Good Morning! 59F @ 5:00AM. Sunny. High 86F. Winds light and variable.
Wng, it's possible to mix chains and snatch straps to extend your reach; I've gone 60' a time or two with good results. Don't forget to hang a heavy tarp or blanket half way out just in case the far end lets go or breaks, though.
Drew, if you can get the Massey to a muffler shop it's likely they can alter the exhaust plumbing for a lot less than the cost of that kit. But the Massey dealer likely has the easiest solution, and I agree that an upright muffler has no place on a woods tractor.
Let's see, 8 from 30 leaves 22, and Don can probably reach 7' so we're down to 15, but that's still pretty high. My pole saw came with strong cautions about using it from a ladder; something about not being able to get out from under falling limbs. Didn't mention anything about bucket trucks, platform lifts, or jet shoes though, or even standing in your bucket with the wife at the controls. :laughing:
How my day started yesterday. Wood in sections too heavy to lift scattered all over the hillside. Several trees worth of debris was also left higher and to the right on the hill. It all rests on a 36% gradient, which makes walking fun, pushing logs uphill a great workout, and driving a tractor pretty much a continuous butt pucker. None the less, working slowly and carefully, I was able to clear the the smaller piles of wood from around the big pile, which at one point meant using a chainsaw to cut some logs up so I could lift them into the bucket on the front of the tractor. That was a lot of fun, too, since every time I put the chainsaw down it vibrated itself down the hill a foot or three, and at the end of each cut there was no telling where the piece would go. I'm happy to say that most did find their way into the bucket, but one particularly thin slice headed down hill like a loose wheel on the freeway and disappeared into the brush. Apparently it liked the situation even less than I did, and just wanted to get somewhere else, fast.
Only two trees survived the previous day's chainsaw massacre. I'd rather the inmates had left all the trees in this condition rather than hacking them up into random lengths and leaving them on the steep back slope. But then what fun would that have been? Obviously they saw that I was getting something of a paunch, and even more obviously needed something of a workout.
About the only good thing about yesterday was that the wood pile is growing again. But even with that, it'll take lots of work in the wood gym to buck, split, and palletize it before it's ready for the wood stove. But with a tractor and a good chainsaw, I supposed anything's possible. Maybe even unavoidable.
Closer than I thought. These are burned manzanita leaves that drifted over from the other, toasted, side of the canyon. A little closer and they would have still been on fire when they landed. And yeah, that's dry grass, just down slope from the back patio. Burning grass wouldn't have carried enough heat to catch the house on fire, but it sure would have made a lot of smoke and caused a lot of excitement among both myself and the two firemen that were here at the time. Especially since all of our attention was focused on the fire that had spotted across the canyon a ways down below the house. The OTHER side of the house, so who knows how long it would have taken us to figure out we were watching the wrong side of the house?
TGIF is comin', Thomas, hang in there you all!
