It's SPRING!!!!

Officially!!! I have trees with green leaves on them,

daffodils I didn't know I had growing (forgot to take a picture of them, oops), and a whole mess of trees cut down and some cut up.

I have found out that a lot of the trees growing around the house are thorny locust. Good for burning, not so good to keep me from being scratched up by the blasted thorns on the things. But there is a LOT of the stuff around the homestead acre so there's going to be a lot of it going into the woodpile. I also found what I was told was once a "goat pen," but it's not much of a pen. Rusty stock fencing, very rusty t-posts, and of all things, the gate and one section of fence are made of old bedsprings with the coverings off. Well, at least it'll make for some good scrap.

The Merlot is starting to come apart inside. A lot of junk is getting hauled out and dumped into the burn pit and torched along with the brushy trimmings off the trees I'm cutting down that aren't worth anything as far as firewood, so that's getting cleared up to be able to tear apart the darn thing. The next problem is to start taking the outer siding off and scrapping it. Thank goodness I've got the tin snips, because the big parts have to be cut down to fit into the trailer to be hauled off to the scrap yard for a bit of extra cash.

Work's kept me busy, but not too busy, as it's getting to be warm weather slowdown and less hours. I don't like the shorter checks, but as long as I get at least 30 hours a week, I can make it through without a major problem. What I do like is the extra time I have to spend doing things here, so I can get a lot more done. Like all those frigging soda cans that just got dumped off the deck and which have slowly been getting buried in the ground as the earth shifts due to the local freeze/thaw cycle. I've had to dig out a few with fingertips to be able to toss them into the scrap trashcan by the stairs.

I do need to get the rest of that wood cut up from in where I want to put the midden heap, but I didn't quite get all the trees I cut down that are laying there all cut up today because the battery on my little chainsaw ran out of juice. I have a sadry over that ... I was in the middle of cutting up a small tree trunk when it ran out of juice. But I can't gripe too much because I'd been out there for the better part of three hours cutting stuff up and chucking it into the woodpile and burn pit before it lost its oomph. So a LOT of stuff got cut up.

I love this little thing. No vibration, no excessive noise, it shuts off as soon as I let off the trigger, and it cuts up a lot of stuff a lot faster than the hand tools. Mind, I do love hand tools, and they have their uses, but for speed, power tools have their place, too. And since I'm the only one doing things now, I need speed. So what if all I can cut up really is smallish stuff. I kid you not, that chainsaw allowed me to cut up about two days worth of small logs in three hours. It's a lot more than I used to be able to do with the hand saw. Wheee!!!!

So since it's spring and I don't want to waste a lot of time that can be spent outside getting stuff done, I'm  outta here. See you next time!

A different view of the "goat pen" area where I cut down a bunch of thorny locust yesterday. Lots more trash to clear up came to ligt, but it sure looks lot better and different than it did.

This is where the midden heap is going to go, next to the easement. It's also right next to the driveway, and the rocks were already there. I've still got a few trees that were growing there to cut up for firewood and brush to burn, but it came along quite well yesterday.