Poulan vs. Stihl revisited

Here's an update on my original Poulan vs. Stihl story from ten years ago.

At the time I was heating with wood, which necessitated spending some serious time in the woods to make sure we didn't freeze. If your saw is going through several tanks of gas per day, the Stihl is the machine for you.

If, however, you only fire up your chainsaw a few times a year, for a half hour at a time, maybe not.

One of the things that's frustrating about my Stihl is that it can be mighty finicky about starting up, especially if it doesn't see regular use. It's not just me. My neighbour has a $1,600 "professional grade" Stihl, and he spends just as much time cursing it as I do my $500 not-quite-professional-grade model.

Last year I spent $150 on a carb rebuild, thinking that would help. It didn't. 

Today I was briefly feeling motivated. My Stihl weed-eater hasn't run since last October, and with only a half hour or so of dinking around I had it purring like a kitten. Only issue is that button in the centre of the cutting head that's supposed to feed out more line doesn't seem to work. Then you have to pry the end off it and feed out more line by hand. A pain in the ass, but at least I got it running.

That success prompted me to take a crack at the saw. After an hour of cursing and at least three dozen pulls on the rope, I was perusing the Home Depot website to see if they have any good deals on chainsaws. That's when I remembered I still have the Poulan Pro Classic. It's been sitting in the corner of the woodshed for ten years, neglected and forgotten.

Cleaned it up a bit, poured in some fresh gas, and that puppy fired up on the third pull! And I'd forgotten how much quieter it is than the Stihl. You can do an afternoon of small trim jobs around the yard and not suffer major hearing loss.

I'm reluctant to say that makes the Poulan a better machine. At the same time, there's a lot to be said for chainsaws that start!

Learning to live with global warming

Ya gotta love this global warming, eh! Here were are a month into autumn and we're getting the finest summer weather we've had all year!

That's brought an unusual late-season infestation of asian beetles to Falling Downs. I'm sitting on the stoop writing this and they're walking around on my laptop, and on everything else in sight for that matter. They seem to be particularly fond of my Rocky hunting boots. I have to remember to give them a good shake before I pull them on again.

Back in the spring we had part of the apple tree come down in a wind storm. It just narrowly missed the tent camper that was parked underneath it, or so I thought. This is the second or third summer in a row that we've not used it, so I figured what the heck, might as well move it out to the road and stick a for sale sign on it.

I've always enjoyed camping. Me and the Farm Manager used to take a few trips every summer. Made it as far as the Rocky Mountains one year. That was a fun trip and made memories for a lifetime for the kids. Mostly bad memories for them, but that's another story. Suffice it to say that none of them grew up to be particularly avid campers.

We got all the way out to BC and back with a couple of tents. Three dogs and three kids and all our camping gear in a Pontiac van. Yoho remains one of my favourite camping destinations of all time.

Once the kids were out of the house the FM decided she was getting too old and brittle for tent camping, which is how we ended up with that used Rockwood tent trailer. I had no problem with the tents, but I must admit the trailer was the lap of luxury. It was almost as lux as the Winnebago I had a couple of lifetimes ago.

The first summer we had it, we took a tour of Manitoulin Island and spent some time around Massey, where the FM was thrilled to discover the Jewish section of the local cemetery. The next year we took it over to Macgregor Point a couple of times. The third year, I opened it up, and the Farm Manager found it smelled "musty." It's been parked under the apple tree ever since.

On closer inspection, it's obvious that the apple tree clipped the back corner of the trailer on the way down. Hmm... that could have a deleterious impact on my asking price. Worst case scenario; if it doesn't sell I can always strip it down to the frame and make it into a utility trailer. The one I got from Uncle Bruno is sitting behind the woodshed with two flat tires and the floor rotted out.

Anyway, it's out by the road now, and we'll see what happens... In the meantime, the FM is marvelling at how I can do a half hour of work and then spend two hours writing about it.

I must admit that's pretty impressive. But I've moved the trailer, and now I can get at the apple tree with the Stihl. We'll be having a few campfires right here at home.

The ladybugs are all over everything. They're getting down my shirt and up my trousers. This would be phenomenal camping weather, but we don't have a camper. Might as well fire up the chainsaw.


I'm looking around for a good used Winnebago.

A day at the farm

Couple of years ago I bought one of those Craftsman socket sets when Sears had them on sale at a good knock-down on the regular price. Every socket you could ever want, in metric and imperial, plus three socket wrenches (1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 inch drives), plus extensions, plus deep sockets...

