[mitchmaine]

richard,
very sorry to hear about your dog. but i think you did the right thing with your son. if he grows up knowing you’ll never lie to him, good or bad, then he’ll have someone he can always count on. you.
good luck, mitch

[mitchmaine]

Hi russel,
I haven’t read any of those books yet, but the book “fields of home” was written about his stay with his grandfather tom gould , on his farm about a mile and a half up the road from here. Tom goulds son frank wrote stories about the same farm called “ maine man in the making” which I’ve read, and frank goulds son john gould was a writer too. John gould and my dad went to school together, class of “28. very good reading. They all wrote stories about that farm and times back then. Franks stories were about the 1890’s. Ralph moodys time on the farm might have been around 1915, and John goulds stories were written about things in the twenties through the 50’s, and it kinda fun to hear stoties about local places any try and see it through their eyes and realize all the changes in the meantime.
I have heard about “fields of home” forever and finally got a friend to lend me his copy soon as he can lay his hands on it…………………..waiting.

Thanks, mitch

[mitchmaine]

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A picture of our sugarhouse in the snow and the paper wasps smart enough to build their nest high. I should have known.
We started sugaring as a way to make it through and give us something to do during mud season. But sugaring has a mind of its own and becomes an addiction and soon takes over the spring of your life.
One benefit of sugaring, is that right around now when you might start going crazy from the weather, you get thinking about sap running. Looking for sapsickles. And you might start getting your buckets ready. Or boiling up some spiles or just cleaning up the sugarhouse. Then slowly but surely you get going and then it lets loose and your running around like a headless chicken and when you finally stop for a breath and the seasons over, you look down and the ground is bare and the crocuses are bloomin and its over. And you never noticed.

[mitchmaine]

bradley,
sometimes, usually even, on a bobsled, the evener hooks to a hook that turns and runs down under the roll and forward bolting through the base of the pole. your hitch actually wraps around the roll, giving a short strong hitch. your pole only needs to be ten and a half or eleven feet. puts the horses right up under the load. more manuverable, and better draft.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

hi dan, farm museums and old barns here in maine have what they called “bog shoes”.
they were used for cutting marsh hay off the saltmarshes down on the coast. kept the horses from punching through the thin root system into the mud. they look just like your snowshoes. never heard of snowshoes, even though we have alot more snow than salt bogs. wonder if the historians got it right?
they said it took a certain knack the horse had to develop to move freely without clipping themselves.

[mitchmaine]

important thing you just said there, carl. is stopping in a good spot.
anyone can tie a knot. the secret of a good knot tier is being able to untie it. especially when you need to.
same with yarding in deep snow. starting is the toughest job. once you get it going its a bit easier. but stopping them where you have a good chance is key. mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey george, we’re in sugar snow, and if it’s any consolation, it takes the rear ends out of skidders too, so looks like it’s just as tough for all concerned. the demand for wood might increase. this snow/rain mix tonight might knock it down and pack it a little. there really is nothing to this snow so when it warms a little it should go pretty fast. but…………i never had any real plan on how to deal with this stuff except keep bullin’ if you want to. hard on horses, people and gear. good luck with it. mitch

[mitchmaine]

good idea. much better than the complicated mess i was working on. thanks, both.

[mitchmaine]

anyone out there worked a single horse in shafts to a scoot? if so, how were the shafts connected to the scoot? or did you even use shafts? in which case, what did you do for holdbacks?

mitch

[mitchmaine]

no one here for leather lines?? my harness is a hodgepodge of bio-beta-nylon. i’ve changed over for all the reasons. cheap, light and so on. but i couldn’t stand the lines. i’ve had this one set of team lines for ever and they came used and look it. i just like the feel of leather lines in my hands.

[mitchmaine]

the mailman is delivering our mail to the birdhouse on top of the barn. we are a ways off the road so it don’t matter if the horses get out too far. they stay where the hay is. sounds like we are all in this one together. i might be out of the woods for a bit, but i have to keep pounding down the roads for sugaring. much more snow and i might have to give that one up.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

a few years back, they sunk some natural gas wells off sable island up off the maritimes, and carved a 100’swath 400 miles across the state of maine (pipeline) on their way to montreal and boston.
nobody got a chance to complain. they were paid peanuts for the easement. they weren’t allowed to cut their own wood on the rightofway. and it was an enviornmental disaster. i know cause they missed my farm by a mile or two, but not my friends and neighbors. they drug an oil truch up the rightofway through mud and stumps to fuel an excavator and ripped off a fitting on the truck and dumped 500 gallons of number two on the ground.
but…”don’t worry, we have some of our best men working on it now.”

[mitchmaine]

hi muletrack, i always wondered the same thing about a pole. lot of torque there swinging any weight on 8′ fixed runners. act of faith i guess, cause it always seems to work.
the shafts came back and wrapped with a steel strap around a steel rod passing from the nose of each runner. the draft ran back to the first bunk or crossmember of the sled so the shafts were only for steering and holdback. new steel shafts run back to a centered peice of square tubing bolted into a peice of larger steel. it seems to me that the older method exerted more leverage on the sled while turning, but i’m no engineer. on dry ground with runners, you don’t really need shafts. loose rigging is fine. welcome to the mix.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

Carl,
I like your story and its clear that you take great care and pride in your work. I also hear your frustration and pain.

I have a story to share. Years ago, I took great pride in the work I did in the woods. It takes time to do good work with no economic incentive at all. No one paid you then to do a good job. Pulp is pulp and logs are logs, worth not a penny more or less how you cut it.

Then along comes this insurance salesman with a plan. $500. and a certificate and we call ourselves professional loggers. The first to buy in, in my opinion, were the roughest ones of all. But they got the gold star and the certificate and it was still a bunch of bullshit, but landowners bought into it and the papercompanies bought in and gave it some teeth, and before long I was the one out on the street. All the hard extra work meant nothing. So now, cpl is the industry standard, has turned itself around to mean something, but it wasn’t always that way.

Perhaps your story may have a good ending. They are clearly not the same tale at all and you can punch all the holes you want in them, but I hear the tone in your voice and understand the frustration when the system comes in without your invitation to fix things.

Hope you find some peace there. I kept cutting, finding “creative” ways to sell wood, but they got around to plugging up the holes till I couldn’t fit in. my guess is the same thing will happen here too.

Good luck with it and best wishes, mitch

[mitchmaine]

hi russel, if you go to a art supply store and find a tube of yellow earth or yellow ochre paint, thats your color. matchin that with machine paint might be tough although rustoleum has one close.

mitch

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