Day 555 - A Lot of Work in 2 Directions

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many fully hydraulic options, go to timberking.com. Good morning everybody. Yesterday we had a uh family day. We went to Dismal Canyon in northern Alabama. What did you think of Dismal Canyon? >> Fun. >> Fun. >> Fun. I guess like it's like the little places and that was really fun. >> It's a lot of fun. Dismal Canyon is uh it it's a canyon, rock formation canyon in Alabama. Um it northern Alabama is a lot of rock, a lot of hills. You know, it's the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. And somewhere out in the middle of nowhere is this big wonderful canyon. Um and it's if I'm not mistaken, the story goes it's Dismals is a type of I think it's a worm. Don't quote me on this. It's on their website. Uh, but it glows at night and they only glow for a a short period of time every single year. Well, you can go down in this canyon and then they all start glowing and it's it's kind of like a a wonder, you know, a very interesting thing to see. Anyway, we didn't do that. We went during the daytime. It was my fourth time going, her Tyler K's first time going, Jaime's second time going. And it's really cool. It's it's it's something that you don't see around here. massive massive uh rocks and boulders and and rock formations and such. Like at the at the bottom of this canyon, you look up and these rocks are like probably four stories high and you have to crawl or climb or squeeze in between a couple spots and you can kind of explore a little bit here and there. I was a little bummed that uh they had a lot of it roped off or not roped off but uh blocked off with wood railing that they made uh for uh habitat preservation and rehabilitation. Apparently uh people have gotten a little too crazy with eroding stuff away and you know >> graffiti with knives on trees and stuff like that. That's all unfortunate. Uh so we didn't get to explore the entire area. Some of it was shut off uh from my previous visits. Uh but it was a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. Still definitely worth the trip out there. For us, it's like an hour and a half drive and it was I think it's $20 for an adult, $15 for a kid. And it's a about a mile long hike on the one side of it. Then you cross the creek at the bottom cuz it starts at a waterfall and there's several different waterfalls. So you stay to the right, cross the creek at the end, then you backtrack on the right as well. and you see completely different stuff on the other side. And it it's a lot of fun. Um I'm not doing my explanation here is not doing it justice, but it was a lot of fun to to uh take a break and and uh get out of here for just a little bit and not break the bank. Your your new seesaw. Are you balancing on the beams? >> Yeah. So these are um five 8ft beams. 8 inch to 10 inch in diameter was the objective. These are going in here in a few minutes. Gentleman's coming to pick these up. I sold them on Facebook Marketplace. You know, of all the stuff that I have listed for Facebook Marketplace, just random stuff here and there, these beams seem to get the most interest. And it's the easiest easiest thing for me to do. Sell them for 50 bucks a beam, you know. Um yeah, easy peasy. Today, I think we're going to be working out here a little bit. I'm not sure which route we want to go. Uh we have the option of creating another one of these log raised beds. Uh or what I think we're probably going to be doing is tackling this pine tree line. These are all small pine trees. Um they're nothing special. They're way too dense. Just leaving them there is is not what we want to do. Um, I don't want these pines here because uh they're covering up some beautiful hardwoods behind them. This is like a 10 or 15 foot deep thick section of pines that blocks our view of beautiful hardwoods and blocks our view into the forest. We really like over here where we can see into the forest. [Music] Heat. Heat. Hey, [Music] heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] So, a lot of the big pieces are going first and way thicker than I thought it would be. I had to switch over to the larger chainsaw for some of these bigger ones. Uh once we get past, let's see, that's a decent sized one. Uh there's a decent huge one back in there. Once we get into all this front area, this huge cluster right here, it's all small stuff. So the top handle chainsaw will be fine and um go pretty quick. This larger stuff and also like I didn't expect the vegetation to be that high inside there. It's been a little while apparently since I walked through this area. Uh but making some pretty good progress so far. [Applause] [Music] This stuff is annoyingly dense and I just want it gone. I I don't care. I just want it gone. You know what I'm saying? I keep hanging trees on top of other trees cuz they're so darn tight and they're not that big. I just, you know, I can move them around and knock them down um for the most part. But jeez, it's just so annoying. So, I think I'm going to switch gears and use the tractor to just grab every bit of this and pile it up on our root balls. Those root balls I thought we were done with. No, we're still piling crap on top of them to get rid of those root