Which, fair enough to say, but I’m not relying entirely on my shoulders and back for indoor rock climbing. No, I’ve progressed to trying to utilize my legs more and keeping a looser grip on the holds so that I don’t immediately fry my firearms and grip strength mere seconds after mounting the walls. Do I still try to brute force it on occasion? Yes — of course, I’m not that well versed in climbing culture and etiquette so I do make stupid mistakes all the time. Like having a death grip. Pulling only with my arms. Forgetting to shift my weight over a planted foot to maintain position in a controlled manner. Not reapplying chalk mid climb. All rookie/noob mistakes, I’ll freely admit it. Doesn’t mean I’m not having fun though!
It’s Saturday. We’re off to go climbing shortly. And now that I look at things more closely I will need to run the lawn mower over the front and back yards today. Going to work up an appetite for lunch!
Being more active is great. But not seeing any weight loss because of it sort of sucks. But I’ll stick with it to see if I can get any movement on the scales, in relation to my belt, and how my clothes fit. I think I need more than eight hours over two weeks of swinging an axe for 60-90 minutes each morning after a farm walk, and climbing two days a week to see any results. Going back to lifting weights would help but that’s another expense, and more time to be found in an increasingly dense schedule*.
The third mound over here looking a little taste. (Fig 1.)Where I left off after another 90 minutes of splitting today. (Fig 2.)
Before you know it I’m going to need to take a few test swings in mound three of Wood Pile One. I’m sort of afraid either way. One, if it splits that’s a good amount of thick and fairly wide bits to have to break down. Two, it hurts my hands, wrists, arms, elbows, shoulders and back taking a couple good natured full force wacks at it only to bounce off and feel as though I have shattered many bones, sinews, and tendons in my upper body. Honestly I hope it splits, but I’m not afraid to move down to the barn. I can take a day off from splitting to go pull weeds and run my gas trimmer to make it a nicer spot to work in. Full sun exposure in October and November aren’t a bad thing, especially if the mornings start at or near zero degrees Celsius. A little bit of blue skies sunshine can go a long way towards making a cold chore slightly less horrendous.
You know I have to get my beauty shots in whilst I work. I think they work better without me in them. It really sets the scene! (Fig 3.)
Today makes five hours this week, plus the three and a half from last week means I’ve just about completed one whole work day down on the farm, spread out over six or so days. I don’t move terribly fast, but the job gets done. Good thing I’m doing this all for free then eh? Hard to complain about my pace of play when I’m just helping out. Putting a body and a dog on the property so it doesn’t appear vacant. We do our walk about looking at stuff, then I smack the shit out of some cut up logs. Win-win in my book. Both the dog & I get exercise, an ungodly amount of wood gets split after years of it just sitting there. Plus should the world end we’ve got firewood to keep us warm for the first winter at least. Plus we can cook on it too. I think that works out marvelously.
I stay occupied with an easy yet monotonous task at hand, thereby focusing my efforts on productive things, instead of shopping, eating, or room scrolling on this phone. I sleep better at night because of the physical activity. The dog is less of a pain because he has time to explore and wander at his leisure. The farm hands are happy because they don’t have to swing an axe to split all this wood, not only that but they get firewood to warm up the house with or to do their own maple syrup operation.
My one gripe would be that the mosquitoes are still bad, and the wasps in the walnut tree are coming closer to me as the season progresses. I liked being out of the full sun when the days temps still climb above twenty degrees celsius. I sweat so damn much. I wore a headband today and whilst I looked a fool, it stopped my eyes from stinging. So that’s going to continue for a while anyway. I could ad a wrist band too for wiping sweat off my cheeks etc… stop me lifting my shirt to do so. Fat belly and all.
The Rstwing 4lbs mallet has come in very handy. I like that it was gorged as one piece. No neck wobble whatsoever. Short, compact and packs a wallop! The nine inch long wedge has proven itself useful. Moreso than the Fiskars wedge which is maybe four and a half to five inches long I’d guess? I’ve buried that one in a mushy logs more than once and had to struggle to retrieve it. Works well in companion to the much larger Rstwing wedge, and not instead of it. A great side kick, but not the whole show.
At some point I’m going to have to stack some of this wood in those green wire bins. I’m just waiting to hear if any are heading north to get stacked at the cottage and returned to the farm empty. That will alter my plan of attack, otherwise I need to find a wall or some trees I can stack this stuff between to stop it from rotting on the ground over the winter. That’s late October, early November Me’s problem. I’ll not either on it now. I will let the ideas percolate in my mind though while I work.
I could do with running the front end loader to go dump all the waste wood and bark piles that have built up since last year. No point keeping those around to kill the grass. That can go into the treeline to breakdown there. Give some little animals shelter and a place to hide. The bugs inside could feed birds and rodents and such. It’ll do the forest good to have the carbon and wood fibers go rot there. Maybe get some mushrooms, moss or lichen to sprout from out of it all.
