[Carl Russell]

Geoff, I use the next size up, 2071 Jonsereds, or 371 Husky, that’s a 70ish cc saw as opposed to the lower 60’s cc of your saw, and I like an 18″ bar, nothing longer. I prefer higher chain speed, and high motor power by dragging less chain. I have also known people who wanted longer bars so they didn’t have to bend over so far, but the longer bars add more difficulty in handling as well.

As far as making limbing easier, I say keep the chain sharp, and learn the bench technique of de-limbing, resting the saw on the bole of the tree and bending your knees, cutting limbs off of one side at a time, in a pattern that makes the tree have four sides.

The saw cuts better and you have more leverage if you use the flat part of the bar instead of the tip. Also what is tiring is holding and swinging the saw around, so if you get used to resting the saw and moving it along the tree as you work your way then you will be working less.

18″ bars are all I use, and I can easily cut down trees up to 32″ in diameter. The fact is though if I cut out the center from my front cut, I can cut a tree over 40″ in diameter.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Check out the Lending Library forum in the Community of Interest category.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Yeah, I’d have to say that I think it is a great idea as well. I think there is interest in sharing, just hard for any of us to try to figure out how to organize it.

We already have the Books/Resources category that can be a central location. If you want me to create a sub-forum to be titled Lending Library, then I would be glad to do that, and then people can figure out how to make the swaps themselves.

Do you think we should have a category specifically for people to post links to videos?

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Just had a fleeting thought about what I said about loose hay.

You still have to make hay in the field not in the barn. Hay stored loose will retain a higher moisture content, but you definitely don’t want to put green or wet hay into the barn.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

The only stupid question is the one not asked. Come on down, and join in.
Welcome, Carl

[Carl Russell]

Glad to hear about the haying success. Nice going.

My thoughts on the plugging run to bar tilt angle, and on my mower there is an adjustable plate under the shoe to raise the inner end of the cutter bar. This tends to be important if your plugging is due to thatch from old dead growth. Also I have found in these old fields that you can hit patches of some grass species that just love to plug mowers.

I agree about the loose hay, you can see it sweat out the moisture, and the hay remains in good quality. Just remember to lay it out in layers when you stack it in the barn so that you can remove it easily without having to tear the pile apart.

Anyway, keep up the good work, Carl

[Carl Russell]

I have always used full deer hair sweat pads, sometimes a felt pad when they gain weight, but have never had such affects on the horses shoulders, even with weight loss, but I also check and adjust collar fit if needed every time I harness.

Another factor to keep in mind is that as the animal losses weight and the collar slips down, the angle of draft will also change, and you may want to tighten your top hame strap, to keep the trace bolt up where it should be so that the collar fits the shoulder under load.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I’ve known several people who have used the pulley set-up. I think you’ll find that handy.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Quote:

trying to solve other people’s problems, which I don’t think is truly helping anyway,

Quote:

That’s convenient to decide that solving their problems isn’t helping them. It takes away that responsibility you like to talk about.

The operative point there is “TRYING to solve….”. What is not helpful, and at the same time distracting is focusing on so-called problems that affect other people, or are just so large in nature that they easily extend beyond your own physical sphere of influence, and then putting time and energy into TRYING to find and implement solutions.

I mean, that’s fine if that’s what you feel is your calling, just realize that very few of us have our own houses in order enough to be able to sustain the let-down and depletion of resources when our work outside of our own need turns out to be wasted through factors beyond our own control, such as those that result from a lack of full understanding of those we are trying to help. I understand the desire to feel important and generous to other people, and there always has to be someone who gives of themselves completely. I admire you for wanting to be like that, but at this stage, I have too much more work to do, and too many people counting on me to prepare to go down holding hands.

Otherwise I can’t argue with anything else from your last post. You have clearly stated your perspective, and all I can say is that you are not alone.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Geoff, I’m glad you can see how far we apart. It will be the first step for you.

If I am spending my time trying to solve other people’s problems, then I am not putting into place those things that I will require to be able to help even the smallest group of people.

