This May Be As Close To Becoming As logger I'll Ever See
Saturday... We skidded a large log, maybe 80 ft tall, from at least 150 ft. up the back hill. The terrain is steep and it took us a long time to find it. Fallen amongst it's contemporaries. Almost buried. We cabled it up and began tugging. We moved it quite a way when it hung up on something. I don't remember. Irene was manning the cables. I was driving. Actually just steering. I don't recall if I mentioned it but when the tippy-tonka is in compound low I practically have to ride the breaks even though it's pulling a few tons. The other side effect is that when you try to accelerate the truck lurches forward (on the rough terrain) which causes your foot to roll back off the accelerator which causes the truck to stop which causes your foot to roll onto the accelerator which causes the truck to lurch forward. That gear is obviously designed for a much heavier load. Perhaps stump pulling. For giant redwoods maybe. So we repositioned the truck and pulled out some cable length. We have several sections so we can pull a long way when the truck only has a small area to work in. We just keep backing up the truck and shortening the cabling. Anyway... A few hours of that in the heat and we were done for the day. I rested for a while then in the late afternoon I went to Irene's to empty the two-horse trailer. It was still in her backyard where we dropped it when we first arrived and we needed it for transportation in our breeding program. We have two more breedings lined up. I removed all the remaining items from the move including the large 250 ft. roll of 5 conductor 10 ga. power cable which I plan to power the shed and barn with. Do you recognize it Pop.
Sunday... We skidded the large logs above the North pasture today. These logs were close to the bottom of the hill so they were at least easy to get to. Half way through the first log however we discovered a rather marshy area in our only path to our landing area. With that much weight behind it the tippy it sank like a rock. Not a real problem, except for the stallion whose territory it is, we just unhitched the log and pulled the truck forward and compensated with some extra cable length until we were past the swamp. With this experience the remainder of the logs went well. The only log we couldn't recover was the large Birch that was an unfortunate incidental. It got caught in the way of a falling fir (friendly fire). It had a crook in it which was caught behind an old stump and had a rather large branch still attached (we chainsawed the others) and we didn't have the chainsaw with us to buck it clear and we were pretty tired by now anyway. The rest of the day I just napped.
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