I Love Wood


I grew up in Centralia, WA.  When we moved there in the early 1970 my Dad bought a Stihl chainsaw from a shop called Madsen's.  It was a little place in an old gas station.  They had a big reputation with the loggers around that area.  Madsen's actually taught Stihl how to make a high performance saws.  Even though logging is pretty small new compared to the good old day's, Madsen's is still around.  I was cruising around the web and thought I would look them up.  They have a nationwide customer base due to their reputation for service and great saws.  They have a customer photo section that shows some amazing tree falling. 

Big wood  Scroll to the last picture to get a real perspective on the size of the wood!

Madsen's Saw Shop

I am in the market for a mid size saw, I just might have to go see them...

The First Person I Met...
when we moved to Corbett was Woody Davis and his son Clint.  We were doing something something around our new little farm and could hear a Detroit diesel running over yonder.  I thought maybe it was an old skidder.  I kept hearing it so I gathered up the lads and we went walking up the road to see what it was.  We found some guys putting in a 1/4 mile long driveway.  This wasn't a simple flat ground gravel track it was over a hill with a 20 foot fill and cut to make it reasonable to drive.  The diesel engine belonged to a Terex bull dozer.  It was a big dozer between a D8 and D9 in size and large for a two man dirt operation.  We stood and watched awhile.  After just a few minutes they stopped their work and introduced themselves and offered the boys a ride on the big machine.  We were friends from then on.  The Davis had dealings with Kroenig tractor so that was another thing in common.  This link hits very close to home in lots of ways.
 
Giving thanks to the community angel

The Sweetest and Most Heart Wrenching Thing You'll See All Week

Baby Boy

The Farm Vermin Saga Goes On

In the past the racoons have been the bane to our chicken's existence.  Over the past few years we have gradually cleaned out the racoons in the area.  Lately I have found that screaming at them like a crazy person keeps them away for an indefinite period of time.

We always have a couple times a year when we smell skunks checking out the place.  They never stick around to our relief.  This year I have opossums.  Once in a while when I go to feed the animals at night there will be a opossum in the barn.  By the time I can get armed they escape.

The other night an interesting thing happened.  When I close the chickens in the coop for the night I count them.  As can be seen in the pictures below there are always two on the ladder type roost and eight on or in the nesting boxes.  I am wearing a head lamp with a narrow beam so I turn toward the two chickens then the other way for the 8.  When I counted the two then swung around to tally the others something in the back of my mind triggered.  "Wait, something didn't look right with the two chickens."  So I swing the light back around and there is a tail sticking straight out next to the wall right next to the chicken.  There right next to the chicken is a opossum tail.

So I ran out to the wood shed next to the barn and grabbed a small piece of firewood.  When I got back in the coop it was still there.  The chicken next to it didn't look right.  I feared the worst.  I shoved the chicken to the side and it was okay.  I gave the opossum a whack with the stick.  It hit the ground and lay still.  The oldest trick in the opossum play book is to play dead.  I gave him a couple more to the cranium.  He did the running in place like I'm dying.  I carefully carried him to the dead varmint disposal place.  I didn't want the playing dead, that is hopefully really dead opossum to swing around and bite me while carrying it by the tail.

I am hoping that this rid us of another free loading varmint.  A couple nights ago, when I went to feed the animals, there was a opossum in the barn...  Was it really dead or just using the old trick?  I think we're going to have to start using the live animal trap to be sure of the ultimate demise.  Dang chickens.

Frog's for Dinner 

Part of our annual deer hunting adventure is shooting frogs at the pond.  The pond has thousands of small frogs and hundreds of big frogs.  This year little C built up a new toy for the frog slaying.  We were told of a frog stalking trick, stay on the four wheeler.  That is how we got some pictures of the big ones.

We had a great time camping and hunting.  We saw elk, deer and a good size bear.  The bear was going 40 mph about 300 yards away and into the brush.  We saw him for just a quick second.  Later we did get to walk his trail and check out the tracks.

This year little C wanted to do the deer shooting all on his own, on my tag under the mentoring program.  He had several chances but had a hard time connecting.  Hunting is a little more exciting, compared to shooting cans!  As always we learned lots.

 

A Goat's Life - Somebody's Got to do It

This is Gibson, a striking little fellow but the fraidy-cat of the goat herd.  He reminds me of an African antelope.  I'd think he was wanting us to do some shooting from the bench, if I didn't know hit true nature.

