We just acquired another cookstove. It is in excellent shape for a stove built in 1905, so much so that we couldn’t let it pass. Like we did with our Sweetheart, it’ll sit unused for a couple of years, and we’ll use that time to give it the bit of TLC it needs.
It’s quite beautiful and has many bells and whistles.
This is unfortunately not an improvement from my last attempt. The design is barely visible due to my poor choice of facing bark. Still, I’m trying to get better at this every year.
We acquired a gas powered log splitter. It’s not something that creeped up on us overtime, we never once considered it. In fact we helped a neighbor use one a while back and it very much turned us off. The work was noisy and repetitive.
Then a monstrous maple tree showed up, and even though I bucked it up in short logs to make maul splitting easier, the amount of work it took to get even a crack in it was just too much. We need wood now, and we occasionally get impossible knotted logs, it would be nice to be able to produce larger quantities of wood faster given our increase use with sugaring, and extended stove season much beyond cold weather for cooking and water. All of a sudden it simply made sense, but the decision was hard and I sincerely hope it won’t affect our family maul swinging tradition much.
After using it once, it is indeed nice to see super tough logs pop open with no effort, but I took no satisfaction in the work and this was reassuring in a way.
A great gift from our neighbors, they had it felled by professionals as it was menacing their house. All I had to to was show up and buck it up, which still took a full day. Several limbs were the same size of the full trees I usually go after. I had to move the main trunk logs with the tractor, splitting them will be a whole other matter.
then I dropped the biggest tree I ever cut. It’s been a good record breaking day, I took down 6 giant pines and several others which were all within striking distance of where we’re getting ready to build a sugar house.
the final boss today: one big fucking Christmas tree
I was apprehensive at first, I had never cut anything this large. Everything went well except on the smaller trees when I was rushing a little more and 2 didn’t go where they were supposed to. All the big ones did, experience is really nice, not that it removes all surprises. A few years ago I would have been shaking approaching anything half this size with a chainsaw.
No more plastic wedges for me
No one was allowed anywhere near the site of the treepocalypse for several hours, the house shook several times. When the carnage was over, Robin got to tame a sea of green to build Fort Awesome.
Chainsaw
I finally hooked up the new stove to the chimney. I wanted to have the room finished, the hearth complete; in reality though, the room is dark and the hearth missing finish masonry work. Still it was cause for great joy to give our second stove, the Alpiner, its first firing. Our first cookstove, the Sweetheart, which covered us for 3½ years will be able to take a break. We won’t have to fire it so hot on the really cold days.
It’s a big deal for us, this represents a lifetime of super nice and free heat, hence the celebration.
The Alpiner is a really nice stove, it has a lot of mass. Chimney draft seems to be perfect, we didn’t have to warm it up and the smoke went right where it was supposed to.
