe power line job we did about 6 weeks ago needs to be done again tomorrow, but no pole this time. Just splice and rehang. Bucket truck job.

 Iwe ain't dead yet. More when I get power back and I have a few photos. Tree tops snapping every 20 seconds or so this morning. It was like being stuck down range during a turkey shoot. Not fun. I put my hard hat on when I step out the door. No mail today either. Whimps. :D


Later folks.

[newoodguy78]

Stay warm the mess will be there tomorrow. 

[WV Sawmiller]

  What was that statement (Actually I heard the same thing from my secretary in Norway in 2007) "There is no bad weather, just bad clothes."

  Sounds like you need an insulated or battery heated suit of armor to be walking around. If you'd like Doc, and Nebraska and a couple of us can work on designing you one. ;D

  Stay safe. Sorry for the hassle. I hope you don't get so snowed in you have to start burning the mushroom logs for firewood. : Keep us posted when you can.

[WDH]

Watch that WV Sawmiller.  He would burn those mushroom logs in a heartbeat. 

[firefighter ontheside]

Hope your power comes back sooner than later, Tom.  I hate being out of power.  At least sometimes in the winter when the power is out you can just put food outside to keep it cold.  We've done that before.
I'm hopeful that the tractor is going to start tomorrow.  I put the battery on charge all evening and when I went out to unplug I gave the key a turn and it turned over.  

[Old Greenhorn]

Well short reply here. They apparently are a bit behind the curve on this one and updated our restoration time to 8 pm tomorrow night. I don't see any of the outages being cleared from their map all day, just adding more. Looks like I wlll have to go to defcon level two tomorrow and tend the stove in 3 hour shifts tonight to keep the heat up. Sunday night into Monday morning they are calling for 2°. Tonight just around 12° I think.
 This is getting old fast. I got work to do.

[Old Greenhorn]

OK, I will try to get caught up here as best I can, it's been a rough few days. Not a lot of fun mixed in either, but nobody got hurt (that I know of), so all good I guess.
 The Ice storm came in overnight on Thursday and we lost power at 5:55 Friday morning. No big deal, but ice storms can get real ugly with very little actual precipitation coming down. Such it was with this storm. By daylight we already had 1/4" of ice buildup on everything. Tree tops breaking out all over. It sounded like somebody was trying to use up all their ammo. Every 20 seconds or so I would hear another one let go and many were way too close. I took to wearing my hard hat anytime I went out. It started out small:



 

Little healthy branches down like that all over the place by the thousands. The fact that they were healthy and live was concerning. While I was out in the shop I would hear bigger tops or trees dropping within 100' of the shop.  I just missed seeing this one come down by seconds, and believe me, I heard it. About 18" DBH.


 

That clobbered my garage roof fairly well, to the point I still (3 days later) can't tell if there is real damage or not. It clobbered the chain link fence bending the top rail into an "S" and covered the roof and punched a few small holes through the siding. Saturday afternoon I could finally get in there to take the weight off the roof, but all the branches are frozen in, so I can't pull them out until it thaws... a lot. The ice load is heavy. That Red Oak also took out 3 other trees on the way down and the ONLY Cherry tree I had on my property. Snapped it right in half 8' above the stump. Firewood now. My neighbor next door (who owns the tree that hit my garage, I think) had one come down, just nicked the rain gutter on the corner of her house and ripped her service connection off the house. I helped Bill cleanup that mess to get her ready for a re-hook. 

Then I had this red Oak leader come down on my drying rack and snapped the ridge beam into pieces. If that had been a hard roof it still would have been creamed.


 

 Being out in it you couldn't go a full minute without hearing a top breakout somewhere and your head was on a swivel trying to figure out where it was and how close. Nasty nasty stuff.



