Gary Navarre on sat 22 may 04
Hay crew,G. in da U.P..
This last couple of weeks I've been puting in a few hours a day into
cleaning up the Cedar swamp where Peter loged out some blow downs before
the swamp thawed. My idea was to take the limbs off the remaining top
trunks, snip any green brush off into bundles and sell it to Teal's to
make Cedar oil, and put up the slash for fuel. The first few days were
slow going until I got into the swing of things. I bought a new pair of
Fiskars 24" bypass loppers that worked just fine on the branches. After
the first few days I started getting 3 or 4 bundles of brush and lots of
sticks, most were cleaned of twigs but some I left with appendages to be
removed later. Eventually all the nubs will be gone so as to not
interfere with stoking. I want to get the brush out as green as possable
so it has the weight, although the dry leaf still has oil and is bundled.
A lot of brushers leave stick on to 40" or more for weight but the buyer
prefers shorter (36") mostly green. That works out great for both of us
because any stick thumb thickness or more I keep.
I've got my hours written somewhere, a carry over from 7 years in an
anodizing factory and ISO 2000 production reports, something like 80 in
three weeks.I haven't figured out the amount of wood in cords or
kelo/lbs. yet but I did get 620 lb of brush which was enough for half a
tank of gas,a can of tobacco and 2 roasting chickens. Nothing like oven
roasted chicken with Morel mushroom stuffing. We've rain days now and I
could use the rest.
The neat thing about working in the woods are visits from 4 foot Pine
snakes. On a smoke break one came up to investigate and I had the K-1000
with me. Should have seen me bouncing round changing film and trying to
get more shots before it made it back to it's home. And the ticks were
just lovely. Kind of feels like vicodine detox all over again only there
really are bugs this time. Once the rain clears I'll start givin er
again. Need lots of wood so I can "bake" lots of pots.
Hope ya'lls firings went ok. Stay in there!
Gary Navarre
Navarre Pottery
Norway, Michigan
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