I was set for life!

Not that I haven't been set for life before. There was not a socket or a ratchet in that kit that I hadn't bought at least once before. But they get lost. They get borrowed and not brought back. They get misplaced.

My rationale for buying this kit was that I'd never have to look for a misplaced, lost, or borrowed socket again. Everything I could ever want was right there in one convenient package!

Plus, at 60% off, it was one of those deals you pretty much had to buy anyway.

So the other day I'm planning a trip into the woodlot with the Stihl and the wood-wagon to fetch a couple of weeks worth of wood. Gotta take care of a couple details first. The wood-wagon has been sitting forlornly behind the woodshed since July. The tractor has been parked in front of the garage since August. Gotta do some battery shuffling to fire up the tractor and get on with the day.

The Escape has been my main wood-fetcher for the past couple of months, but the battery doesn't want to hold a charge anymore. Gonna swap out the battery for the one in the F-150. It's got four flat tires but a strong battery. My original plan when I bought the Escape was to swap the tires onto the 150, and I think the reason that never happened was because it was just way too much fun to blast that Escape around the property... up and down the hills, over the fence-rows, donuts galore in the pastures; hell, I bought the thing for $400 thinking it was a great deal 'cause it had $600 worth of rubber on it, and then I got a bonus couple of thousand dollars worth of entertainment out of it!

But that was then and this was now. I'm gonna swap in the battery out of the big truck, which was new just this past spring (the battery, not the truck). That's when I realized I need a 5/16 deep socket. That's because there's a battery tie-down secured by a couple of threaded rods that you have to undo before you can lift out the battery.

No problem! I've got that complete compendium of socket sizes just a sittin' in the pantry cupboard! I'm ready for any eventuality! THIS MOMENT is exactly why I bought that kit!

So I go to grab it out of that pantry cupboard...

Hmm... not there.

WTF?

Well, maybe I took it out, and although it's highly unlikely, maybe, just maybe, I forgot to put it back?..

So I check every cupboard in the pantry.

I check the wood-shed.

Been doing a bit of furnace maintenance, so I check downstairs.

I check upstairs too... not that I recall having the tools up there, but I'm running out of places to check.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

WTF? I buy this magnificent socket set so I'll never lose another socket again, and I've lost the entire kit???

How the fuck is such a thing even possible?

It's not really spring till you've had a proper grass fire

It was a beautiful spring day here at Falling Downs. A little cool, but clear and lots of sunshine. It was the kind of day that makes you feel you'll be young forever.

I appreciate those days more than I used to. In fact, the older I get, I find I pretty much appreciate damned near everything more than I used to. Whoever it was that said "youth is wasted on the young" pretty much nailed it.

At thirty you tend to be anxious about shit like your job isn't working out, or your marriage isn't working out, or blah blah blah...

There's always something.

At sixty, if you can drag your ass out of bed in the morning without assistance, and eat and shit without assistance, well.... high five!

So I thought I'd take advantage of the fine weather and bring in a little wood for next winter. I've been going back and forth between the Poulan and the Stihl recently, mainly because I went through a spell where I incorrectly concluded the Stihl was pooched.

That was back in February, when I was desperately trying to keep ahead of the yawning appetite of the wood furnace, due to my showdown with the bitch at xxxx Fuel Supply Company who had insisted that I provide a current certificate of compliance for the oil furnace. By the way, I think I won that round. It's late April and we got through the worst winter in forever without a drop of furnace oil, and nobody froze to death.

But the experience did make us highly chain-saw dependant.

Therefore I pretty much had a panic attack the night I couldn't get the Stihl to fire up. Felt like there was no compression, and based on past experiences that generally means only one thing.

Time for a new chain-saw.

Or, time to fire up the Poulan.

I'm out in the garage in forty below rooting around for the Poulan, which hasn't been used for a couple years. Top her up with gas, prime that stupid little bulb five times (and it's amazing how they can make plastics that don't freeze solid at forty below) and by god if she didn't fire right up!

So the much maligned Poulan became the main saw around here for awhile, while at the back of my mind I toyed with the inevitability of taking the Stihl in for a professional diagnosis. I knew the news could only be bad, so I kept putting that off the way you put off taking a favourite hound to the vet when you know the diagnosis can only be bad.