balls. Uh, they'll eventually go. Um, Tyler K wanted to keep the poles out of most of this so she could build a little cabin. And that sounds super amazing for a 7-year-old to say that, but this is this stuff's just too annoying. We'll we'll get some stuff off the sawmill if she wants to build a cabin. This is just downright annoying, and I want it gone because right on the other side of there is my beautiful hardwoods. There's a couple hardwoods in here that I'm not cutting down. Uh some smaller diameter stuff that I'm actually leaving because um it's ash and there's a maple in there somewhere that I saw. Anyway, I'm taking all these pines. I'm not caring about any of the materials. Burning it. Get rid of these root balls and move on. Heat [Applause] up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] [Music] Mildly productive day today. I wish I could keep going, but it's 3:00 in the afternoon and I've not edited yet today. So, got to get on the computer and edit. And uh yeah, right about hereish. Let's see. That's the stump I took down. I took that tree down. I guess it was way off into here is where I started clearing back this way. And of course, the fire pile is, you see how long that is? huge huge fire pile again. So hopefully we're hopefully we're getting rid of these root balls just just a little bit at a time. H darn root balls. This stuff we wanted to take out all these pines right here. Uh so we can look into the forest. The pines don't do anything for us. They're not they're just inviting pests, you know, these beetles and whatnot. So, we have a beautiful wall of hardwoods, and I want to look at this beautiful wall of hardwoods for the fall colors and whatnot. Also, wouldn't mind getting a little bit more space over here for the garden and whatnot. So, uh clearing this is a win-win. We're not losing anything. And burning it all is I mean, I don't know. I I keep going back and forth on on man, that's that's kind of a waste of resources. On the other hand, it's like, how much stuff do you save? I mean, you spend so much time trying to save stuff and we have an insane surplus on this property. I mean, we uh we can't keep up with the natural regrowth. It's just it's just bonkers here, right? So, part of me is like, I should keep trying to save as much as I can. And of course, the other part of me that won today, won the battle today says, "No, move on. You've got other work to do, buddy." Uh, speaking of other work to do, there's a lot of stumps that I'm leaving in the ground that I have to come back with a stump grinder and get um, cut that one down quite a bit as well. And I only want to leave any established hardwoods. So, like that, that's a sweet gum. That's going to stay right here. But the pines go another 20 or so feet back. And then there's a cluster of three sweet gums right there. We'll leave that. We'll leave anything that's established and hardwood. All the pines have to go. You can see already we've got beetles in this little area, too. So, it's not um it's not the end of the world taking these out. I I thought these were a lot less in in diameter, a lot smaller in diameter than what they are, but just about everything up here is too big for the mulchure, and it's just the right size to be annoying for chainsaw cutting. Obviously not big enough for the sawmill, but the tops, every bit of this is intertwined. So, it's like I'm I'm fighting trying to get them to fall away from each other. And um it it just uh it is what it is. This is more timeconuming than what I thought. Also, we've got a lot of poison ivy uh creeping in all the way through this stuff. So, I had to stop a little while ago before I got on the tractor and washed up my arms real good. Um, don't want poison ivy again. Yeah, I didn't realize how much damage we've already got going on with with beetles and whatnot. A couple of these smaller trees in there. I walked in there a little bit. A couple of them have uh some rings of sawdust around them. So, yep. This little itty bitty stand, even the small stand has has beetles in it. But, like I said, once we get rid of the pines, we'll have a nice, beautiful view of our hardwoods. Right on the inside of this, right over there is a couple monster oaks, red oaks that are just gorgeous. And of course, we've got natural regrowth of sweet gum coming in through here on this other pine stand or this other area of the big pines that are going to come down eventually. Anyway, so the the majority of the hardwood regrowth that we have naturally is sweet gum. And mixed in between the sweet gum, we have some hickories and uh red maples primarily on on this northern side. But over here, this is all natural regrowth of hardwoods. And it's it's uh very few sweet gums. Actually, when you once you get into here, it's a lot of oaks. Uh some maples, but oaks and hickories seem to be the dominant tree inside here. Other than Chinese privets, got some of those. But anyway, Mississippi was once a grassland savannah. This area was once all farmland. So, if we can get sun poking through the canopy a little bit more than what it is to get a lot of this these grasses to come back and uh get rid of as many of the privets as we can, get rid of as many as of the pines as we can, then we're going to