This doesn’t say helping people will distract me from helping people, it says trying to solve other people’s problems, which I don’t think is truly helping anyway, will distract me from implementing the solutions that I need to support me in my basic function, which I require before I can help even one other person.

I don’t even really understand what “hole” or “solid ground” you’re talking about. Or new horizon.

This is what I was trying to get you to realize. When you finally become aware of how your allegiance to the socially correct concept of trying to save the world has placed you square in the middle of a sweeping wave of mindless human flesh pouring over the edge of a cliff, you will have a better idea of what I am referring to. The “hole” is that place where we make bad decisions based on a tradition of bad decisions, in the hopes that it will bring a new result ( new horizon), and the “solid ground” is that place where you finally feel yourself taking control of the elements of your own success based on simple human truths that have been overlooked, or even disdained, for eons.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Geoff you seem to be completely misinterpreting what I am talking about. I am talking about the initiative that causes an individual to make changes in their own life to live in a sustainable way. If I am spending my time trying to solve other people’s problems, then I am not putting into place those things that I will require to be able to help even the smallest group of people.

We delude ourselves into believing that we can actually see what our choices can bring. That is why we are where we are. We focus on what we think is the point, and we always miss the real affect of our choices, until they come up and bite us on the butt.

You see the global mess, and finding solutions to that as being the point, I see that as the problem, and look for skills that I can use personally to survive, as the solution.

In fact the “hole” is only sucking in those who don’t see or hear it, and those who can’t feel the pull of the current. I didn’t say that helping others was going to pull me down. What will pull us down is running wildly, frantic with the crowd, rather than finding some good solid ground to hold onto. And I have no remorse in letting the crowd go in their frantic headlong rush to a new horizon.

When you’re sick of trying to help people who can’t hear you, or who can’t believe what you’re trying to tell them, then you will know that if you find me, I will have food, roof, and wood to share, and you will be welcome. This is not a new conviction for me. I first had this argument with college classmates in 1980, and many who thought that I was thoughtless and fanatical, have begun reconnecting with me to learn some of what I have to offer.

As far as those who want to take what I have, that is an even better reason to put the time in now to a secure and functional home. I can share what I have that will work, and because of that, I will plan to have association with a growing number of people who will all work together to fend off the roaming bands.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Geoff, my points are in reference to the initiative that motivates me toward making decisions about sustainable lifestyle choices, not about whether or not the Earth can sustain large populations of humans.

My point about per capita resource use is not about justifying, nor condemning a particular lifestyle, nor population density, but merely to point out, just as you reiterate, that population and lifestyle choices are not necessarily mutually inclusive. A small number of people using short sighted judgment are more destructive than large numbers for the sake of it. I absolutely agree that the carrying capacity of the Earth is overwhelmed by shear human numbers, but that fact has nothing to do with my individual choices about lifestyle.

The point about personal sovereignty has to do with being able to stand alone. To understand that even though there are forces in place, that were in place when you landed here, that you can find ways to sustain yourself and your community without blind allegiance to the conventional, or expected, and that what may seem like the only option because it is the only game in town does not have to limit your expression, and that as you take appraisal of all the things that the pundits and political leaders are ringing their hands over (those things you guys have been listing) you can free yourself from the masses as they slip closer and closer to the gaping hole with the huge sucking sound.

I realize that “social responsibility” has a huge grip on so many people, but how responsible are you going to be if you just slide into the hole with the masses. We have to learn about ourselves as Earth creatures with individual capabilities to survive with what we have in our immediate surroundings, and be able to allow those around us to fail without cutting our own throats and the eliminating the options for our children. The plant lets the dried leaves sluff off, and I am prepared to do that as well.

In the meantime, I will continue to build an infrastructure here that can do the best job that I think it can, to provide for my family, and as many as five others, into perpetuity, or at least as close as I can come up with based on my limited understanding, but working all the time closer to those energy sources limited to what I can make or grow myself. As heart-breaking as it is to see the way we have destroyed the Earth and have seriously limited future human existence, my responsibility is to my family, then to a small number of people in my immediate neighborhood, and then we’ll see after that.

