how we spent our weekend

A month ago in a chilly rain, the first of hundreds of trees to be logged on our property took the plunge.  We went over in the evening after the workers were done for the day.  With one crew falling and another building roads, the area is far too dangerous for two civilians and one curious dog to be during working hours.  Here Jude and Slinkee survey the scene.

The road crew is extending an old logging road into our property.

They’ve done a lot of blasting to free up rocks for the base of it.

The excavator of the road crew at rest.  Our two-year-old neighbour calls it a “big diggie”.

Just behind the big diggie is the bridge it’s building across a large creek.  It has to be durable enough to sustain substantial logging truck traffic, so it should serve us long after the big rigs are gone.

These are the logs I stamped.

Due to their instability, the stacks can only be stamped from the ground.  Not every log has to be or can be stamped, but I tried to get every one I could safely reach.  That involved a golfing swing, a baseball swing and a wood splitting swing, so for an hour plus I did my best Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds and Paul Bunyan.  It takes a mighty whack square on the log end to mark it clearly.  I was wrung out by the effort.  I may have to take a cue from Bonds and start juicing.

Here’s the stamp.

The logs should start rolling out this week.  When a load gets to the dump in a nearby harbour, a worker checks it for our stamp and does any additional stamping needed.  Then the timber is measured and we start getting our mortgage paid off.  There’s a certain sadness in seeing these stately giants go down, but the area will be replanted.  Other than that, it’s been a genuine pleasure working with the corporation buying the wood and the two local companies doing the cutting and road-building.