Friday, 12/26/14

Clouds returned.  Overcast all day.  Increasingly damp as the day progressed.  Periods of light mist off and on during the afternoon.  Light drizzle during the evening.  Gusty south wind most of the day, but it backed off to moderate during the evening.

South wind is producing higher temperatures as well as increased moisture.  Temperature steadily increased all day, including during the evening.  High for the day was 51°F/10°C at midnight.

Cut, loaded, brought home, unloaded and stacked a small load of firewood.

I often harvest firewood from fallen trees, but I do not think there is any usable firewood in this tree.  I'll leave it for the bugs and fungi.

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Friday, 12/26/14

Log Hoop

With an Arctic blast headed our way, I spent part of the afternoon splitting firewood and restocking our porch log hoop. This afternoon was sunny with a temperature pushing 70°F/21°C. The front started moving through around ten o'clock. Now it's 35°F/2°C and falling @ 1:00 AM. And it's snowing.

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Log Hoop

A Little Snow in the Ozarks

Snow began around four o'clock on Sunday, 1/9/11.  Continued until around midnight.  Accumulation around two inches.  Was a dry, powdery snow.  All in all, with only our couple of inches of snow, we came out of this winter weather event in much better shape than most of the south that's to our east.

One of our wood racks with next winter's wood.

Stump I use for splitting wood.

Shed and walnut tree.

Van

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A Little Snow in the Ozarks

Photo Tips

There is a porch running the full length of our house on the south side. Sunday morning while sitting at the computer, I noticed movement out on the porch. A roadrunner was investigating the porch. The roadrunner is a regular feature around our place. I've seen him several times over the past couple of weeks, but always at distances impossible to photograph with our camera. This shot would only be highly improbable.

The smart thing to do would have been slowly and quietly getting up from the computer and fetching the camera, but of course, that's not what I did. Instead, I yelled for Jo to "Come see". Jo heard but couldn't make out what I said, so she started shouting back wanting to know what I said. All the shouting convinced Bucket there must surely be a visitor outside so she tore off through the house barking loudly. Roused from his nap if front of the stove, Rusty was clueless but assumed he should join in the cacophony. Needless to say, when the riot subsided the roadrunner was long gone -- probably into the next county.

Photo Tip #1: When intending to photograph a roadrunner, "Be Quiet!!!"

Later Sunday, I decided the below freezing temperatures forecast for overnight indicated I should split a few more pieces of firewood. (There's no need to get too far ahead with wood splitting at winter's end.) One of the log sections I split was full of photographic subject otherwise known as ants. I'd only taken a few (not very good) photos when the camera indicated its battery was low. Back inside the house I popped in a fully charged battery pack, but when I returned to the split firewood, I discovered that this photo shoot was over. Most of my subject matter had been eaten.

Photo Tip #2: When photographing insects, do not leave a robin guarding your photographic specimens.

Photo Tips

Baffled -- Not!

You just cannot baffle the squirrels when they can jump straight up and grab the bottom of the log-type feeder. (Photos from Saturday.)


Bits and Pieces over the past few days:

Friday evening and most of the day Saturday it rained. We picked up another 2.25 inches, giving us a total of around five inches of rain for the week. The pond is looking in a lot better shape now. Fortunately, very little precipitation fell after our temperature dropped below freezing Saturday night. No snow, sleet or icing.

We've been battling with a bad telephone connection for several days. Sometimes, no phone. Most of the time, the computer wouldn't stay connected. Every once and a while, things worked fine. I was convince the telephone company had a problem up the line somewhere. I was totally wrong -- again. We have a shorted line in the house.

I really wanted to replace that telephone line Monday, but the dogs said we should go cut more firewood instead. Rusty and Bucket insisted that it was rediculous to be crawling around in the attic on such a bright and sunny day. I removed the shorted line from the system so the other two lines worked and we cut more firewood.

Firewood

Baffled -- Not!

Thursday Sunshine

Our "driveway" bathed in glorious sunshine. In honor of this special event, I decided to cut some more firewood. Jo's main project for the day was fabricating some squirrel guards for our birdfeeders.

Squirrels are always something of a problem, but this year seems especially bad. I reckon that's because the squirrels don't have their normal supply of acorns, honey locust pods, etc. Last spring's late freeze killed the blooms on most of our trees.

The funnel-shaped guards Jo made look kind of tacky, but seem to be doing the job so far. However, engaging in a test of wits against the squirrels makes one feel like Wiley Coyote trying to outsmart the Roadrunner. I would be very surprised if the squirrels don't find a way to circumvent the guards.

After Jo finished with the guards, she and the dogs walked up to where I was working and helped load firewood. Jo was much more help than the dogs were.

Biologists with the Arkansas Department of Game and Fish are saying that deer and wild turkeys are already beginning to alter their feeding habits due to a lack of mast. The animals are spending more time feeding in open field and food plots. However, these biologist also say that there should not be any serious increase in mortality because the deer and turkeys have enough other sources of food -- assuming we don't have a prolonged period of bad winter weather, that is.