Sustainability for me is about survival, and in some ways that can take on short term characteristics, but survival in the best sense has to be sustainable, or it doesn’t work. And thus survival is very personal, and in my mind is limited by outside influences, and weakened through efforts to save everyone else, but it is also unsuccessful if it is purely individual, so we each have to decide how big our community needs to be. Some want to be part of a very large group, others can be satisfied with a very small group.

I know that to be successful, I have to be part of a small group, and I make no apologies for that.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

jenjudkins;9418 wrote:

…..
OK, Ed, Larry and Jean…are you all up to do a ‘Getting Started’ panel of new teamsters for NEAPFD? I’ll email you all privately. Jen.

AWESOME!!!!

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I just don’t see population as an issue that plays into my decisions about off-grid living and sustainability. First of all high populations by themselves are not the problem, but how the community uses whatever resources are available, (ie. US uses 35 X resources per capita than people in countries like India). Secondly, I cannot affect population by myself, unless I opt out, which kind of defeats the purpose. And thirdly I have more positive affect on population by trying to set an example of how a family can use their resources and skills in a sustainable manner to the benefit of not just themselves, but also a neighborhood and surrounding community.

The fact that organisms have responses to reduced resources does not mean that they can pre-determine the need to enact those responses. The shutting down of those portions that require the greatest expense of energy are reflexive, and often lead to necrosis, and/or sluffing off. It will be no different for humans, or the human community as an organism. We can intellectualize the human experience all we want but we cannot avoid the realities of the Earth.

BF points out what I consider the biggest part of sustainability, personal sovereignty. There are, as I pointed out in other posts, many artificial power structures that strive to control our individual and shared lives. Although I find it somewhat entertaining to explore how and where they exist, I do not think it is reasonable to try to use those arguments to support a personal lifestyle change. First of all the evidence changes based on perspective, and those types of arguments are often used to try to convince other people that they should, or need to, make the same choices that you are for the same reason, which limits success based on how many others you can get to share your experience. Second as soon as your conspiracy theory is undermined, or loses luster compared to the difficulty of breaking the trend around you, then sustainability goes out the window like a bad habit.

When you learn to see yourself as a sovereign individual, with unalienable rights, and personal responsibility and capability to provide for yourself, at the same time participating fully in your community without having to swallow all the pre-constructed opportunities then you are on the road to sustainable living,…..in my mind.

My decisions are based on things like what can I put together right here, from what I have right here, in such a way that my kids,or others, can easily and successfully continue, and improve upon, and what things are doomed to drag me down, or will limit future commitments and opportunities. Global populations, economies, religions, environmental degradation, and injustice, all are intellectually compelling issues, but they are not contingencies in the sustainability of my day to day life.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I will just add that in comparison, I much prefer to be facing the animals to pick up and place the pole. The likelihood that the animals bolt toward a human facing them is much much less than with a person approaching them from behind, and in between them.

Furthermore by standing in front you merely need to step back a few steps to the side to let the bolting animals go by, and when in between you are stuck directly in front of the load if they move while hitched to it.

Hitching the chain to the load by stepping in behind the cattle has a couple of advantages. The animals are not hooked to the load while you are standing in front of it until you hook them, at which point you only have one step back out of the way, and if they should bolt when you step behind them, the pole will drop and they are free to move without the load attached.

In a similar way, I always use a choker chain for logging. I stop the cattle facing the log, attach the choker, then turn them around, and take the draw chain back with me to hook to the choker. This way I am not fooling around with trying to wrap the chain around a log with the animals connected, my draw chain is always the right length, and I don’t have to stand in front of the hitched log for more than a few moments.

Although I insist that my animals allow me to approach them from all angles including in between them, I never hitched them that way. I fact I could never see the advantage, and really see that more as a show stunt, such as 4-h showing how accepting their animals are. Working my animals logging for a living, I never saw the application, and as I work entirely by myself, felt that it would be very risky, and somewhat foolhardy.

Of course we can never be completely free from risk, and each of us make our own determination what feels right and I know that many highly respected ox teamsters hitch by going between the animals so ……..

Carl

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