Life on the farm has been a bit busy around here lately. Between work at the church, family, and regular winter chores we are sure to keep busy, but when you add in all the spring/summer planning we are going through now and the homework from the GYSMF class there isn't a lot of down time. Lately I have been able to finish our makeshift chicken coop that will get us buy until we are able to build an eggmobile type of structure, finalized some exterior fence plans with a ton of help from the guys at PowerFlex Fencing, and how can I not mention the fact that we are taking in three of our last four pigs to the processor tomorrow. The only piggy left is the boar ... we are just going to try to sell him either to an individual or at the sale barn.But, one of the most enjoyable things that I have been doing is splitting wood (you can see a bit of my stack in the picture above). Thanks to some great church friends we had a bit over 5 pickup loads of wood dropped off this winter and it was a big help because of everything that we had going on while our Senior Pastor was in the hospitial.
Mostly we have been burning the chunks that didn't need to be split because they were they were on top of the pile and of course took the least amount of work. But, now we are down to the bigger stuff and I have been spending a little time each day out there chopping away with the splitting maul and axe. I don't even know where the maul came from, but my wife found it in the wood pile one day. Someone must have felt sorry for me when the saw my little axe!
I do love cutting wood. I love being outside in the fresh air ... I love smelling the wood all around me ... I love the sounds of the cows, pigs, chickens, and more as I chop ... I love the tired feeling I get as I'm working ... and I love to see the wood fly apart in two pieces. Of course the wood doesn't always fly apart in the picture perfect way. That is what happens when you have some elm mixed into the pile!
Pretty soon I'm going to hit the woods again and build up more of a supply for this year and next. I'm looking forward for those times again...
3 comments:
Ethan, Please tell us about your fencing plans, hopefully in a daily blog post. I am thinking of powerflex posts on exterior fences also. Would like to know your decisions and thought process to arrive at those decisions (number of wires, wire spacing, post spacing, end and line wood post spacing, etc), and maybe we can kick around some ideas on the comments page. My exterior fence rows are wooded and I think powerflex may be the best way to go for durability and ease of maintenance.
John
I was hoping for some details too.
We've got our 6 wire high tensile up on the first 10 acres but any new ideas would be helpful if we try to fence in more on our own. The guys that up up our fence used a fiberglass post for line posts but I plan on using powerflex next time.
That sounds like a good idea. I will get to that either tomorrow our Saturday...
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