Always On The Back Burner

Just before beginning hay season, Mike declared that we needed to remove all the firewood project paraphernalia out of the barn for a clean area to stack bales and move hay equipment.

Hooray, I thought to myself, moving the Splitter, the cribs, waste/chunk buckets, saws and the like would work to my advantage. I would happily set up an outdoor workspace near the log deck to work more efficiently. The big problem with that would be the main herd of cows that enjoy scuffling around in the fresh wood chips and depositing great globs of manure. When Mike said he wanted to move the cows across the field to eat around the far, far pasture while we worked on the hay I thought my worries were over.

The in-between times while we waited for the grass to dry into hay and when we weren’t fluffing, raking, baling, loading or stacking hay, I was out by the log deck.

My dreams of cleaning up the last of the fir log deck that I had been working on all winter seemed like it was close to happening. I was even able to get the wood blocks split into bundle-able sized pieces and stacked into the half-cord cribs that Mike moves around with the front loader tractor.

Things seemed to be going well until I started having trouble with the compression on my favorite saw and couldn’t get it running easily. Then I could not get it started at all. I have two saws that I use for my firewood project and wasn’t worried at all when I realized that I would have to start using the backup saw rather than my first choice. That was until I found that I had used my backup so much that I could no longer tighten the chain and that a link would have to be taken out (a job that requires the chain to be taken to town to use a special tool that removes links).

So sawing was now out of the picture until I get a saw that is usable. I changed gears and started splitting the hardwood (used for premium bundles) that I had cut last month and stacked up with the plans of getting to it after hay season. With the Super Split right next to the stack, I was able to plow through more than two cord of wood and re-stack the now bundle-able sized pieces so they can dry in the summer breezes.

With the small  hay field finished and Mike wanting to move the cows back across the river to clean up the leftover hay, I planned on fencing my outside work area to keep the herd from scuffling, pooping, messing up my Splitter or toppling my neat wood stack.

Mike used his idea of moving the Splitter and finished cribs inside the barn for now and piling up the wood I had yet to cut around the hardwood to keep it safe from critters since I can’t cut the wood until I have my saws back in working order. By then, the cattle will have been moved once again away from the area and I can work in the outdoor space in peace.

It’s a good thing we always have something on the back burner to keep projects going even though they may not always be the ones we planned on.

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