Well, the day came when I felt I couldn't put it off any longer. Just before I put her in the truck for her last trip, I thought I'd give her one last try. On principle. Just to say I did everything I could.

Well, fuck me, she fired right up!

Due to the fact that the Poulan had filled in admirably in the absence of the Stihl, I didn't want to discard her entirely, so I've been going back and forth between the two recently. You want to avoid jealousy between the saws, after all.

Which is how I came to be clearing the south-west corner of the north-east woodlot this afternoon, right there above the bridge by Indian Creek. It's only good manners and good woodlot management to burn off the branches and whatnot that won't be firewood, so while I was falling and cutting and loading the truck I simultaneously had a good burn going.

Unlike in some years past, today's burn did not require the intervention of the township fire department, and I was thankful for that. I'm sure they were too.

There's something about spending a day in the fresh air that really makes you appreciate life. The day will come, all too soon, when I'll be warehoused in a "home."

There'll be no more walking the hounds.

No more dropping forty foot elms and hoping they don't land on the truck.

No more truck.

No more chainsaws.

Maybe I should be pro-active.

Maybe I should start up a "home" for folks who aren't ready to fade off quietly into that forever night.

Introducing the Gateway to Heavenly Downs.

Bring your hounds...

Our staff are specially trained in the care and maintenance of chainsaws.

We've got a garden plot round the back where you can grow what you will with the assistance of our highly trained Jamaican herbalists.

And if you and the 85 year old hottie in the next room want to spend some quality oinky-boinky time together, hey, that's your business, not ours.

And every April, we'll celebrate the turn of the seasons with a honkin' huge Heavenly Downs Fire-Department-invited-in-advance grass fire!

See ya soon!

If it's not one f@ckin' thing it's another...

After finishing off the Saturday Globe and Mail this morning I figured I'd take advantage of the weather and head out to the woodlot with old Rusty and the hounds and grab a couple cords of firewood.

There wasn't a whole lot in it by the way. It's what they call a slow news day, or week... Renzetti had an agreeable column. There's a mildly interesting Q and A with former GG Adrienne Clarkson, but overall, nothing blogworthy. Kinda felt I didn't get my $3.75 worth, which is what you pay for the Globe once they truck it this far into the hinterland.

Wood wise, I'm about half way to where I'd like to be. It'll take 16-20 cord to avoid calling the oil truck, and by my calculations I'm at about ten. I don't want to risk a repeat of last year, when we ran out of wood mid-January, and then spent $4,000 plus on furnace oil in the next four months, which totally decimated the property-tax budget, which resulted in nasty letters from the township threatening to sell the farm for tax arrears, and oh my goodness, it was all we could do to hang on to Falling Downs.

So I don't want to go there again.

I've been cutting dead stuff along the fence lines, mostly elm. I head to the second field in from the corner. There's a bit of a gully to traverse, and it's a bit wet in there due to all the rain we've had the last couple weeks.

Old Rusty is still licensed for the road and fully insured, but this is no longer a vehicle that you drive with confidence on the public highways. She's a farm truck. Last week the power steering went for a shit. Had to muscle her through the Timmy's drive-through. That armstrong steering gets you a full upper-body workout and a coffee when you have to go through the drive-through at Timmy's in a 5,000 lb. truck with no power steering.

Made it through the gully in 4x4 mode with my foot on the gas. Took down three dead elms on the fence-line. I'm evolving an eye for dropping the trees so they don't hit the truck, and except for the last one, where I had to use my 30 foot tow strap to persuade a 50 foot tree to fall in the right direction, things went reasonably well. The old Stihl is working like a charm, trees don't land on the truck, the hounds have acclimatized themselves to the chainsaw and no longer run home to mommy every time I fire it up... what more could you ask for?

Then, as I'm tossing firewood into the back, I notice I have a flat tire on old Rusty.

Oh for fucks sakes!

And not just a flat tire, but a tire that's completely lost its bead - I can see six inches of aluminum rim before I see any rubber. Guess when I was traversing the hillside we were on, there was enough lateral pressure to break the bead... probably wouldn't have happened with new tires. No wonder she felt a bit tippy! I've been meaning to get new tires for a while now, but what the hell, old Rusty is mostly a farm truck now, so why bother?

Anyway, by the time I notice my destroyed tire, I got the box half full of firewood, but now I'm focussed on how to get the truck home. I make the executive decision to just drive it back on the flat tire. After all, the tire is toast anyway, and if I damage the rim, well how much can a rim be worth for a 15 year old F-150?