 

 The power company got caught with their pants down and did not get mutual aid trucks on the road as early as they should have. Plus, there was a lot of equipment damaged beyond just coming down. Add to that all the trees that needed to be cleared before they could start putting things back up, and they really got very little fixed in the first 24 hours. They had us scheduled to get power back by noon Saturday, then they pushed that out to noon Monday. 50,000 customers out in our county and by Saturday night they only had 6,000 back online. Not normal at all, but this was unusual.

 Feeding woodstoves to try and heat the whole house was getting old by Sunday morning. Bedrooms were down in the 50's, the fridge was warming up. I slept down by the woodstove on the floor Saturday night so I could keep it rolling through the night. We cooked a nice steak on the shop stove Saturday night, and that was very fine.



 

I took to filling buckets with snow and melting it on the stove for flushing toilets. As long as I had a bucket full of snow it doubled as a cooler. It was way too cold to leave beer outside, it froze solid in 15 minutes. Temp Sunday morning was 2° and it stayed well below 20 until Sunday afternoon.



 

 But the fun was quickly waning away. ;D

 By Sunday morning, it was time to kick it up a notch. My son came over Saturday afternoon and dug out the generator and took it to his place and ran the 2 fridges over there. He had lots of clients who left their houses to go back to the city and some had flooded basements and sub-freezing temps inside and they were unable to help themselves. They just 'call the guy'. Sunday morning he went to Lowes as they had just gotten a load of generators in, he bought 2, brought them here and we put them together and fired them up. He left one with us which we dead bugged into the oil burner, plugged in the fridge, and charged some cell phones. Then later I thought to plug in the blower on the woodstove and that made a huge difference, duh. He took the other generator and started warming up clients houses. Hop-scotching them around. Around 6pm he came back and got ours and moved it to an elderly clients place. We went out for a hot meal at the local watering hole and ran into a lot of friends and neighbors, so we got some good visiting in. When we got home, the lights were on. So I cleaned up all the extension cords, rewired the burner back to the house and got that running and filled both wood stoves and went to bed. Long 3 days. Not complaining, a lot of other folks got hit worse and still are without power, but that number is quickly coming down now.

 My wife and I were trying to recall when we had ever had a winter storm taking out power for that long in the 35 years we've been here. We could not. This one pushed it about as far as I would like to go. I don't want to have to go nuts investing time and money into avoiding a little discomfort. But if we get another one like this, I will start thinking about it. My son is out at it again this morning and he just texted me a photo of a very nice bathroom with the water in the toilet frozen solid. Looks like he has work going into the future.

 My neighbor across the road made it sound like they were having a tough time without the internet (whole house generator), but then when his genset blew up on Saturday morning it all looked different to him. He lasted to Sunday, then bailed out to the city and called my son for his generator to run his heat.

 It's tough all over. I gotta get some work done. Later folks.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Any update from our favorite sawdust covered ice cube up in NY? Do we need to send firewood? Here's hoping all is well. We do care.

[Old Greenhorn]

UMMM yeah, Read back a little.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Don't get your G-string in a wad there! I was just thinking of you and as I was typing my query you posted your update. Check the posting times if you like. :D

   Looks like a real mess. Sorry couldn't be there to help but I am glad nobody was hurt. The ice storms are what really make a mess. The cable guys come around here with long poles and beat on the lines and try to break off as much ice as they can to help keep them from breaking from the weight. Often the lines sag to the top of the bushes. 

   Around here the locust trees are shallow rooted and when they get ice after several days of slow soaking rain that has already softened the ground they fall and since they are on the steep hillsides, when they fall they are like dominoes and take 2-3 more with them which in turn takes 5-6 more. I've seen whole hillsides come down in it.

   Our poplars and maples and such do like yours did and the tops and limbs break off.

    I had a big/42" WO fork fall across my concrete goat barn (It started life as a milking shed). I had to brace it with locust fence posts and poles to keep the weight from collapsing it as I cut it off in pieces. Some of your tops and limbs look like they may need the same kind of support when you cut them.

   Stay careful and don't overdo it. Keep up posted.

