Home on the Hill

We got up early on Saturday to start the weekends wood cutting operation. The ice fog left crystals over all the trees and the morning sunrise was inspiring. This was a pic taken with the "little" camera. J0-Ann snapped some beauty's with her camera: We managed t0 bring in six cords of wood over the two weekend days. One chainsaw, a 10 foot trailer and a pickaroon . We had a leisurely start and a chain saw breakdown. Maybe a total of eight hours. Two of that driving. Fortunately I managed to quickly repair the chainsaw after a trip to the shop. We have way more than enough wood for our house heating needs but I am contemplating using wood heat in a green house and chicken shed. I am still in wonder over the bounty that is going to be left to rot or burned as slash in our forests. The trees we're cutting here are too twisted or cracked for the mills to accept. They will be burnt if we don't pack it away. We're much more accepting than a mill. A bu...

That's the latest buzz word around here. Seems some forward thinkers have been pondering what to do with the Bug Killed Pine which covers 80% of the provinces mature pine forests. Why not grind it all up and turn it into BioFuel. I am not sure how I feel about that. I think it just lets us prop up the Auto industry which needs to be put out of its misery. In this day and age we can only use so many buggy whips. On the other hand that just may be a poor analogy. Maybe we need more. I love the techno-babble and politics that go with the crisis. Government propaganda at selected road side sites proclaim how the bug kill is a "natural occurring phenomenon", that couldn't have been prevented. Of course planting huge tracts of the same species, because that's what industry wanted, and not burning the outbreak when it first occurred in Tweedsmuir park - because we didn't want to upset the tree huggers. Let's not talk about that. We don't even burn wo...