So, due to the flat tire, I'm nursing it through that water-filled gully... and I get stuck! For fucks sakes! I can go a few feet forward, a few feet backward, but I can't get out of the gully! Not even in 4x4! Not even in 4x4 low range!

Well, gonna have to walk home to get the tractor to pull out the truck.

For fucks sakes!

The mud is up to my knees. Me and the hounds waddle out of the gully and make it home. The tractor doesn't start...

Oh, for fucks sakes!

It's probably due to the fact that I haven't had it fired up in a couple of months.

Luckily, the Mustang 50 just got home from a check up at Jimmy's in Wiarton. Fires right up, and I use it to boost the tractor. There's another half an hour out of your perfect afternoon.

Longish story a bit shorter, I did a couple of back and forth runs between the truck and home base. I was toying with the idea of using shackles and clevises to tow old Rusty and her half load of firewood back to the house. That was not to be. I know I have the right shackles and clevises to make it happen; I just don't know where they are.

I really gotta organize my shop.

So I drove old Rusty home, once I towed her out of the gully, and it looks like there was no damage to the rim.

Bonus!

Then I walked back and brought the tractor home. After running all afternoon, at least the battery should be well charged up. Another bonus.

So after an entire afternoon spent in the great outdoors, getting maybe 3/4 of a cord of firewood, I walk in the house, pants mud-caked up to the knees, and the first words out of the Farm Manager's mouth are, "so how much wood did you get?"

Oh for fucks sakes...

Why is winter always a surprise?

I've lived in Canada long enough to know that come November, you might wake up one day and find snow on the ground. Furthermore, that snow is likely to stay awhile. Like till next May.

Nevertheless, November once again found me unprepared.

The snow-blower for my Ford 4000 is parked behind the garage. If memory serves, I think I need to fix the drive chain, which snapped on my last snow-clearing mission back in the spring.

The Ford 4000 is conveniently parked just out of range of my longest extension cord. Once the temperature falls to below 10 C, that Ford diesel needs to be plugged in for a couple hours before it's going to start.

You know the temperature is well below that if the snow stays on the ground overnight.

The day I parked it there I had just attached the 3-furrow plow, meaning to get to plowing up that weed-ridden flower patch on the east side of the front yard. That's a job the Farm Manager has been nagging about for at least two years, and if nothing else, I thought mounting the plow was a gesture of good faith on my part.

The walk behind snow-blower is in partial dis-assembly in the garage. It will start and run, but there is something wonky with the pulleys. It'll spit a drive belt out before I'm halfway down the driveway. I planned all summer to fix that, but here we are with snow on the ground, and wouldn't you know it, I never got around to it!

Last time I was out and about I'd dumped off a load of tree-tops behind the woodshed, thinking I was going to cut them into wood-stove sized pieces of firewood. That's another issue the Farm Manager has been on the warpath about.

"You better get going on the wood because it doesn't look like we'll get to Christmas with what's in the woodshed now!"

She's right of course, but I can't admit that, so I've been fobbing her off with how next time it's a nice afternoon I'll be carving up those six-footers behind the woodshed.

Today that nice afternoon came.

I haven't actually fired up the Stihl for a good two months. Topped her off with gas and bar oil, and set about to starting her up. After a few pulls on the cord I noticed I had bar oil all over my pants, my boots, the floor... and on account of the temperature, the bar oil had a viscosity just slightly more fluid than used bubble-gum.

I'd forgot to put the cap on the oil reservoir.

While I'm cleaning up that mess, I notice that one of the two nuts that secures the chain sprocket cover is missing. This has happened before. They will vibrate themselves loose if you don't tend to them. Not a big deal. The saw runs fine with just one nut holding the sprocket cover in place. Just keep an eye out...

So I get at my woodpile, and not five minutes later the other nut falls into the snow, the sprocket cover flies off, and the bar and the chain both disappear into the snow.

I'm left standing there with a perfectly running Stihl but it has no bar and no chain attached to it. Not gonna cut a lot of wood with that rig.

While I'm debating whether I should run into town and buy chainsaw parts, or just slash my wrists now and get it over with, Kipling calls.

You know how whenever you're at the end of your rope, if you can find somebody with an even more horrendous hard luck story, you find the strength to carry on?

Well, Kipling only calls a few times a year, but every time it has that salutary effect.