[aigheadish]

Goo OGH! I was hoping it wasn't going to be that bad, but I'm happy to hear y'all are safe. 

I've been through a couple good ice storms, once as a home owner, many years back, and I don't know that I've ever been as anxious as hearing many of the trees breaking apart in my older neighborhood, where lots of pretty big trees sat right over the tops of houses. I remember going out and trying to map where each tree in the yard would likely fall, if it did, and if I needed to adjust where anyone in the family was sleeping, in case one let loose. We ended up being about the only house in the neighborhood that didn't have any major breakage. Quite scary and I know exactly the noises you are talking about. 

Take care man and good luck with the clean-up.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Yeah, after cleaning up after a few hurricanes and ice storms I make sure never to plant a tree close enough to the house that it can fall on my house. I might plant a dogwood or redbud that would never get big enough to fall on the house but nothing bigger. 

[Old Greenhorn]

  Don't get your G-string in a wad there! I was just thinking of you and as I was typing my query you posted your update. Check the posting times if you like. :D.......................

Geez, a tad bit testy there WV? Sleep on the wrong side of the bed last nigh or something? Which G-string are you referring to? The 4th string on my banjo, or the high G, 5th string? I wouldn't know how to get it bunched up anyway, it's hard enough trying to coil those things up.
 I just came in from a walkabout, Now that it is finally warming a little (30° now), we are getting that second wave of tops breaking loose as the hangers on melt loose and fall. It's another hardhat day. I was standing in the road talking to a power company line surveyor looking for anything they missed and a silent branch landed 5 feet from us. Stuff like this is never fun.
 I remain pretty tired after the long hours over 3 days. Gonna go slow today. I did manage to have that first mushroom order picked up Saturday around mid-day and while they were here they also bought one of those log drilling fixtures I made, so now I have to make 2 more. The couple of SGU's I collected came in handy for the extra expenses incurred since Friday. I have the next order to get done and I don't think I will get it all out with the trees I have here, but I need to get started, it's Monday already. Geez.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   You know I don't sleep at all.

    Can you salvage some mushroom logs from the tops and limbs of the neighborhood trees or are they suitable? You might be sitting in the middle of a gold mine here. Collect a clean up fee then sell the logs. Then again, I highly suspect most of your clean up has been free/community service/good neighbor work anyway. Stay safe.

[Andries]

We've had a few ice storms recently, kinda unusual for the Prairies.
The damage gives rise to a huge supply of downed trees.



Something to watch out for, You'll probably get a bunch of logs that look like this on the inside.


 
There's no joy in trying to mill this stuff, it really just wants a quick trip to the firewood shed.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well thanks for the reminder. Lots of this stuff is already splintered, but I should keep my eyes open as I go. 

 I am starting to head your advice from yesterday a little more. I went out at noon to try and get more cut up, but so much stuff is coming down yet, it's just crazy and the risk isn't worth it. SO I switched to just cleaning some of the junk and burning up a bunch of cardboard boxes. One of the grandsons came out to help. But at 5 years old, he doesn't understand why he can't walk under the trees. When I tell him to move quick when I see or hear something, he doesn't. He thought I was yelling at him because I was mad and he would just shut down. Of course I wasn't and we had a talk so I could explain why we need to be safe and it was my job to keep him that way. Finally we decided together it was time to come in and be safe.

 It's only just 34° here now and there are tons of ice up on the trees yet. I am letting it go another day. It's pretty miserable out there. Overcast, feels like rain, some snow falling, very damp, maybe some rain, but hard to tell between that and trees dripping. We have the 3 grandsons anyway, and that is a distraction enough. Schools are still closed. The work will get done when it gets done.

 At least there are still no mosquitoes and the pollen count is really low too. ;D Tomorrow is another day.

[gspren]

Got any electric juice flowing yet? I'd send a couple buckets of electricity up there but shipping's complicated. :D

[Old Greenhorn]

Yeah, last evening it came back.

[Nebraska]

Good deal, looks  like a dang mess.