This Week in the Woods
Happy Independence Day! We are looking forward to a good ole back yard celebration this evening with sparklers, s’mores, bonfire, and friends. The silver lining to the recent 1000000 inches of rain is that the fire danger is a little lower for the festivities. This is hands down my favorite holiday of the year. I feel so much pride to be an American and incredibly grateful to be able to work in the career of my choosing, provide for my family, and choose my own adventure.
I have to remind myself a lot that I freely choose this difficult career. Covid-19 is putting a significant damper on everyone’s ability to be self reliant. So many businesses are suffering, including the logging industry. We get asked a lot in conversation how it is affecting our industry. In very basic terms, the new housing starts plummeted so large scale consumption of lumber froze which backs up our log yards. Products are moving at a snails pace and we are constantly being put on strict quotas. Some weeks I open my e-mail to see “your quota this week is zero” Well that’s not too helpful, but we will march on. Loggers are no strangers to struggle and we certainly don’t give up easy, so we will keep farming the forest.
So what have we been doing? Well, we are on a beautiful woodlot in Minot that really needed that excessively dry weather. We were plugging right along over there enjoying the dust when the reverse clutch pack in the transmission failed. Our incredible CAT service guy came to attempt to rescue it, but it was more than can be fixed on the landing. She needed surgery….. again. Off she went on the low bed to Brewer. I was anticipating a $30,000 repair and braced myself for the terrible news. By the grace of God it will be about a third of that, but we certainly didn’t need that bill or the two weeks of down time. And just as nature would have it, we get the thing back and the skies unleashed. Oh the joys. We are trying to get the wood out over there that was on the ground already and then we will have to move out. The lot is mostly pine logs and it’s very wet. The combination isn’t a winner right now, so we adjust our plan and return when the time is right.
Thankfully, I have been able to fall back on some mulching. I’ve done a few projects with that and it’s working out quite well. We have taken down a sea of dead pines, scaled back over growth on long driveways, cleared out vegetation for a view on a future building site, and now I am grinding around Mechanic Falls baseball fields.
I decided to take the day off with the family and celebrate the day. It will all be there tomorrow.