He's just finished rebuilding his VW diesel van for the nth time. That's not a slag on the VW; it's got over two million miles on it. You have to do a rebuild every half million or so.

But the story isn't that simple. That diesel broke down on the edge of an Indian reservation somewhere north of Ottawa. He had another couple hundred miles to go to deliver the load of windows he was taking to a building supply place up there.

The locals were friendly enough, but they didn't have the technology to fix a VW diesel, so Kipling is stuck, in a snow storm, with a diesel that won't start, and a load of windows that need to get delivered the next day.

He calls his broker and has them send another truck up to complete the window shipment.

That truck is going to take ten hours to get there. In the meantime, Kipling figures he better stay with his van to protect both the van and the cargo from vandalism.

While all this is going down he's also got the worst cold in his life and it's getting worse and worse by the hour, and he's thinking he's just another cough away from pneumonia.

"I coughed all night. I coughed so hard I shit myself."

Well, that was more info than I needed to know, but suddenly I was able to put my chain-saw issues into perspective. I've got a warm house right here. He's spending the night in an unheated van in the middle of a blizzard guarding his windows. Not to mention cleaning up after that personal hygiene incident under those circumstances.

Long story short, Kipling gets a ride back to Cambridge with the driver his company sent up to finish his job. His van is still up there in the boonies. He borrows a truck and a car hauler and heads north to retrieve his van. While he's winching the van onto the trailer the OPP stop by, and wouldn't you know it, he's got absolutely no paper work for the truck he borrowed.

There was some to-ing and fro-ing, but fortunately reason prevailed. The cops concluded that he wouldn't be stealing that ten year old VW van if he was driving a new F-350 Ford, and they gave him the benefit of the doubt on the rest of his story.

Getting the benefit of the doubt from the cops isn't something you can count on these days.

Anyway, he didn't get paid for that job and he was off work the next two weeks rebuilding that VW diesel.

I missed an afternoon of chainsawing.

It just proves that your troubles can be few so long as you compare yourself to someone who has lots more.

Oh, and winter has arrived!

Pot-addled hillbilly cuts off legs with chainsaw

There's snow in the forecast if not on the ground, and now that Lundy has his cows back at the home farm I can access some trees along the fence-rows that I haven't been able to get to all summer.

That turned into the usual shit-show of the sixty foot dead elm wanting to fall to the east when all of my calculations indicated it was going west. That leaves me standing there scratching my head, chainsaw stuck in the kerf, until I do the only thing I can do; pull that sixty footer to the west with my thirty foot tow strap.

I've been meaning to get a good long length of 5/8 rope if TSC every gets around to putting it on sale, but if that's happened I must have missed it.

Last time I was at the Tractor Supply Company store they had a good deal on Tremclad paint. You can put that shit on everything, and they don't call it rust paint for nothing. Yup, you can paint right over rust!

Which reminds me of a story about my old pal George from the drydock, but before I get into that I wanted to mention that I met Billy Morris at the TSC on that trip to buy the Tremclad.

Billy was from Kentucky, and he'd been hired on for the summer by one of the local farmers. Billy was 16, and I was duly impressed when he showed me a picture of his fiancee.

Who the hell has a fiancee at 16?

I managed to get that unwieldy elm to fall to the west with, I am pleased to report, no damage to the truck.

I'm getting better at this, but you never want to think you're too good at it. A sixty foot elm is big and heavy. Once she's on her way down there's no do-overs on the cut.

There's a kind of existential purity about heating your home with wood that you cut down. I suppose it's right next to eating meat from the deer you shot at hunting season. There's something primitive about it, but at the same time you can't help but feel good about it.

I was a bit taken aback at Billy's fiancee and all that implied, and then he showed me a picture of his 14 year old sister. And her fiancee.

What the hell?

Hey boy, how you kids coming up with these fiancees?

The internet!

So George is the guy who built a beautiful 3,000 square foot home in St. Martin, overlooking the Bay of Fundy, and the day I was there me and him and a couple of lads from the shipyard got seriously shit-faced on George's home made beer. I believe he had a jug of screech at hand as well. That's when George told us about his plans for the house.

Now the house was there. We were sitting in it. We'd had the grand tour. But George had a plan.

Next year, God willing, he was going to jack 'er up and put a foundation under it!

Well fuck me!

My four year old Stihl put in a good afternoon. I went through two tanks of gas and had a full load in the back of the truck when I came back to the house. That's about a week of warmth in the dead of winter. God willing, global warming will keep winter warm and short, but that isn't something we should count on just yet.

