18 April 2018

Preface: at the time we built the house there was a beautiful, very large, hemlock that resided in our front lawn at the corner of the car turnaround area.  Last summer that tree up and died, most likely as a result of its roots having been damaged during house construction.  Very sad!!!!  With help from the 100 foot steel cable and Chree driving the tractor while praying fervently, I dropped that tree in the 10 foot wide space between some other trees and the woodshed.  Miracle of miracles, that felling was done without destroying (or even damaging) the woodshed.  The trunk of the hemlock was cut into six logs, each 9′ 6″ long, with the smallest piece still 9″ in diameter at the small end.  That’s potentially a LOT of board feet of lumber!  Our intent was to, someday, use that lumber in building the barn.  Fast forward to this morning.  Toby Rheaume (logger extraordinaire, who also owns a portable sawmill) showed up first thing, bringing along his extra-large dump trailer.  Without more than normal difficulty, we loaded the hemlock logs into Toby’s trailer using the Kubota’s forklift.  Toby then took the logs away to his place over in Salisbury, where he will saw them into rough cut 2x4’s, i.e., the boards will measure a full 2″ x 4″.  With some minor smoothing in my thickness planer, those 2x4’s will become the barn’s wall studs.  After Toby left, dug out all the remaining stumps at the barn site, except for the monster wrapped around the boulder that will need Jim Ploof’s excavator to dislodge.  FYI: the lake now is mostly thawed and the water temperature (2 feet under the surface) is a brisk 35°F.