Trees and tractors

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As we are getting ready to move to Ak, my "TO DO" list is long and daunting. Our friend Eric was on leave this week and helped us for 2 days. He says I am a slave driver, but we got a lot done! Eric and his family have helped us with many of the things we have here, barn building, house remodeling, plumbing, tree cutting, log splitting, probably some roofing, the list goes on. He helped us Monday with landscaping, we pulled out an old creeping evergreen in the back patio landscape bed that was dead long ago and he and Tad trimmed back a flowering tree next to that bed.

Then we carried all the brush and branches to the burn pit, and Eric and Tad cut down/cut up a tree. Eric cut it down and then helped Tad use the chainsaw to cut some branches. Eric has a saw that goes on the end of his weed eater, its like a tiny chainsaw. It is a wonderful tool that I think I need, oh wait I need ALL of my tools again!

Many low branches were cut, as I couldnt brush hog under the trees with low-hanging branches. Eric said that we could move all of the old dead trees (they were the parts that were too large for us to cut with our small chain saw and split with our tiny log splitter) to one big neat pile. We did this with the tractor, Eric (sometimes with the help of the children) attached them to the bucket with rachet straps and then I followed his directions on when to raise/lower/tilt the bucket, back up/go forward etc. He is a good ground guide. There were only 2 times that I covered up my ears. For me, covering my ears signifies fear or worry. I hate the sound of things breaking, cars crashing, loud people, I have always covered my ears even when what I fear isnt a noise. I did fear tipping over, because I mean-the tractor DID go up on one side but as Eric explained, it wasnt going to tip over. The tree would right it when the tree hit the ground, because it was wider than the tractor. Which is reasonable.

I still covered my ears the next time it happened. One log was so heavy, we couldnt lift it so I had to drag it backwards, and then turn hard right when Eric said and deposited the heavier tree in the pile of other trees. Then Eric flipped it over. Alone. Which made the tractor feel a LITTLE bad about her abilities!

Nathalie is always bummed that I wont let her use a chainsaw, not even the tiny chainsaw on the weed-eater, and she cannot drive the tractor. But people, honestly, she cannot drive a barbie car without hitting at least 2 trees. She did find plenty of things to do though, she manned the fire after getting the hose, helped with limb pickup and got to help attach trees to the tractor. Oh and ride on the brush-hog. No, the PTO was not engaged. That would be irresponsible parenting.

Wednesday will be shown in another blog post, Eric helped us (he and the kids did the work) finish most of the drywalling in one bathroom, and all of it in the other. Tomorrow I am off to lowes to get the tools and supplies that I need to finish the bathrooms and paint in the rest of the house. I have a good landscape post as well! I was given a quote of $2300 to do half of the landscaping that we needed done, so I spent $75 so far, and MANY man hours and am about 3/4 done with all of the landscaping. It will cost around $200 total so thats better than $4600.

Thats all in updates. I missed a lot, blogging has fallen by the way-side with the move. Am sorry for that!