I’ve turned in some paid work, now I’ll read and have breakfast. Welcome to Friday. Hope you have a lovely weekend.
It won the Pulitzer so it should be an interesting read. (Fig 1.)
I’ve just started to read Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, and it’s an interesting book. All commas and no periods, and every single new paragraph begins with AND. It’s about world war one, trench warfare and some five undesirable allied soldiers are sent on a task to silence someone in no man’s land that is shrieking themselves to death. It’s a bit verbose, loquacious, and alliterative in places. I’m most definitely going to need both my thesaurus and dictionary to pick up what’s being put down. I thought I had a strong vocabulary, but it turns out, yeah — not so much.
I’m nearing 100 pages in after my first evening with it, and so far I am enjoying it. The main character Cyril Bagger is a con man at heart, so I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or if it’s some kind of von he’s putting on after luring us in. Seems like a neat twist by the author if that’s the case. Bravo if so!
Two hundred and eighty some odd pages of a run on sentence seems like a real task to write. Thankfully it’s interesting, and the increased use of AND kind of disappears on the pages. Although I could see why somebody more refined than myself might be bothered by it. If I tried it it would be a lame gimmick, but in steadier hands it seems to work out just fine.
Welcome to Friday morning. Where would you like your book to take you today?
The spring time bucked rounds are willing to come apart! ( Fig 1.)
I made my way through the last two remaining pieces in my neatly stacked rows and then did a test chop on my spring time rounds and wouldn’t you know it! POW! They split without too much fuss. I’m pretty excited about that. That means I have wood to run through next week that’s all gathered in a single pile near to a bin, and free from obstacles. I can park my vehicle nearby and nothing much about my schedule needs to change or be altered. I might take a few swings at the mound directly beside where I’m digging in now to see if the years old wood will split too. I don’t hold out a tonne of hope that it will come apart, but I won’t know for certain until I try.
The beginnings of another new pile of split wood. (Fig 2.)
Unfortunately for all of you this means that I get to continue blathering on about my hours of wood splitting chicanery and shenanigans. My gloves are soaked through with sweat and I’ve started to wear through several of the finger tips. More importantly though the gloves have saved my hands from calluses and nasty stinging blisters. That’s what matters most. Not that I pick up dirty logs and shit with them, but the protection from the axe handles giving me torn blisters and shredded palms. I did buy a replacement pair of gloves but I like my current pair because they still do the task I wear them for. Plus the finger tip hole means I can operate my phone in a pinch without having to take them off! How handy is that!?!
So now it’s Thursday, and I’ve done another hours worth of splitting bringing this week up to 3.5 hours, and the total tally to 7 hours. If we escape rain tomorrow I might as well tack on another hour just for funsies. I did hear that I may receive a new larger report project next week, so my time spent splitting wood would be greatly diminished until that paid work gets finished. Gotta play ball when you’re finally gifted a pass right to the glove side.
I might try to start running the planer today too. It’s loud, dusty and not all that pleasant of a job. If I’m not mistaken I should probably wait for a cooler day so the dust won’t adhere to me, making me a powdered donut looking idiot in my own driveway. I likely need the whole day to run my five boards over and over again, and again. So I feel it’s too late in the day to start now. I’ll walk the dog, come straight home and then hop to it. I hate getting all set up and then having to stop mid way through. It gets easy to forget what you were making plans for once you interrupt the flow. Plus I’m tired from wood splitting this week.
I should keep both activities separated so that it becomes my primary focus for the day and not just in that moment. I have the luxury to do this so of you may not. I don’t want to be distracted or tired & sore before I start working around the table saw, planer and other life altering power tools. Same goes for the chainsaws and farm equipment. Keep your focus directed on the task at hand lest you lose a finger, hand or entire limb, or god forbid your life. Keep your mind on your money and your money on your mind.
Did I mention that it’s Thursday now? We’ve gone beyond the midway point of September all ready! That’s crazy talk. Next month gets even busier with the Fair, Thanksgiving, my wife’s break week, local voting, and Halloween too. Boy oh boy October is going to fly by at a break neck speed! Prepare yourselves accordingly.
I’ve had to rip my boards down to 11.25 inches instead of 11.5 inches because the board I was using as an 8ft long reference was kicking out along the bottom towards one end causing a taper to appear. At least I’m just off by one quarter of an inch, so not a massive set back.
Once I trim the legs I will likely be closer to 3/8ths lower than the true 34 inch height I had been planning on. But I’m waiting to do all of the planing to finished thickness before I start doing cross cuts again.
At least they all match! Albeit one quarter inch smaller than I had hoped for. (Fig 1.)
With any luck and some on paper planning I can try to complete this front hall storage unit without too many more screw ups, hiccups or mistakes. We shall see.