have an, you know, an explosion of wildlife over here. Everywhere that we've cleared out and the grasses have come back, we see a lot more wildlife and and that's great. I take the four-wheeler through the trails and a couple of spots where I've um cleaned up already. You see a lot of rabbits. Every time you come up there, there's some rabbits. We've got the trail cam going going. We see uh turkey. We see raccoons. We see possum. We see coyotes, unfortunately. We see uh foxes. See all kinds of stuff. We see a bunch of deer. And every now and then, we find a new species of deer. This deer is an older deer. It has seen its better day. Um, I don't know where it was born, but it's concrete. Why do we have a concrete statue of a deer just laying off in the woods? I mean, this is off the beaten path. But nevertheless, poor Rudolph. Broken ear. We'll get this taken care of. Bunch of trash right there. There's a big burm right here. I'm not exactly sure why, but there's a big mound of dirt right here and more privets. Anyway, uh all this behind me, like I said, is going to get cleared out. And I'm further away from the clearing than the back stop of the shooting range, which is right there. So, we're about to reclaim a lot of basically wasted land. Oh, there's one of the big oaks right here. Yeah, that's a beautiful tree. I want to be able to look at it more often than not. And then some other bigger oaks back there. Oaks, oaks, oaks, oaks, oaks. And I like oaks because oaks bring deer. That being said, how much has our natural deer population declined on this property just because these guys are here running through the woods leaving their scent and barking constantly and all the stuff that dogs do, chasing away stuff. Wonder how much that plays it. Jeez, look at them. It's just grass, dude. They eat grass 24/7. I thought it was just when they start when they put the camera on, but no, these these guys graze in grass 24/7. And uh they don't throw up, so it's not like they got an upset stomach or anything. They um they just like grass. [Music] [Music] A lot of clean up to do right here. The wall of trees was at these uh posts right here. That's where the wall of trees was. Wall of pines. And got it all done. All down rather. Now, day one was only like a couple hours and I cut as well as took all that material and stacked it. So, our burn pile is huge. Plenty enough material to uh dry out a little more and uh finish burning up those stumps. And bonus, Jamie got me to get rid of one of my favorite shirts that's just a little a little too holy. I ripped the ripped the hole right at the belly button. So, that one's done. So, a big win for her. She hates my holy shirts, and I don't blame her. Anyway, a whole wall of hardwoods. Took down all the pines, went back in there, and grabbed a couple huge pines over there as well. Uh, grabbed that one over there. The cluster of three, one of the clusters of three sweet gums that had to go cuz I got some pines hung up in it. And that's fine. But I'm going to try and get a couple different angles. I know I have some before video on the drone. I'll have to shoot some after once I figure out what their before was so that way we can match it. Um, but let me come over here. So, previously this to the right was a wall of pines and it's opened it up quite a bit. Now, I've got a lot of stump grinding to do. A lot of stump grinding to do, but totally worth it. Totally worth it. Especially when you get back here and the shop area just completely opens up to another view, another dynamic. Oh, it's going to be so good. Another reason for clearing this is this is where Jamie Oh, dog's taking a crap. That's fun. This is where Jamie wants to uh put the goats. Jamie has it set that we're getting goats, and I am totally on board with that. Chickens first, but this will be where the goats go. Plan A 1.0. Uh, that leaves at least 15 different changes, iterations before we actually do it. I am pooped. I'm soaked with sweat. And it is uh it's time for shower number two for today, but I got it done. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] All right, plan B for today. My tra my trailer, it's kind of sort of blocked in. I got a bunch of stuff around it. So, I've got to use the tractor and grapple to pick up the front of the trailer, move it around, get it hooked up to the truck because um I found uh two free oak logs on the side of the road. Well, in someone's front yard that has a sign on it that says free. And I haven't measured it, but each one of these logs looks to be about say 20 22 inches in diameter, 20 25 ft long. Pretty darn straight. Uh, so if I cut them up in well 10footers or whatever, cut the logs in half, that gives me four logs that my tractor should be able to put up on the sawmill. And I do believe they're white oak. They look like they're white oak anyway. So, um, rather than doing the finishing up that pine job over there, taking all those and processing all that stuff the best we can, I have to load up the tractor and figure out how to get both the tractor and the logs back home. I think I can drive the truck, I'm sorry, the tractor in front of the truck home while Jamie drives the truck, but it's about eight or nine miles and my tractor's slow on the road. So, I'm not entirely sure if we'll do that, but probably will. All right, I've got to get moving. Heat. Heat. I do need a chainsaw. saw the uh Pro Yamas. I need to make a video on these. I really do. It's been longer than 6 months. These are great saws. Uh they're cheap. They're great saws, but that's only got a 20-in bar on it, and I don't have enough time to swap out to for a 24. So, I'm grabbing this one, my squaret rancher 460 24in bar just because of the length of the bar. Need bar and chain oil. and need fuel. Okay. Was that good? Did we do it good? >> Yeah. >> Okay. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. So, that's a nice that's a nice stack right there. I thought they were both white oak, but it's apparent that these are red oak. It's going to be a long ride home. Get this unloaded and then we're coming back for more. We made it back home. I don't know how many miles or minutes that was. I'll have to look at the time stamp on the camera to uh see how long that took, but wasn't too bad. I love how this space is turning out where the walnut trees are. Every time we drive through here, see so many birds. On our way out, uh, we saw a red cardinal come out from over there. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. The logs that I just got, I thought they were white oak until I cut into them. They're red oak. Not that big of a deal, but I was preferring white oak. Beggars can't be choosers, right? It's free lumber. Uh, so four 8 1/2t long red oak logs. And I didn't take a measurement, but my 24-in bar just poked through the other side. So, they're about 20 21 in in diameter, something like that. Was really happy to get those up on some logs and out of the way. Those logs up on some logs and out of the way, because these are just a huge pain in the butt for this driveway area. And I got to do something with these. Soon, right? You just say soon and you can't be wrong because it's in the future. loaded up for round two. Uh the rest of the stuff is not super exciting. There's some smaller diameter ash that might be good enough to go on the sawmill. Maybe a few smaller diameter, straighter sections of the uh red oak to go up on the sawmill. But a lot of what I'm going to go get is some good firewood for the smoker because like I said uh last time I purchased lumber or not lumber, firewood. This is hickory firewood and it's my smoker. Uh, last time I purchased that, I said I didn't want to buy anymore. Well, I've got an abundance of oaks and whatnot here on the property, but none of them are down and I don't want to cut down a nice healthy oak when just a few miles away is a whole pile of already cut up oak. All I have to do is haul it back. So, uh, we're get we're getting a lot of stuff here. Lumber and firewood for the smoker. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Whole gallon of pancake batter. It's got the bubbles and everything. Heat. Heat. [Music] Ah. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] What are you doing, Gracie? Hey, Gracie. [Music] Come on. [Music] [Laughter] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] These trees didn't look like they were down for very long when I got them. Uh, but apparently they were down for just a little bit at the very least. Gracie, your butt's in the way. Gracie. Gracie, your butt's in the way. Gracie, come over here, girl. Over here. Up. Okay, now your tail's in the way. All right, so this now your head's in the way. Do you want to fetch a cookie? Do you want a cookie? Go get a cookie. Oh, cookie broke in half. All right. So, this log apparently has been down longer than I thought. The sapwood all the way around is spalted. So, I've never seen spalted red oak, but there you go. You give me that cookie. Go get it, Gracie. Gracie, get bring it here. Nlly boy, bring it here, Nollie boy. No. Too many calories in the cookie. [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Yeah, [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] [Music] Just got anchor seal on all eight of the ends of those four red oak logs. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those. Red oak is not uh not too popular around here. I may save those red oak logs for when I redo the flooring on my trailer here. My trailer, I've been beating it up lately. Finally got some anchor seal on these hickory logs. And I want to move these sooner rather than later to be honest with you. I had to cut this cookie off the end just so I had a nice flat face. Uh it was all messed up. And uh speaking of messed up, we do have some cracks in there. I should have sealed it a long time ago, but to be honest with you, my my ignorance on this situation got me. I I'm not used to putting anchor seal on the first time I've had to do it. So, it's just a new routine. You know what I'm saying? Uh but I got to get these cut. And then the second load yesterday on the tractor or on the trailer was uh a bunch of firewood. Now all this stuff is I mean it was definitely worth getting. I was hoping that some of this would be a little bit more saw log size. These two pieces of ash there's a I think there might be another piece of ash in there somewhere. But this ash I could probably get a maybe I could get a 6x6 out of that. They're both sawed off on an angle, so