Special Days

When Bethany, my two oldest cousins and I were younger my grandparents on my mom's side, Grandpa Dave and Grandma Elaine, did this thing where they would take us on a special day(s). Each of us would get a day or a few days and they would take us somewhere he had never been or we just did things we didn't get to do very often. My very first special day was in 2002 and had a special day each year from then on until 2004. It was this year that Grandma and Grandpa decided to do a group special day and take the four oldest cousins to Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, together. At that time there weren't near as many cousins as there is now. It was just Isaiah, Eli, me, and Bethany. We thought this was great because we didn't get to see each other as often as we would have liked. After this special day we decided that every third or fourth year we would do a group special day. Our next group special day was in 2007 when we went to Branson, Missouri. During this trip we decided that we did a bunch of different stuff including spending a day at Silver Dollar City, it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with my cousins, and I suppose my sister. The next year in 2008 we did a guys special day in June. Grandma and Grandpa took Isaiah, Eli, and myself to Minden, Nebraska to Pioneer Village.  Then in July of 2008 we all went to Branson again and didn't do anything similar to the year before. Actually Grandpa had bought a timeshare in '07 and this was the grandkids first time to try it. We went to the Passion Play in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was this year that we believe we set a record for how many buffets you can eat at in a week although I don't remember what the grand total was. It seems like we ate at them for every meal. In 2009 we took one of our longest special days yet. We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That was a long drive. We did a lot of stuff while we were there too. My grandpa has this thing where he makes it so you need a vacation, to recuperate from your vacation. It is incredibly exhausting but tons of fun. While in Tenn. we went to Dollywood which is similar to Silver Dollar City, went to a comedy show, and stopped and played in a stream along the road, which is actually fairly common in Tennessee. They actually have parking areas and steps leading to the streams. In 2010 Isaiah and I graduated from eighth grade and Grandpa Dave took us to the AGCO plant in Hesston, Ks, or for those who don't know what AGCO is. He took us to a plant that makes tons of farm machinery. Isaiah loves farming more than I do for those who are wondering why we went there, we loved every minute of it. We saw how they made balers, planters, swathers, combines, headers, and more. Also in 2010 Bethany and I went to Wisconsin with Grandpa Dave our uncle Josh and younger cousin Gracie. Grandma Elaine wasn't able to go on this trip because she had just started a new job and Isaiah and Eli weren't able to as well. We went to the Wisconsin Dells and since it is the waterpark capital of the world. We went to a water park. We also went on a boat tour of the Upper Dells, which was beautiful and we got to see some really interesting rock formations. On the way home from this trip we stopped in Illinois at the John Deere Pavilion, which I thought was neat, although I don't think Bethany and Gracie thought it was.

2011 was kind of a sad year. We had our last special day. We decided to go back to Wisconsin but this time Isaiah and Eli were able to go. We went over Spring Break and the whole family had been at Grandma and Grandpa's on Sunday to have dinner. Then the four cousins spent the night and when we woke up on Monday morning of spring break, there was eight inches of snow on the ground. It was gone by the time we got to Nebraska though. When we got into Wisconsin, they still had feet of snow on the ground it was awesome. We had intended to go skiing but for some reason they close the ski slopes at the resort the week before spring break. So instead we slid down the slopes on our feet and we also rolled snow balls down them. We would make a big snow ball and then see how much bigger it would get when we rolled it down the hill. Once again during this trip we went to a water/amusement park although this one was inside and it was huge. We had a lot of fun on this special day but because we were getting older and our lives were getting busier we decided this would be our last special day. It was a hard decision to make.

Fall

Firewood season is underway. Blake came out Thursday morning and we split three loads of wood and delivered one of them. We managed to get this all done before 2:30. It was pretty good days/mornings work. Blake bought his splitter and we started out with me running the lever and him handling the wood, because of my collarbone, however not to long into it we switched. Since I know how small I want the wood split and which logs I want to split it is easier if I handle the wood cause Blake doesn't have to ask about every log. I couldn't lift the biggest logs onto the splitter so Blake had to do those and anything that was two big for him to lift we split down with an axe to a size that was handleable. It didn't hurt my collarbone much yesterday but I could definitely tell Friday that I used it a lot, because it is sore again. I think I'm going to try and deliver the other two loads of wood tomorrow afternoon after class.
We are still cutting corn at work I bet we get done by the beginning or middle of next week. We have been cutting fall crops for nearly a month. After we finish corn then we have 70 acres of milo to cut which will only take a couple of days. The other guys have been working a new calf pen so we can start weaning calves here shortly. That is always a fun time of year although it will be really loud around the farm for a week or two. The calves don't like being taken away from their moms and will walk around the pen balling for awhile.