Firewood, like guns and condoms, are in that category where it's better to have and not need it than the vice versa.

One day I asked Billy how the Morris clan ended up here in the Bruce all the way from Kentucky. Oh he says, Mom met this guy on the internet...

So one Monday George announces he did a body job on his truck on the weekend. We're deep in the bowels of one of the frigates we're building for the Royal Canadian Navy. So deep that you can hear a black-hat clanking down the ladders ten minutes before he gets there. A dog-fuckers paradise.

A body job on your rusty old truck in a weekend? Do tell, George.

"Well, while the missus was in the mall I slipped over to the TSC and got a roll of duct tape and a can of Tremclad. The bright white Tremclad matches my truck perfect, so I just taped over the rust holes and then gave 'er a spray with the Tremclad."

A couple weeks ago I ran into a buddy who has a house down at McCullough Lake. He uses it for the summer and rents it out September to June. I did the customary "how's things" routine.

"Oh by fuck, you wouldn't believe it. I had these fucking hillbillys in there, folks from Kentucky. Paid rent for three months and then nothing. When they finally moved out I find out they've cut the stairs down, the fucking stairs to the second floor. The railing and the stairs! You can't even go upstairs now without a ladder!"

"Was the name Morris?"

"Ya! How the fuck do you know that?"

"Just a hunch."

I was hand bombing the firewood into the woodshed. Got a couple of old dining room chairs back there. They'd make good kindling I thought.

So I fired up the Stihl one more time and cut the legs off.

Wilderness adventures

Unless it's an especially severe winter, which I don't see happening, I've probably got enough wood in the basement and the woodshed to see us through.

Be that as it may, I continue to make forays into the woodlot. Today I had my eye on that Maple that's been taunting me from the back woodlot for at least the last couple of years.

Two or three years ago a big trunk came off one of my Maples in a wind storm. Came apart about twenty feet up, just where the main trunk splits up into three. At the tree end she's still attached, and then she arcs across a bit of a ravine and has her top branches holding her off the ground towards the top.

I took away a good part of that top a couple of years ago, so all that's left is what you might call the weight-bearing branches. I headed back there with a ladder, an ax, and the trusty Stihl.

Leaned the ladder against the top-most branch and up I went. I was cutting four to six foot lengths, stuff I could carry out to where the truck was parked. Eventually that became two foot lengths as the diameter of the trunk got bigger. Then one foot lengths.

Finally I had to take a shot at those support branches that were holding up the works. I knew that was going to be tricky. They're holding up a good thirty or forty feet of trunk that must weigh in at a couple of ton.

Sure enough, even though I made my first cut bottom to top, the bar of the Stihl got pinched. There I was, saw stuck, wondering what to do next.

Luckily I had the ax. Started chopping away just above where the saw was caught. Built up quite a sweat if you don't mind me saying so, till suddenly with a great crack the limb gave way and the entire trunk did a quarter turn and came to earth.

When a big old branch like that is doing a quarter turn, the outer extremities can move rather quickly, so I was lucky to get out of the way.

The Stihl was not so lucky. Instead of being freed up, she had the entire weight of the the trunk drive the bar into the ground. It was stuck good. And twisted too. By God, here's another trip to the shop, I thought.

Well, after a lengthy survey of the situation, I came to the conclusion that the only way to solve this was to drive home, get the other saw, and cut up enough of the trunk into small enough pieces so I could get it off the Stihl.

Unfortunately I hadn't fired up the Poulan since the last time the Stihl was in the shop, and it took a fair bit of effort to convince her to start up. As luck would have it, first cut I made was about a two foot length that took a sudden snap before I was through. The snap let the main trunk roll. Right onto my foot.

So I'm standing there, two ton tree trunk pinning me to the ground, and I'm considering my options. The options are mightily circumscribed by the fact that I can't move.

The hounds are standing there looking at me. I know they're thinking if the old bastard doesn't get himself out of this we've got a really good meal happening.

Luckily, I've still got the Poulan in hand. Managed to make a cut just to the left of where my foot was trapped.

Got my foot out. Then I got the Stihl out. That twist in the bar? Straightened out like you wouldn't believe. I scraped the mud off her, fired her up, and it was like nothing had happened.

So it was a day of mixed results. Wood harvested? Zero.

My ankle feels much better after a hot bath and twenty feet of tensor bandage wrapped around it.