A Change to the Reading Area of Interest


For several years my main area of interest for casual reading has been African Safari true stories mainly in the 20th century.  The last few months I have started reading about the United States Special Forces and some other clandestine organizations.  I have read a couple documentary type books by persons involved in the early days of the Afghanistan conflict. 

The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Fought for a New Afghanistan (P.S.) by Eric Blehm  - Really good read

 

The Night Stalkers by Michael J. Durant and Steven Hartov

 - Good author and a good read

Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander by Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo  - Pretty good read

Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda by Sean Naylor

If you are interested in military doings and special operations.  These are some pretty good ones covering recent times.

Pig Farming After Action Report



The week of the fair was a busy fun educational experience.  On Wednesday, I came home from work around lunch time, changed clothes and headed out to load the show pig, Disney.  I explained to everyone that we needed to be patient and it would all work out.  After Disney figured out that we wanted her to get in the trailer, she did everything she could to avoid that trailer.  It has been awhile since I have helped load horses into a trailer so I had to do some thinking to remember the trick for uncooperative critters.  I wanted to be careful so Disney didn't look like she had come through a battle getting to the fair.  I retreived some nylon webbing tied it up front in the trailer and ran it back out the door.  We got her up to the trailer, looped the webbing around her butt and yarded her in.  We gave her a bath in the trailer as it was a clean piece of ground.  Then we threw in some clean straw and hit the road.  It took 45 minutes to load the pig.  I have some ideas for next year.  We had to all change clothes again before we left.

Everyone at the fair was really nice and helpful.  The 4-H people's mentality is that its all for the young people.  Having fun is a big part of it too.  After arriving and getting her unloaded, we let things settle down then headed for the official final wash job.  Disney just puts on the brakes when she doesn't want to do something.  Both front legs are braced up solid and the only way to move her is to push.

Thursday morning start early is "weigh-in."  In April there was a weigh-in and the pigs got their ear tags with a certain number.  This weigh-in for showing required the ear tag number correlate to the previous weigh-in.  The pigs have to weigh between 230 and 280 pounds.  This is so they are competitive against each other.  We watch close to 100 pigs get weighed and it was really hard to predict what one might weigh.  If the pig is outside the weight limits a guy pulls out a pair of wire cutters and clips off the ear tag and you are disqualified from showing...  It is pretty rough on the youth.  So Disney was looking like she would be on the high end of the boundaries.  She maxed out the scale at over 300 pounds.

There were some tears and angry words.  The Mrs. and I felt badly but really didn't know what we could have done differently.  We had searched for a scale about 3 weeks before the fair because we didn't know where we were for weight.  After the weighing we found out that he still would get to show conformation but in a heavy weight class.  Remember this is out first time at all this.  We met some people that had a pig that looked very similar to ours, they are sisters.  She was overweight too.  So it is a family trait.

We learned from some pig farmers that these were just fast growing stock.  The birthdate was right to make weight.  So junior got to show against his pig's sister.  There were only two 4-H pigs in the heavy weight class.

So she got second against her sis.  She did have a bum leg so that didn't help.  Junior had a huge fan club show up to see him show, family and friends came from all over.

On Friday, he was in a showmanship class with 7 others and took 3rd place.  I think that is pretty good for his first time.  He really did look confident.  He had worked with one of the two pigs almost everyday for about 5 weeks.  The second showing was better for Disney too.  We had learned from some new 4-H friends to give her asprin for some relief from here leg injury.

Due to the overweight thing, he didn't get to praticipate in the auction on Saturday.  This was a big part of the disappointment with the weight problem.  Typically the pigs sell for at least $3 per pound with the high this year being $12.50.  There was an $8 but most were in the $3.50-$4.50 range.  The market price is $0.75.  Many businesses and family push the price up as a money maker for the youths.  He had arranged a buyer up front with a price that was better than break even but not like the auction prices. 

Junior helped show a yearling nubian goat for a friend and had fun doing that, winning a reserve grand champion ribbon.

He didn't come away from the fair without a big award.  He had woven a scarf on mom's loom and entered it in the 4-H textile division.  It won champion and is headed for State competition.

All-in-all it was a good experience and everyone learned a lot.  Next year we will have a scale of some sort.