it looks kind of weird. Maybe I can get a 6x6 out of that. I don't know. It's not perfectly straight, but it's not too big either. This one's wonky up and down. So, I don't know what I'll do with this. The rest of it is oak firewood, and I wanted to go ahead and get it. Actually, this is This looks like a piece of hickory. Let's see. I don't know. The majority of it's oak. That one right there looks like hickory. Um, but I want to cut up all of that oak for firewood right here. This is my smoker firewood stash. We got two full bins of hickory, a quarter bin of hickory, and another quarter bin of hickory on the other side over there. So, I'm going to put this quarter bin consolidate over by the smoker and then start filling this one up with oak. And uh that way we can keep some keep some inventory going uh for firewood for the smoker. Oh, there's another ash log over there. Uh because I like smoking meats. You know what I'm saying? And that one actually down there on the bottom. That one's another ash. And oh, there's a lot more ash in here than I thought. Ash, ash, ash. Another ash over there. All right. So, uh, anyway, this is not a priority priority. This can kind of sit for a while. I don't even have a log splitter. I mean, I've got three axes, two moles and an axe. So, I am the wood spplitter. I'm in no rush to get this off of the trailer. What I am in a rush for is to use the rest of this gorgeous, beautiful, beautiful day taking care of all that pine stuff over there. So, the mulchure has to come off the trail, the tractor, and the wood chipper is going on. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. I think that was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I think I'm done with this chipper. For real done. I have put so many shear pins in the PTO shaft on this machine and I don't know why it keeps breaking them no matter what I do. This thing calls for a grade five shear pin. Grade five pins, the correct size and everything only last 5, 10, 15 minutes at the most. So, I put a grade eight bolt in there and it broke. And I put a grade eight bolt in there and it broke. And I put a grade I went through four grade eight bolts. Um, and it it just keeps breaking them. And like I said, grade five won't last hardly any time at all. I have no idea what the problem is. Uh, the bearings feel good. Um, I can't feel any wiggle front to back. I can't feel much resistance when I spin it when the uh, PTO shaft is not um, when the P pin is not in the shaft. I can spin it freely and it doesn't feel like there's e excessive resistance. And of course, there's a B belt system over here to turn the hydraulic infeed roller. So, there's still tension on the whole U main axis right there from the belt. So, it's not like a true test of the bearings, but bearings are greased. There's my grease gun right there. And this is a 6- in diameter chipper, and it keeps breaking on pine. This is not I mean, that's not that big, right? That's not That's not that big. And it's it's pine. It's not oak. It's not hickory. It's not hard maple. It's not oage orange. It's pine. Why is pine causing this thing to break? Now, I just sharpened the blades the time before I used it today. Uh so, I mean, I've got actually this is the third time I've used it since sharpening the blade. So, the blades are pretty darn sharp still. I don't have that much time on it. I don't know why it's breaking shear pin bolts constantly, but it's this is uh it's it's frustrating and it's probably a me thing. It really is. This thing's got all kinds of raving reviews online and people love it and it's x amount of years going fantastic. Uh not for me. I I don't know. But this is it's frustrating. You get a pile like this and you're like, "Yeah, wonderful. Awesome." Bam. Again, it stops. So, we were out here, I don't know, maybe an hour, hour and a half, and uh the bolt that's in it now, well, it's on the ground somewhere. Uh that was the third bolt I put in it today. Or the third bolt that was in it today broke twice on us. So, I'm done. Moving on. Um with this all this material over here, plan A was to just burn it. Plan B was like, nah, I don't want to burn it. Maybe I should use it for the wood chipper. Now, plan C is I'm going to burn it. I'm just done. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you just throw your hands up in there and say, "I'm done. Hot shower, warm supper, or maybe a warm shower and hot supper." That cures a lot of stuff. What a beautiful day though. What a beautiful day. you know, this this uh area over here, this is the parallel line to the clearing right over there to right here. So, all this we've reclaimed over here going going into the hardwood side, it gives the it gives the shop a completely different dynamic and look when you come to this side and look up there. It just it's nice. It's nice. I am living the dream. I'm living my dream, that's for sure. You're not in my dream right now, but I'm living my dream. Tomorrow will be a better day. I'm not sure what we're doing tomorrow. We got to make another list of priorities and then rearrange that list based upon priority. Oh man, I got a pile. Dang. See, I was I was going to chip all this stuff right here and I forgot about that. [Applause] Good night.