But the Stihl still works and the hounds didn't eat me.

All's well at Falling Downs.

In the woods with Junior

I don't see Junior that much anymore.

He's holed up in his Mom's basement down in the city. Used to have a job at Wal-mart, but he quit to focus on his music.

I didn't actually notice much in the way of music when he took his hiatus from the world of work. Got the impression he was more focused on pussy and pot-smoking than he was on music.

Not that he's faking it in the musical talent department. There's a little thing he did called Nicotine run that you can find on You tube if you're interested.

Oddly enough he managed to put that together back when he was working at Wal-mart.

So I was thrilled when he e-mailed me last week to ask if this weekend would be a good time to come up for a visit.

WTF, he's my kid, anytime is a good time for a visit. And his mother was giving him the car for the weekend. It would be the first time he found his own way to Falling Downs!

I damned near exploded with pride.

Friday night I called to ask the particulars of his itinerary. Nobody picked up so I left a message.

Thirty seconds later his mother called back. I like to avoid talking to the mother if at all possible.

"Junior isn't getting the car unless blahblahblah yadayadayada.

Hmmm...

Well, maybe I won't be seeing Junior this weekend after all...

Couple of hours later Junior calls up.

"Hey Dad, any chance you can pick me up?"

Well, godammit, I hate to be a sap, but I want to see the kid, so we strike a deal.

I'll make the three hour drive to the city to pick him up; he takes the bus back.

So I pick up Junior and he's got it all going on. Sporting a new look. Trench coat and Sherlock Holmes cap. And he's got news.

Got his Wal-mart job again.

I never dreamed I'd feel elated on hearing the news that the fruit of my loins is working at Wal-mart, but what the fuck, at least it's a change from sitting in Mom's basement smoking dope.

The mere fact that they hired him back says something good about him.

The fact that he hates it says something good about him too.

So we hung out for a couple days. He drank way too much of my beer. It was great to see him.

Before he headed home I wanted him to have a taste of the real Falling Downs. It ain't all about smoking the weed of wisdom and drinking beer.

I took him out to get a load of firewood.

He was a bit out of sorts at first. Just watched for the first five minutes. Then he got into helping load the truck.

When I fired up the Stihl he asked if he could give it a try.

Music to my ears. Within the next five minutes he'd got the lesson on the cold start, the hot start, and how to figure if you should make the cut from this side or that.

Have to say that with the trench coat and the Sherlock cap he was the most nattily attired lumberjack of all time.

We loaded up the truck and then had a beer, just me and Junior in the woods.

Adventures with Stihl & Allis

Had a big old dead elm on the fence line way at the back, just at the edge of the marsh. Been dead for years; bone-dry, all the bark long gone; two months of winter fire-wood just standing there.

What held me back for years was the question of which way she was going to fall. Must have walked all round that tree a hundred times doing the mental math. About twenty feet from the ground she branched out into five seperate trunks. Had two big trunks heading off to the west, away from the marsh. There were three trunks that were closer to neutral or eastward.

Which trunks were heavier depended a lot on your perspective. When I stood on the marsh side, it always looked like she'd fall that way. Looking up from the other side, you'd swear she was going west. Directly under the tree, it was a toss-up, but I was thinking the two big limbs heading west would outweigh the three going east. Time to fire up Mr. Stihl.

The diameter of the tree was about a foot more than the reach of the 18" bar on the saw, so just making the "v" cut on the west side took four cuts instead of two. Same with the back cut. I was making the second of the back cuts. Gradually the kerf starting to open up a bit. Yes! Two years of head-scratching was paying off! She was going to go west!

I'm practically through, and there's a gust of wind, and all of a sudden the kerf closes up. Shit! Couldn't get the saw out in time. There I am with a tree that's been practically cut through, saw caught in the trunk, and a thirty foot tow strap to pull 'er back the right way.

It's about a 75 foot tree. I've been there before. Ain't going there again. Figured next time I'm in town I'll pick up an 80 foot rope and away we'll go.

Then I got to thinking. I've got a back-hoe; maybe I could use the boom to nudge the old elm in the right direction!

Had to wait a few days because as you know the think tank here at Falling Downs has been pretty busy following world events. Like, holy cow, what up with the Santorum show last night? Haven't even got around to blogging about that aberation.

