Showers

A daring move was made between this week of days of muggy warmth and days of rain. While we were in one of those gap-days of no rain but some expected in the late afternoon/evening, the pole truck was ordered.

In anticipation, Mike had been sprinkling rock along the dirt road in those pockets that held sludgy muck. With the bulldozer, he scraped off the top layer of gooey mud from the edge of our front landing because the pole truck would have to drive through this area to get to the back landing and the deck of poles. With the bucket tractor, he scooped  the piles of bark and small broken wood pieces generated from Marilyn’s marathon firewood splitting to sprinkle over the top of the remaining mud to give a little more traction and so the mud did not lodge in between the dual-tires on the long truck.

Our logger, Dennis Weller, drove in with his red self-loader log truck first and dropped off his trailer leaving only the front end and loader portion of his rig. He then backed into the landing and positioned himself right next to the deck of long poles.

The green pole truck with the extra long trailer came next. He slowly backed through the cattle fence, up the incline and stopped next to Dennis and the loader. This feat was interesting to watch, both drivers were using radio communication with each inch as the truck maneuvered into place. The trucks had to be in proper placement in order for the self-loader to reach the deck and the truck bed. The trucks had to be close enough to load without either one of them in danger of getting bumped by a log as it would swing through the air.

Dennis sits in a little chair above and between the cab of his truck and the strong boom arm of the loader.

He extends the arm out to pluck a single log off the pile, then swings one end of the log over his own truck and places it tenderly onto the bed of the pole truck with the front of the log the correct distance from its cab. Then Dennis returns to the deck to pick up the back end of the log to do the same. Every time he picks up a log, his red truck sways against the extended stabilizer arms he has sunk into the dirt on both sides of the loader. The green truck sways each time either the front of a new log is set on the trailer and when the back end of a log is set. If it were a Disney movie, it would be like musical trucks dancing a choreographed sequence.

With the truck loaded and the poles bound with  cables, the truck takes off back across the field, through the close landing and down to the river crossing.

Once across the river, he then has to drive through yet another field and up to the logging gate. We flagged him onto the county road with a pilot car that follows behind him to the mill to alert motorists of the long length of the load. It is with a sigh of relief that we have at least one of the loads of poles out.