So, nearly 3 weeks without a post. Why?
We have 3 MacBooks. Chargers and batteries have failed over the past few years. Between them all we now have 1 charger and 1 battery. Sounds bad, but actually it has been working. Cristina and Ben use their iPhones for almost everything, rarely go to laptop, and if they do, it is usually just to move things (pictures, music) to/from the phone. So what's the problem? Cristina has gone to the Philippines for the bi-annual medical mission that her mom runs. She needed/brought the charger. I ordered a cheap charger from Amazon the day she left. Charger shipped from Wang Chung China. Finally arrived. And here we are.
So now time to catch up.
We have been burning a LOT of wood to try to keep the house warm. I'll tell you about the house; my Grandfather built the house in 1977. It is hollow cement blocks on a slab. The walls have no insulation. Between us and the outside are 2 layers of paint and an 8" hollow block. The attic has/had blown in insulation. In the last 30+ years it has compressed to approx. 1" thick, so it's hardly doing any good at all. There is a propane heater in the kitchen as the primary source of heat for the house. It really only heats the kitchen; there is no air mover in the house. It may be 95° in the kitchen, still 40-50° in the bedrooms. Anyway, the house is hard to heat, and propane is expensive lately. So we burn in the fireplace to try to help. It's a fireplace, not a wood-stove, so it is very inefficient. We started the winter with maybe a rick of wood. That went really fast. My Dad's cousin saw what was going on and told us to come get some of his firewood. He had some wood that had been seasoned so long it would begin to rot in another year or 2. We hauled 2 truck loads from his house, and that got us through so far.
He (the cousin) and his nephew, with big hearts and heavy equipment, brought us this:
Flatbed trailer loaded with red-oak logs
second load
my new 20" chainsaw arrived just in time (Poulan Pro, 50cc baby!)
23 logs total. 5 are monsters. I plan to stack in the building on the right. That is the "old" blacksmith shop. Not used for anything now, was halfway falling apart. I need to replace a roof beam and sheet of tin at the front. Siding at the back wall is rotting away.
They also loaned us their homebuilt hydraulic splitter.
Still a lot of work, but so much better than the maul.
Beginning the stack.
Knocked together some wood racks.
We're gonna need a bigger boat shed.
I've cut, split, and stacked 8 logs in 8 days. None of the monsters yet.
