Don’t know if it was the heat (triple digits) or the wildlife-friendly aura I project, but two fawns were relaxing in our front yard. Riley was climbing the walls so I finally had to let her out which sent the deer back into the woods.
I’ve been seeing the title guys without mom and was getting concerned something had happened to her. But she was checking out my hiking trail this morning so all is well. Probably my imagination but this small family seems more and more comfortable around people.
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Rope Saw
The two dead limbs on the ash tree near out deck (and outside my office window) have been bugging me for years. But they’re too high to reach with my pole saw and I didn’t want to pay the tree guys to come in with their high-lift equipment. So I decided to try a gizmo called a rope saw.”
It’s like a chainsaw chain but with cutting teeth top and bottom. I finally got the thing over my limb but quickly got it stuck. It looked so easy in the videos but this might have been a case of operator error. I finally pulled a big rope over the limb, put the pickup in 4WD, and pulled the partially sawed limb down.
But it wasn’t pretty. I’m going to have another go at cleaning up the stub. To be continued.
Hiking Trail Update: 6.26.23
I attempted a time-lapse video showing a couple of hours of this project but it was just too boring to post. Not boring for me, mind you, but the state of flow this induces for me doesn’t come across in a video.
UTV (utility task vehicle)
I moved some brush this morning using my neighbor’s UTV (utility task vehicles), also known as a SxS (side-by-side). He has repeatedly offered the use of this thing but I resisted. I don’t much like borrowing tools and I felt like I needed the exercise I get from dragging brush up and down our hill. But was pretty hot this morning and the hill gets steeper every time I climb it so I borrowed his UTV. I didn’t have all that much brush and I wasn’t moving it that far. I can see why people are fond of these things.
Squirrel proof? TBD
“Squirrel proof” simply means the squirrels haven’t figured out how to beat the bird feeder. (Henry prefers the term “squirrel resistant”) Yet. Like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, the squirrel proof bird feeder is a myth. I’d love to be proven wrong. Watch this space.
Cedar chips aplenty
I went a little nuts with the chain saw a few weeks ago and wound up with a massive pile of cedar trees and limbs. The chipper turned them in chips so it’s time to gather rocks to line the trail.
Wildlife: Murphy the Black Snake
One of our resident Black Snakes has been sniffing around the garage door and we keep chasing it away. Don’t want to open the car door and find this guy curled up in the driver’s seat.
Hiking Trail: 06.07.23
We’ve added another 40-50 feet to the hiking trail. Lots of rocks and tree roots in this stretch so it was slow going.
The illustration below is a rough approximation of the trails path. I’m as far down the hill as I can comfortably go so we’ll be heading back up the hill (toward the road).
Hiking trail update
We added another 40 or 50 feet to the hiking trail today. I remind myself (and others) that this project (?) is more about clearing cedar trees than creating a trail. Cedar trees are the crabgrass of the woods. They choke out almost all other trees. I quickly discovered I enjoyed cutting them with my trusty chainsaw, but getting rid of them hard work. As noted in previous posts, the wood chipper changed that. But I quickly generated big piles of wood chips and that was when the idea of making a hiking trail “paved” with cedar chips came to me.
My routine goes something like this:
- Use marking paint to flag the trees to cut
- Fire up (battery powered) the chainsaw and cut the marked trees
- Drag the trees/brush to a pile near the wood chipper
- Fire up the chipper
- Line the hiking trail with rocks to keep the chips from washing away. Works better than you’d think.
- Drag the chips to the end of the trail, dump and rake.
The rocks part is the most physically demanding. There’s no shortage of rocks on our property but there’s no easy way to get them to the trail. It usually comes down to picking them up one at a time and carrying them to the end of the trail.
I find all of this satisfying in a way I can’t describe. Mindless, physical activity out in the woods with no clear plan for where the trail leads.
New septic tank
After 35 years our septic tank developed a leak. (In my book, there’s no such thing as a small septic tank leak. Any odor is unacceptable.) Two years ago we had our tank pumped and an aerator installed. We’d had a little odor and hoped that would fix the problem.
It did until a few months ago when the smell returned. The company we used found a leak in our aging concrete tank and tried to patch it. Worked for a while …then it didn’t. Today we had a new tank installed.
Living “in the country” means a big old propane tank, a very expensive water well, and a septic system. There’s no where I’d rather be.
