This Week in the Woods
I spent much of my Sunday playing Mario with the kids and I am not ashamed to admit it. (Well I did go walk a woodlot, so I guess I didn’t completely take the day off) My kids think I am a Mario warrior, capable of conquering the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if I was as good at life as I am Mario? The great thing about kids is they think I am great at both, so I’m going to let them think that for now. haha They are all finally feeling better after almost a month of sickness going round and round between the 3 of them. My oldest son is getting to the age where he really wants to hang out with Dad all of the time, even if I am doing something boring. Yesterday we loaded up the car with the whole family to go find a woodlot we thought we might be interested in purchasing. The younger two kids fell asleep and Trafton was adamant that he wanted to walk the woods with me. Up until now he hasn’t been too interested in that aspect of what I do so it was fun to walk with him and talk about what I am looking for. We are always on the hunt for woodlots to purchase and manage which proves a bit difficult these days because everyone thinks their land could potentially be developed and are sitting on gold mines, however, whether you’re going to develop into house lots or manage a wood lot, neither are possible if the land costs too much. Finding these properties takes a lot of time searching the internet to find them and then walking endless woodlots. For every one good woodlot, there are many not so good ones.
Bogie Skidder
This week we wrapped up the job we did for the town of Poland. The week started with my father hurting his back and he was a no show for a few days. One of the downsides to being a small operation is there are not many back up plans when someone is out. We have to just make due with what we have. Brandon and I were able to use the track skidder to fix up the skid roads and get the grapple skidder back out there to get the wood up to the landing. Initially, things were looking pretty terrible out there because it has been so warm but we have the tools to fix it up. Chrissy made a video of us using the track skidder, but Brandon was the videographer and he held the camera wrong so pardon the terrible quality… thankfully he is a much better operator of logging equipment than a camera. Let me tell you, that track skidder will do a number on your back. Not sure when I’m gonna recover from that and I’d be happy to not have to get in that thing again for a long time. I have been completely irritated with the weather and thought I should go buy a bogie skidder. A bogie skidder is a 6 wheeled skidder that has forwarder tracks on the rear for flotation when the ground is soft. They perform much better when its muddy than a four wheeled skidder, but to the tune of $235,000 for a half worn out back up skidder, my wife advised me otherwise, for now.
By Wednesday, Chrissy was exhausted from caring for sick kids for the 3rd week and I was over fighting mud. We put in for a mental health day, but the boss denied it, so we kept going.
Some very exciting news is that our big truck is finally put back together and in our hands! That process took nine weeks. I cannot tell you how insanely unacceptable that is. To say I am disappointed in that process is an understatement and I hope to God that we don’t have to do that again. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and we have learned a lot about our resilience in the last few months. So what the heck, onward and upward.
Have a good week