Hello Everyone!
Warmer weather, The rat trash task, Felling small trees, A wood drying rack idea & Plenty of rain!
This morning I awoke a few minutes after dawn and decided to go ahead and get out of bed after laying there trying to fall back asleep for the better part of thirty minutes. Which of course would have been nice and all but after sleeping so much the day before and having fallen asleep early last night... I would probably still be laying there trying to fall back asleep to no avail. Instead I let the dogs out, set the espresso to brewing and opened the text editor to begin working on this entry.
Since I took the day off yesterday I do not have much to write about but I will plod along here to the best of my abilities and see what emerges. The weather is once again on a warming trend and this week it is going to get up in the eighties (Fahrenheit) and stay well above freezing at night. Sometime around dark today it is supposed to rain but otherwise it is supposed to be a nice day even if it is going to be a cloudy one.
Lately it seems like every time that I write out any plans for the day in these entries something occurs that changes those plans which is fine and all but whoa I could go without the extra writing. It always seems what happens is like when I set out to just run the dogs through the vermin areas and wound up spending nearly all day shuffling stuff around in the shop tent afterwards.
This morning I have been debating on what to do with my day and while I want to 'keep it loose' there are some things that really need doing before the rain arrives later in the day. Mainly I need to deal with all that rat nest stuff that is in the wagon so that when it rains the wagon bed does not fill with water and make everything in it a soupy mess.
Although I was initially considering burning all that stuff upon further consideration I think that I am just going to stuff it into some empty dogfood bags (to be hauled to the dump later) and deal with it that way instead. It will be a gross task but there are just so many bits of plastic mixed in with all that rodent nest stuff that picking it all out before burning the other material would be an even grosser task.
Aside from all that jazz, I also still have to dispose of the remnants of the wooden spool and of course retrieve those long bolts from it as well. Since the spool is full of what looks like a combination of small nails and staples I should probably burn it in a barrel. Alternatively I can make a new fire-pit where it would be okay to burn that stuff. Later I could use my neodymium magnet to get all the metal from the ground but in the not-so-grand scheme of things the burn barrel seems like the easier (or at least more contained) route.
I am not really looking forward to dealing with any of that rodent fouled stuff but one way or another I will at least get the wagon freed up today and can always deal with the wooden spool later. It really would not hurt anything for all that wooden junk to get rained on a good bit because whoa it is pretty foul smelling and I am sure that if I were to burn it all as it is the smoke would be pretty nasty to say the least.
It is getting on in the day and the wind seems to have died down so maybe I can get an early start on doing the routine chores and seeing what else that I can get done outdoors while the nice weather lasts. I doubt that I am going to go 'full tilt' on doing stuff each day just yet but I have gradually gotten back into having more productive days than what I was having a few months ago.
Although my sleep schedule is not yet 'perfect' it is at least acceptable and consistent enough that it has been keeping me on a rather even keel as the cold winter days creep by and I continue easing back into longer and longer work days. Heck, even on my most 'non-productive' days I keep getting outdoors, hiking around and getting a lot of minor tasks achieved... so in short I want to continue that trend and not get stuck cooped up indoors unless I really need a break.
Alright, the sun has recently set and it has been raining for the last several hours and not looking like it will let up anytime soon. It is not pouring rain, nor storming but it is rather steady and just seems to have settled into the area for the time being. Even if the overall weather is dreary thankfully it is still quite warm and the wind is not gusting like it has been so often lately.
On a different note, this afternoon I got all the junk in the wagon sorted out and bagged in an old dog food bag so that the wagon would not fill with water when it rained. The task itself was pretty gross but I was able to roll down the upper portion of the bag, set it in a tote and easily shovel all the old nest material into it without kicking up too much dust.
As the bag filled I unrolled it and it held its form quite well once I began really stuffing it with debris. All of that was nowhere near as gross as I thought that it would be given how small the bag opening was and how much of the material that I needed to stuff into it. While I was at it I also got all the trash that was in the spool picked up and spread the parts of the spool out to get washed off by the rain.
Later in the afternoon, I finally got the battery operated chainsaw out and started felling some of the smaller trees below the shelter site. Although some of them were just standing dead trucks I think that I got five of them in total knocked down and bucked to one degree or another. The tops of all of them (minus the already dead ones) were a bear to get pulled free from all the vines in the canopy.
It was quite the mess to buck them where they hung in the vines (when I could not pull them free) but in the end the end I got them all. Instead of hauling the brush away I just stacked it in small piles wherever I was cutting at so that I could make the best use of my time with the saw. Mainly I wanted to fell as many of the 'easy' trees as I could before it rained and not get over-involved managing the debris that I was creating.
Since I already had the saw in that area I also cut that really long pole (left from the initial site clearing) in half so that I can finally move it out of the walking path. While I was over there I also realized that I should build another of those triangle shaped log stacks like I did for the compost but this one for logs/poles. The exact placement is still foggy to me but I think that it would be perfect in a sunny spot somewhere near where I have already been stacking the logs/poles.
What I am thinking is to do like I did on the other triangle by installing some posts and then building the triangle around them in a way that 'locks' it all together. If I use thick enough logs in the construction I think that I could then lay all the longer material across the top (to dry it out) and weave smaller branches through the horizontal slats basically making the entire structure a drying rack for wood. Ideally it would need a roof or covering over it but all in all its not a bad idea and a good use of stuff already laying around in that area.
Okay, I am going to wrap this entry up and get on with the editing. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
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