Joel is up in Casco this weekend with Millie and their grandson Mason (who’s dragging around with a cold, but that’s another story). Joel encouraged me to get out my chainsaw and start using it, while he’s here to coach. Yes! I’ve been meaning to cut up some wood, but haven’t really worked up my courage after smashing my finger back in September. But that’s two months ago by now, the finger is all healed and working fine, and there’s wood to be cut.
Really, you can’t own eleven acres of Maine woods and not have a chainsaw (and be able to use it). Trees fall in the forest, whether or not they make a sound, and block trails you made, or block the driveway, or are a hazard to walking because they only fall halfway and are just waiting to fall the rest of the way onto someone. Besides that, there are logs lying around that would be better cut up into firewood than left to rot.
So, now I’m checked out on my chainsaw. I cut six or eight or ten logs into convenient stove-sized chunks. Four of those logs were in the way of a path I want to use to get to the raspberries and blackberries. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go farther around the lot and cut up some more logs that are in the way or could be firewood before they rot. This time of year, deer hunting season, you don’t want to be walking around the woods on a Saturday, but there’s no hunting on Sundays.
As a bonus, working with a chainsaw is macho enough that I felt fine finishing knitting that herringbone stitch scarf. That was just over a month from yarn purchase (at the Fryeburg Fair on October 7) to finished object. OK, so I still have to weave in the ends, but the knitting is done.