Pile of bark and split bits is now larger than the stack I’m pulling from. (Fig 1.)
Wish I had more to report today other than wood splitting updates, but here we are, and here I am. So let’s crack on shall we? Right, so my neatly stacked rows are just about done, I have two (2) lonely rounds left to split. These have gotten significantly larger, heavier, denser and more difficult to split. Not a major problem, just means I’m a little slower moving and not rushing through. Takes a more surgical strike to pull the bits apart and discard that which won’t rend itself to bits under my axe. I’m cool with that. I’m not wasting an hour to split a knot in two anymore. My ego suffered those battles last year and I’m more resigned to accepting defeat at the hands of a too tough tree crotch, not, or limb joint. I’ll live to fight another day. I’m up to 2.5 hours of splitting for this week, and six in total so far now that school is back in session.
I had planned on testing out some bits from other mounds in Wood Pile one, but the humidity and general toughness of these last thick boys was too much for me today to really care. My enthusiasm and curiosity took a back seat to all the sweating, fatigue and discomfort. My right elbow has announced its presence so that will now be a limiting factor as well. I’ll have to keep an eye on how it feels before I try to get all lumber jack crazed at the farm.
The humidity was real nasty this morning. I knew it would get ugly when it was 19°C at 7:00 am, when it’s been only 8-9°C more recently. Last night’s rain and all the morning dew only added to the moisture content of the air. I sweat through my shirt, socks and pants after just one hour of axe swinging today.
Was happy to see that my plan worked yesterday, and those damn red ants high tailed it out of the log I set up for chopping this morning. Though with the sunshine and humidity came a glut of mosquitoes buzzing around and feasting upon my exposed arms and neck, cheeks, forehead etc… not my favourite by any stretch of the imagination. Need to keep my concentration on the path of the downward swinging axe, not blowing on buzzing insects mere moments before impact, or near miss if I flinch. That could lead to catastrophe. Don’t need that. No thank you.
Second last piece from my neatly stacked rows just sitting and waiting on little ole me to come along and serenade it to pieces. (Fig 2.)
The closer we get to autumn the more vigilant I’ll need to be about ticks and spiders hanging out in amongst the scattered rounds. Ugh. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
Oh, I have all my Cherry wood boards glued up. I need to trim them down to their final width of 11.5 inches. Then I can scrape off the glue and begin planing them all down. That will take me a few days at least. I’ve gotten tired from the axe slinging, so I’ll alternate days between wood shop and the farm splitting exercises. Last thing I want to do is be tired around my table saw or power tools. Work smart not hard!
Making short work of the first group of stacked logs that I bucked late last year. (Fig 1.)
Last week I did a combined three and one half hours worth of wood splitting, and today I can add another ninety mi utes to the tally sheet. If tomorrow’s weather holds up I think I might finish the entire block of five rows I had neatly stacked over the winter from late last fall. Once those tough nuts get cracked I can try my hand at the logs I split this spring, or move slightly further across the wood pile and try my hand at some much larger rounds left at the farm a year or two ago that felt like walking on concrete. It wasn’t ready to give up the ghost just yet. I’m hoping a full additional fall, winter, spring, summer and now fall might convince it to split with the efforts and tools I have on hand. If not it will get designated as a hydraulic wood splitting pile, and I’ll not bother with it any more. I can only do so much with wood that refuses to come apart.
So possibly by October I’ll move down behind the barn to do some of what I cut up all ready, and some of the outer most portions of the gigantic heap of wood back there. I will need to bring my weed eater to go through there. The weeds are nine feet tall, and by October should be full to the brim with ticks. If I eliminate the tall grasses and weeds, I might be able to limit my exposure while splitting. I just this morning stumbled across more red ants, right at 10:30 am, so I figured that was a great time to quit for the day. I thought I could go two full hours, but why push it, and risk getting double digit red any bites. It’s only Tuesday! I might fight through it on a Wed or Thursday because I’m caught in the middle of the week. On Friday i’d say “to hell with it!” And leave it for Monday. I’m a hell of an employee!
My stack of split wood is steadily growing and an even pace. The mound of bark is getting rather large now too. A little unwieldy if you ask me. (Fig 2.)
I have quite a bit of wood to keep me occupied this year, and enough to do next year too (if no new stuff arrives that is). I am slowly clearing up the ground and reclaiming the various lots where the wood piles are. It’s slow work when my elbow, paid day job schedule, kids, and weather add obstacles into the mix. The constant drizzle of this morning was moving more into actual rain territory, so that hastened my retreat today as well. Not just the red ants. Swinging an 8lbs axe with a wet handle and slick gloves is an accident waiting to happen. I try to avoid those.