But I finally got around to it. Had to plug the old Allis-Chalmers in because that diesel just doesn't want to start in the cold weather. She hasn't run for a few weeks, so I also had to hook it up to a battery booster. Finally got the old girl fired up, and I was on my way.

Theres about three fields to traverse before I get to the mighty elm, and the last one has a couple of low spots where I normally cross the fence line. I was worried about getting stuck in the low spots. You'd think an eight ton piece of machinery wouldn't get stuck in anything, but you'd be wrong. I decided to build a new path through the stone fence that demarcates the last field.

Those stone fences! What a testament to the work ethic of our pioneer forebearers. Stone fences made out of the rocks and boulders they picked out of the fields by hand the first 75 years that the European settlers colonized the land in these parts. Such a thing is inconceivable today.

I've had about two hours of practice time on the back-hoe, so carving a new gateway through the stone fence takes a little longer than I expected. The Allis will actually throw five hundred pound boulders. Trouble is, I'm not trying to throw them. When I figure I have a pathway cleared, I steer through into the next field and get hung up on some of the boulders I didn't throw.

Well, here's the beauty of a back-hoe! You can actually get hung up on rocks and use the various hydraulics to get un-hung! Trouble is, my learning curve is pretty much a straight horizontal line so far and this is taking way longer than I expect.

Finally make it through, and I arrive at the elm. Only it's no longer there. It's gone over.

Into the swamp.

Shit!

I should have known. We've had some strong winds these last few nights. After pondering the situation I finally decided that I'd try to use the hoe to pull the tree out of the swamp and back to where I could cut her up.

Long story short, I managed to do that, and the mighty Stihl was none the worse for wear after being lodged in the trunk for a few days and then lying there in the snow for a few more.

Unfortunately, by then it was pitch dark. I still wanted to bring Allis back home with me, and I had to move a few more boulders to get across that fence line without getting hung up again. That was quite a deal. I understand now why excavation work is generally done in the daylight hours.

I've beeen bullshitting the farm manager about getting the oil tank filled. Haven't actually followed through. With the big old elm now on terra firma, I figure we've got wood heat clear into June.

By then we won't need it.

Poulan vs. Stihl : part II

I have to admit, I only use the Poulan when the Stihl is in the shop.

And all things considered, it's not in the shop that often. Had to drop it off for a new bar and chain not too long ago. The guy behind the counter went all out trying to sell me a thousand dollar "professional grade" Stihl.

My unprofessional $500 Stihl has been doing yeomans's work. I'm taking down twenty and twenty-four inch stuff with that 18" bar all the time. You just have to be smart in how you go about it.

Not that I'm all that smart. Everybody here at Falling Downs has a story about their narrow escape when the sixty foot elm just missed the spot they were standing on.

My main quibble with the Poulan is that it doesn't let the fuel flow properly. You'll be half way through a 24" trunk and it'll starve out for fuel, not because the tank is empty, but because the fuel tank isn't vented properly. That's a design flaw. They're a global brand and it shouldn't take a back-woods hillbilly like me to point out the flaws that their highly educated and way over-paid design team built into the machine.

So I'm thumbs up for the Stihl all the way, but I do have to mention it does seem to like the shop. I've only had it for a couple years so I don't know if that's a characteristic of the machine or of me. I know there was the big trip for major surgery after Junior ran over it with the truck.

Wasn't really Junior's fault. Had a bit of a grass fire going on, and if panic wasn't in the air, it was just over the hill. We were trying to move things out fast.

The fire had spread to where the truck was parked, and I was too busy beating back the flames to move it, so I yell at Junior MOVE THE FUCKING TRUCK!

Didn't have time to specify move it forward or move it backward. In my mind, over-busy as I was, I figured it was obvious I meant move it forward. After all, I'm right behind the truck, the Stihl is right behind the truck, the biggest flames are right behind the truck, so the only possible thing you could ever do is move the truck forward out of the impending disaster.

So Junior gets behind the wheel and backs up the truck.

Runs over the Stihl. That repair pretty much cost the price of a new one.

Keeps coming at me. I run for my life. Barely made it.

Keeps backing up right to the fence-line.

Junior gets the truck jammed up against the trees. The flames are heading for him. Oh my God the little shithead's gonna get immolated right there in front of my eyes... his mother's gonna kill me!

I run for the truck, grab the wheel, race through the flames, running over the Stihl a second time, and we make it to safety.

So like I said, the Stihl being in the shop more often than the Poulan might not entirely be the fault of the saw.