This a picture, which I thought was neat, that I took Saturday night while we were cutting corn at around 9:00.

Cutting Firewood! Can it be considered a hobby.

As many people, who know us or drive by our house, know we cut firewood and lots of it. Before we moved to Riley I don't really remember my dad using a chainsaw much he always owned one but because of where we lived they hadn't really ever been a need to cut firewood. The first time I remember working with firewood was on a mission trip in Canada. We helped many people stack their firewood and there was a lot of it because they get it delivered in dump trucks. The firewood they burn is the scraps that the saw mills throw out. It was also the first time I'd ever used an ax. I hit on the same long for a very long time and only managed to criss-cross the top of it with ax marks. I never got it split. However when we moved to Riley our house only had two forms of heat, a small propane stove in the living room and a fireplace in the dining room to heat the rest of the house. We had to cut wood or we were going to be really cold. For the first couple years of us living in Riley, I didn't enjoy any part of cutting firewood. I wasn't big enough to run a chainsaw, and although I tried to split, the only thing I managed to do was turn logs into toothpicks because of how many times I hit the same log. Dad says he would give me a log and I would work on it the whole time he split the the rest of the truck load. Oh, and let me stop here and say that we don't own a log splitter, at that time everything we cut was split by hand. Even though I didn't find much enjoyment in cutting firewood I did enjoy playing with my ax and cut down many trees with it. I believe the biggest I ever cut down like that was roughly eighteen inches in diameter. For a nine or ten year, that big of tree takes a long time to cut down.
I think cutting firewood became an enjoyment for me around the age of twelve or thirteen. My uncle Justin was selling wood but he didn't have a place to keep it because he lived in town, so he stored it at our house. He would come out to our place in the evenings after work to split wood and I would go out to help. He started showing me how to "read" a log so it is easier to split. For those who don't know how to "read" a log there are things to look for. The rings of tree not only tell the age of a tree they also let a person know how that the grain of that piece of wood is. If they are nearly perfectly round the grain is smooth and the log will split easily. If the rings are round on one side but they bubble out on the other it means there is probably a not or old branch that has been grown around and the log will not split well on that side. Or sometimes a log will have two sets of rings that have their own center starting point. This means that the tree had a crouch or another branch there. When you have these logs they are very hard to split unless you know just what you are doing. After Justin had started pointing these things out to me it became easier for me to see them on my own and I was able to actually split wood. This made firewood cutting more fun because I didn't just have carry and stack, I could do something else. When I turned fourteen, once again cutting firewood became even more fun, I got my farm permit and was able to take my truck when we cut. This meant I got to help haul as well as split. I was also running a chainsaw by this point but not very much yet. I remember when I began running a chainsaw a lot. It started at our house, dad would bring 15-20 foot long logs and then I would cut them up. This gave me practice running a saw, was in a fairly obstacle free area, and was close to the house if something happened. Thankfully nothing did. Once I had cut like that for a while dad let me cut some when we were in the woods and it just grew from there until I was running a saw just like everybody else. Then last year dad just let me go cut as long as a friend was there just in case. The stories from those cutting trips were the subjects of several blog posts last year and you can see the amounts of wood we cut.
Firewood cutting is dangerous and I have been a part of and witnessed some close calls over the years. I think the first I can remember was when I was in seventh grade. Justin had just gotten married that fall and Lenay his wife had come when we went to cut wood, because my dad and uncle often cut together. Dad was getting ready to cut a tree down and had looked around for my little siblings to make sure they were clear, but he hadn't remember Lenay was there. He made the last cut and the tree started falling when everyone noticed Lenay was in the path of its fall. Justin yelled and Lenay crouched over and covered her head. CRASH! The tree hit the ground and Lenay stood up, not hurt. The tree was dead and didn't have any small branches and had two main branches that forked out several feet above the ground. Lenay was standing in the middle, between the two big branches.
The next close call I can remember actually the next two both happened to me in the last couple of years. The first one happened when I was cutting. I had just made a cut and picked up the saw, the saw I was using had this problem where it wouldn't stop the chain from spinning, and I had the saw hanging at my side when I felt something tugging at my coveralls. I looked down and the chain had cut through my coveralls and started on my jeans. It was a little close for comfort. The second was similar however I was actually cutting on a log and my hand slipped jerking the saw up into my boot and taking a notch out of the sole. That again was a little too close.
Even with how dangerous it is and how much work it is. I enjoy cutting firewood and hopefully always will live in house where I can burn wood. Can cutting firewood be considered a hobby or is it a little strange?