I am getting back into the habit of bringing a low calorie beverage, and a protein heavy snack for myself. Honestly, I’d love for these axe swinging sessions to help me lose some weight. Not like 30-40 pounds or anything crazy, but if I can get down below 200 lbs, I’d be pleased as punch. I work up a pretty good sweat when I get moving. Strengthen my back, shoulders, arms and grip would be a pretty good bonus. Make climbing a little easier. Speaking of which since the extracurriculars aren’t all up and running yet we can head to the gym tonight, try some bouldering, or hit up the auto belay section. I’m excited!
Fun fact, since we’ve had the Hydro-One people here to fix the neutral wire on the roof connection my downstairs dehumidifier hasn’t been clunking and clanking with random restarts and shut offs. Much quieter, and running far more smoothly. At least right now anyway. My APC battery voltage regulator only seems to roll from 114-116V on the outlet, instead of randomly dropping to 60V or spiking a little above 400V. That’s pretty awesome. Thanks guys!
Turns out the neutral wire direct from the outside was fried pretty good. (Fig 1.)
Wife called up Hydro One and they turned up several hours later on a Sunday afternoon, got us sorted out real quick. I don’t think they were here much more than an hour. Pulled the meter and checked our hook ups front to back. Our connection on the roof was corroded and blackened from the heat build up due to excess resistance. Was why our voltages would jump from a regular 115-120V up to 413 on Saturday morning. It was a nasty jolt that nearly tried my wife’s sleep apnea unit. That was the last straw. Weird flashing lights and constant rolling brown outs localized to our home were one thing, but a fried piece of life saving equipment was a whole new level.
Good thing is it seems to be sorted out now. They did tell us we could look into replacing the stack & meter since ours are original to the house.
Corroded and old meter and stack bundle. (Fig 2.)
They also suggested upping our service and panel to a 200 amp service. The new wire to the road would be about $600.00 to Hydro One, and likely about $2,000.00 of parts and labour for the electrician. So not a crazy expense on the panel portion. Nobody wanted to venture a guess about the stack and meter replacement though, so I might need to start saving up for that within the next year or two. A 200 amp service would run the house and leave room to add extra things over time, like a deep freezer, new refrigerator, and an updated and larger air conditioner. Would probably make some of the busier circuits able to be split so as to not overload them at all.
Boom truck behind the trees. (Fig 3.)
Glad they could come out on such short notice and get us fixed up. I’m just at the garage waiting on an oil change. I guess I’ll buzz down to the farm for a good walk once the van is all wrapped up.
We did in fact go climbing yesterday morning (which was a lot of fun) and we both got through six climbs each. Going only a few times this summer means that nearly all of the routes have changed and we had a variety to choose from. If you go too often I find things can feel a little stale, but on the flip side if you struggle with one course you have the ability to come back to it repeatedly to try and better yourself and your technique against it. So take what I say with that in mind. We’ll need to get back into fighting chapel if we want to do the 59’s or the 510’s. My grip strength and my core are both floundering right now. Needs work, is what I’m getting at. Anyway, we went climbing in the morning with the expectation that we’d go to Wonderland in the afternoon. My thinking was go climb, have a leisurely lunch with the inlaws where the kids can swim, then head to the park at three and ride what we can, have a meal and several beverages and enjoy our Saturday. Well it seems everybody else felt the same way. I also forgot Oktoberfest was on, do that brought in a load of people with it.
The park was full of team events (think U14 soccer clubs and hockey teams). The place was far busier than I was expecting. We stayed for four hours and got on two rides. It was much warmer in Vaughan than at home, and the wasps were ever present. Food service was slow, and all ride lines were over an hour wait. We certainly got our steps in walking around and standing up in the queues. By six o’clock our ankles and feet were done and we had to find a proper seat and beverages. We were accosted by more wasps and then decided to make our way to the exits and go home to rest.
Though the sky was grey it was 28°C and humid. (Fig 1.)
I do hope if we go on a Thursday evening it’ll be both cooler in temperature and less busy. One can hope anyway!
It’s currently after midnight and we’ve had power outages three days in a row because I’ve had to reset my clock from flashing on three consecutive mornings. Every light flickers, flashes, and goes too bright every single night. It’s been going on for months. I’m trying to narrow down whether one of our appliances is doing it, or if the town’s grid on our side is bad. I’m no electrician so I’m mostly guessing in the strobe lights here. Could be a loose neutral wire on the panel (according to google), and it’s definitely not the dehumidifier which isn’t capable of adding power back into the house. So at some point soon I need to get an electrician in here to look over the panel and tell me if our wiring is faulty,or if this portion of the town’s grid is dog shit. I bought a gas generator, and a solar panel/battery unit because we lose power so often in Stouffville. I’m hoping it’s external (and not a fire hazard) but I also hope it’s fixable without a major expense. I imagine neither will be true. Wheeeee!
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