Levitation

Cutting firewood is hard work but when you can float the wood over to the truck it becomes much easier. We went up into Moonlight Valley today to get a load. As you can see there are a lot of cut trees laying on the ground right next to the road but unfortunately most of it is white fir and not a desirable species for firewood. If you look closely though, there are some pieces of douglas fir and also some yellow pine, both of which I will take when I am looking for softwood. Today was a softwood day so we got a pretty good load again. Tomorrow it will be back to oak and a lot closer to home. It took us a little over an hour to drive down from Moonlight Valley and I really don't like traveling that far to get wood. Hey, we live in the woods so I'm getting spoiled... ok? Oh, and levitation is just one of my many wood cutting skills.

Wood cutting

Well, we went out yesterday and got our first load of wood. On this side of the Plumas we can cut oak so we got a full load of it since there is so much up in the moonlight fire area that was killed by the fire. Most of it is buck skinned so it's not black and sooty and some of it still has some bark on it like the stuff I'm cutting here. We ended up with a pretty good load, I'm guessing about ½ a chord or a little more but it was a hot day and we didn't bring enough water so I was pretty dry when we called it quits for the day.

The place we are going is not too far from our house, maybe a 20 minute drive, and it used to be a pretty place before the fire but now the under growth is coming back and it's pretty brushy and there are a lot of burned trees still standing so it's not very picturesque or shady. Moonlight Creek runs right next to the road we are on though and when I went over to it I could see some trout in there and it's a pretty creek in a big burned area. Still, there are lots of dead oaks so we will go back in there again today and get another load.

A married man

Well, when we were in Idaho we decided to go ahead and get married since we had 2 pastor friends there and we never seemed to be able to find the time to do it. We were supposed to be there to get the house ready to put on the market and getting married slowed down the process a little but in the end we got it all done. Our friends gave us a "country" wedding, and we all had a great time in the process. Sonny, on the left in that picture was the gracious host and we had it at his house out in potato country. He was one of our pastors. Eric, on the right side was the other pastor and all 4 of those guys had some part in the ceremony. Brad next to Eric played guitar and had a song for us that the lord led him to play and John, next to Sonny led us in communion. You couldn't ask for a better group of people to give us a wonderful memory that will always be with us.

So now we are back in Greenville, married FINALLY, and thinking about getting ready for winter. We still have 5 chords of wood to get in and other things that need to be done before the cold weather starts. Or maybe I should say colder weather starts.

Early winter

It rained pretty good last night and this morning it looks like a beautiful fall scene. Makes me want to go out and burn some piles like I used to do when I was working for the Forest Service. But it's still August according to the calendar and we still have almost a month left until fall officially arrives. This type of weather makes me also think of fishing at Eagle lake which I'll get to do this year, but when the weather changes so fast like it has done the last few days, you have to wonder. Climate change? You bet. Global warming, I think not. Ice age? Maybe. Still.... ya gotta love it!

Mt. Jura

This afternoon Karen and I drove up to Mt. Jura and much to my surprise, the road went all the way to the top. We can see Mt. Jura across the meadow from our house as you can see in the first picture that was taken from our deck, but I had no idea there was a road all the way to the top. It was a pleasant drive and not very far from home which makes me even more happy I live here now.

In the bottom picture we are on the top looking back toward our house which is on the far side of the meadow. I just love living here and having the opportunity to jump in the Jeep and be out in the woods in a matter of minutes.

Metal Detecting

Well, this morning I decided to break out my metal detector and look around our new digs. Of course I started finding the usual junk, and I mean that literally but pretty soon I found an interesting thing. It was an old axe head. It's pretty rusty and I think it's not too old but old enough to make it an interesting find. So now I'm out ranging around away from the house and I see a fruit on the ground and when I pick it up I see it's a pear. Unknown to both Karen and I, we have a nice pear tree and it has some fruit on it but not too much. So we start looking at the rest of the trees and shrubs and notice the berries and yet another apple tree. The berry bush I finally identified as Black Hawthorn, which is edible and is also used as an herbal treatment for heart conditions. You can make jam and wine out of the berries but they have some large seeds so some straining might be required and I think I'll stick with the berries that are easier to process. If I change my mind though, we certainly have plenty on our property.

So apparently we are coming to the end of a warm stretch of weather so I guess we need to head back to Idaho to finish up the business we still have there. It's nice and warm today but by Sunday we are supposed to be much cooler, to the tune of 30° less than a day or 2 ago. Ya gotta love that good old global warming, I keep hoping we will see some of it soon. Maybe it's in Idaho...

A berry good day

Yesterday we headed down the canyon to the Caribou road to do a little berry picking. The blackberries are coming along nicely but next week they will be even better since we found quite a few that weren't ripe yet. If we were going to be here I would go back down there and get some more for sure but we will be heading back to Idaho Falls by then. Needless to say we picked plenty to make a few pies and next year I want to get enough to make some wine.

Picking blackberries is a prickly affair and I had to wade into the patches to get to the good ones. I didn't see any poison oak but I know it grows down there and I hope I didn't stumble into any as I was picking. I was watching out for it so I don't think I got around any.

After picking and getting pricked we drove back up the Caribou road around Butt Lake and back to Greenville. It was a nice day, not very warm for August but then this year has been colder than normal all summer. Good old global warming... where is it?