23 June 2013

While Chree was off getting more Gifford’s at the Middlebury Hannaford, I put the cut off live wires from Kate’s circuit breakers 17 & 27 into a weather-tight electrical box, covered with the pressure treated wood box made earlier, and buried so that the top of box is just at the earth’s surface.  Then I made a little bridge to fill the gap between the wooden walkway and the deck where the dock shack used to be.  Then we cut up and hauled away the last bit of the former stairway, supervised again by the resident garter snake.  After lunch I changed out the backhoe and front bucket for the three point log skidding hitch and pallet forks.  While Chree was bringing the tractor down to the waterfront, I cut off an 8” spruce that I needed to drop where the dock shack used to be in order to miss a 4” maple that we wanted to keep.  As the spruce went down it grabbed the maple anyway, which I didn’t see happening as I was admiring the precision with which I had aimed the spruce.  The maple knocked me to the ground just in time for the butt end of the spruce to hit me in the chest. Ouch!  By the time Chree arrived I was back upright, if a tad the worse for wear.  Fifteen minutes later, after I had limbed, bucked, and hooked up the trees for skidding, I realized that I was no longer wearing my glasses.  We looked high and low and couldn’t find them, so hauled everything away in advance of an approaching thunderstorm.  After all was secured for rain, I went back down the hill to continue searching.  Finally found the glasses when I stepped on them.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that we couldn’t find them because they had been driven into the ground when the tractor backed up over them.  Fortunately, some adroit use of needle nose pliers, brute strength, and a little duct tape soon had them back to wearable.  After that, Chree made me lie in bed and drink a concoction of quinine water, lime juice, and distilled juniper berries to ease the pain.  She said I was acting like someone with a head injury…