Fire Wood

A few years ago we put a wood burning stove in our house. It definitely cuts down on our heating expense. For the most part it has been worth every effort of "designing", installing, wood chopping, starting fires-ONLY THE INTENTIONAL ONES!, and dealing with the mess of wood chips. On Saturday Ron went up with Lane and Blair to get our years supply of fire wood. He borrowed a 25 foot dump truck to get the job done. He left at 7:00 and said he'd be back around 4 or 5. Well, I know Ronald. He's usually at least an hour longer than he expects. These were the "delays" of the day:

1. The forest ranger came and hunted them down and spent an hour reading them the rules and regulations of cutting down fire wood. There were a dozen or so calls made to him that morning because people were taking semi's to get their wood. (Ron admits the guy was nice too them, he just had to follow through on the complaints.)

2. One of the rules was that the logs couldn't be any longer than 8 feet-they were planning on doing 12 foot logs.

3. When Lane goes to get wood he usually gets the big fur trees that you can't even put your arms around them. Therefore, they only needed to get about 5 trees to fill the two dump trucks and the trailer. This time they got the "normal" trees so they had to cut done TONS!

4. Blair attempted to cut off his knee cap. Don't worry everyone. He is just fine. Melissa (his wife) made him sit out for about an hour. Turns out it bled more than it was worth. His pants are shredded, but as for is knee...just looks like he got in a fight with a kitty cat!

5. The forest ranger came back to double check that they were following the rules because he was STILL getting calls about those semi-trucks! Oops...they only filled one dump truck legally. I guess if they are longer than eight feet its considered commercial. They got away with it, but had to make notches in the loads that weren't legal.

They finally got to our house at 9:30. Blair and Melissa still had a 45 minutes drive to home. They hurried and ate dinner and took off for home. Since it was dark and so late we waited to dump our load after church on Sunday. It was almost a catastrophe!



THE LOAD


Here she goes!


Can you see the problem that almost became the catastrophe? -oh and yes, it was MY fault for not telling him sooner! (He was just mad I was laughing at him!)


The Solution: Dustin pulled the power line out of the way using a tow strap!