Weather: High = 57. Low = 31. Sunny skies with a light north wind.

Thursday Sunshine

A Dog's Life

Bucket assumes a relaxed, though not very lady-like, pose.

Can anyone please tell me how the expression "leading a dog's life" ever came to be associated with hardship and drudgery?

Borrowing a cup of 2-cycle oil

Tuesday morning my neighbor, Jerry Joe, drove down to our place to borrow a can of 2-cycle oil. He and a friend were planning to spend the day cutting firewood, but needed to mix some chainsaw gas and didn't have any oil. Our place is a lot closer than town. However, I'd recently used my last bottle of 2-cycle oil to mix up a can of gas for my chainsaw, so Jerry borrowed that instead.

When Jo and I (and the dogs) took our afternoon walk, Jerry and his friend were still cutting and hauling firewood. I think they were trying to cut enough for Jerry, his friend and Jerry Joe's son. Jerry has a fairly large house that he heats with a wood-burning furnace. To me, those wood-burning furnaces are the worst of both worlds. You have to go to all the effort of cutting firewood, but if the power goes out and the forced air part of the system stops working, you're going to get cold. I'll stick with my Vermont Castings wood stove that heats just fine when one of our ice storms takes down the power lines.

I was glad to see that Jerry had taken down a couple of dead trees that were within falling distance of the power lines that come down to our place. I've been thinking about cutting down those trees for a while now, but just don't trust my tree-felling skills. About the time I get to thinking that I know what I'm doing when it comes to getting a tree to fall where I want it to fall, I'll make a major miscalculation. When I'm cutting in the woods and misjudge where a tree is going to fall -- or, more likely, make my cuts in the wrong place -- it means the tree gets hung up against neighboring trees. When cutting near power lines, the results can be much worse.

Several years ago, I got a chance to see that there is actually quite a bit of slack and give in the power lines. I'd really studied how to fell this particular tree so that it would fall right between two nearby trees. I made my cuts in just the right places and the tree fell to the ground exactly where I wanted it -- well, almost. I'd gotten so involved in keeping the tree from hanging up on its way down, that I'd failed to take note of it's height and how close I was to the power lines. The top of the tree hung up on the power lines long enough for me to skip one heartbeat and then came on down. The power lines whipped up and down violently for what seemed like five minutes, but was actually only several seconds. Jo said the lights down at the house blinked off and on several times, but in the end no damage was done, except that our telephone line ended up wrapped around the bottom power cable. It stayed that way for several years, but caused no problem. A crew from our electric co-op was eventually unwrapped the lines.

About this time last year, a different neighbor cutting firewood on the edge of the co-op's easement had a similar experience. Again, the power lines held, but for and instant the two power cables and the telephone line were all making contact. He popped the fuse for this section of power lines and, despite our surge protector, fried the modem in our computer.

A Dog's Life

Firewood Cut

Believe it or not, I finally got some firewood cut on Monday, and I thought I was going to succumb to heat stroke while doing it. The temperature made it all the way up to 81º here early Monday afternoon. That's WAY TOO HOT for cutting and carrying firewood! Fortunately, a new cool front starting making it through during the middle of the afternoon. I can't say that the temperature suddenly cooled off, but at least clouds moved in and the temp did drop a few degrees.

I filled the log hoop on the porch and got a start on filling one of the racks out in the yard. There's a lot more firewood that needs to be cut, but at least we won't freeze to death in the next couple of weeks.

Firewood Cut

Chainsaw Repaired -- Again

I gave my old Poulan chainsaw all summer to rest, recuperate and heal itself. With freezing temperatures in our forecast, I decided it was time to see if my hands-off approach to chainsaw repair had worked. No such luck. My chainsaw was still plagued with the same affliction with which it ended last winter. It would start and idle, but not rev up enough to do any cutting. I remained convinced that a fuel problem of some sort was the culprit.

Since a through external inspection reveal no cause for the problem, it was time to tear into the carburetor. After removing the cover from the carb “bowl”, I found a small screen that was totally covered with crud. Cleaning that little screen did the trick. My 25-year-old chainsaw is now cutting wood again.

Chainsaw Repaired -- Again

Splitting A Little Firewood

With rain and a little cooler weather in the forecast, I decided to split a little firewood on Wednesday. This was a stubborn piece. I've got one wedge driven in and beginning to drive a second. The round had split fairly easily up until this point, but as it turned out, this piece contained an old, grown-over branch making splitting a little more difficult.

We went all the way until evening before getting a fire going in the wood stove. I kept thinking (hoping?) that the sun was going to break through the clouds and make a fire unnecessary. (As you can see, our firewood supply is getting low, and I still haven't gotten my chainsaw running again.) The sun did peak through several times, but never long enough to do and appreciable warming, leaving us with a windy, damp, mid-sixties day.

Splitting A Little Firewood