[mitchmaine]

hey guys, this is one book you might not want to judge by its cover. it appeared under our christmas tree this year. its kinda interesting if you like lists. i liked the book and you may too. its the summary of logging on the north western maine in the late 1930’s. counts every apple and potato it took to cut 35,000 cord of rough (not peeled) pulpwood. i don’t want to give away the end. you might have to read between the lines but there is a good story in there.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

great photos scott. tells a good story. very glad to have got a chance to meet you.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

great looking rig donn. thanks for the pictures.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

Hey miles,
Your story reminds me of years ago at Cumberland fair. They had a steer named blackjack, “the worlds biggest steer”. Don’t know about that he was just Holstein, young and big. They had him in a little tent in a fence and he looked huge in that tent. Cost a quarter to see him. They had the sign saying how big he was, the only thing I remember was he made 11,000 hamburgers. Anyway, we were there all week with animals, so I went back over when they were breaking down and there he was with no tent. Just staked to the same pipe in the ground by a nosering calmly chewing his cud. His owner was backing a truck up with a ramp just in front of him. He got out, snapped his nosering into an electric winch hooked to the headboard of the truck and pushed the button. He was talking to me like nothing was going on, and the cable shortened up taking a strain on blackjack. Blackjack stiffened up and dug in and slid a little til he got his footing and the truck started coming back, either way the two were coming together. The steer assumed your same yoga position with his nose right on the ramp. Then for a moment nothing was moving and the cable started to stretch a bit. Then finally, blackjack launched himself up into the truckbody with the biggest crash you ever heard, got to his feet and went back to calmly chewing away. The owner never batted an eye, just kept up his calm talk about the weather or something. Part of the show I guess, but I think I got my fifty cents worth. I really liked your story, cause I could see it all happening. Thanks again, and hope your new year is a good one.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

thanks carl

[mitchmaine]

hey carl, i have been looking at all or most of the pictures of your bobsled, but can’t make out how you bind the logs down. could you give a brief description?

mitch

[mitchmaine]

Thank you geoff, for posting this site. I’ve been back to it a few times hatchin a plan. I’ve never had much luck with steel sleds and don’t lean that way anymore, but I’m wondering about taking wooden runners with steel shoes and welding up some steel bunks that clamp and bolt through the runners. And making the rolls up out of steel as well. Basically, a steel sled with wooden runners and pole.
If anyone has had experience doing this, good or bad, or has in idea, let me know, please, so I can make adjustments.
Thanks , and merry Christmas.

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, your catalog shows a set of eveners in the back pages that look like a photo someone sent in to small farm journal back aways. no one seemed to have a good idea what they were. but if i remember, the photo looked just like that set in your catalog.

andy mcevoy (dap) was over yesterday and we were talking about this book we found filled with stats and columns of figures from a 1939-1940 pulp cut here in northern maine. pulp hooks cost 10 cents, collars were $6. they cut from sept. through jan. 1st. three man crews with axes and pulp saws cytting 4-5 cord each day. enough men to pile up 35,000 cord. took 43,500 pounds of potatos and 6500 lb. of apples. an axe was $1.05 and the handle cost 30 cents. not that long ago.

merry christmas, mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey mark, if your young horse is working that hard, you are probably right in the first place to give him a little leverage. and that evener of carls looks like a great rig. leave the evener centered on the load and let the horses in or out. print out that photo and go visit your local welder.

merry christmas, mitch

[mitchmaine]

mark, i might be off the thread here. i know this wasn’t your question, but i have a horse, getting older, able, but a half a step behind the others now. she’s 20 this spring. shes behind whoever you hook her with. so i buck or check the leader back to her heel chain. a soft peice of rope from the leaders halter a little slack to the trace chain of the slower horse, and instead of punishing the worker, cause she’s a worker, just a little slower, the leader comes up against the strain on his halter and backs off a step. in a way, molly holds back the quicker horse and i take a break.
nice evener, carl. that looks like it’ll stand anything. it looks like it was made for or by a puller. it has the strap loops for the two men to help hook in the pulling ring. and i see what you mean by 1/2 inch. is that two rows of 1″ holes offset? how much ($)?
a friend of mine said everything has a price.

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, that paint on the stump is a deterant to wood thiefs. reminds the forester which trees he painted after they are gone.
you and carl are right about the pace of horse logging. seems strange but when i cut with the horses i go much slower. take my time and am much more careful. put me up on a skidder seat where i can cut twice as much wood and i try and cut four times as much. never could figure that one.

[mitchmaine]

Tim, Scott, I got a question. Maybe a notion. They had a saying that you left a piece of you in the woods evry year, and if you stayed long enough it took the whole of you.
I haven’t cut much wood in the past 15 years but I did full time for the twenty years before that, and lots of my friends and neighbors had some pretty bad scrapes and one died in the woods. I didn’t do anything different than them, but I had better luck.
The maine forest service tells me that the woods is much safer now to work in, new felling practices and awarenerss mostly. And I believe that totally. BUT, I also think that most woods workers now are in protective cabs and not in so much danger. The numbers of choppers using saws is way, way less. I’m not trying to say that the new methods aren’t effective. Just the opposite. BUT, I am trying to say that horse loggers are out there. With not much of a safety net. And shouldn’t get lulled into thinking that its that safe, cause stuff happens. Like kamakasi porcupines. We had an ice storm here 12 years ago that broke off the tops of half the wood around here and its been raining wood ever since. Stuff like that you just can’t prepare for. So expect the unexpected, keep looking up and try and stay safe out there. You guys have cut enough to know what I mean, but its always good to keep saying it. Right?

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, i weas cutting a pine and hemlock grove once picking through the pine. the pine was older and taller wood and you couldn’t really see the tops well. i cut this big one and stepped back as it fell and pow, i got hit by a falling porcupine. don’t know if i brushed him out or if he just baled but he got me good in the left shoulder and drove me right to the ground. we were in about two feet of soft snow and he made it fine. he came out of the snow like a little bulldozer heading off. i was wearing a bunch of clothes so i didn’t get quilled to bad but it took months to get over that whack. you could have told me it was an anvil and i would have beleived you. good advice. keep looking up. thanks for the reminder.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

i met les barden at this years neapfd and he is just great. what a fine man. i’d listen to anything he had to say about that harness.
when i was scrounging around the country side looking for harness and so on. old guys would load me up with tons of trees, eveners, yokes, bridles and so on. i still have a bunch of that old stuff. one thing that seemed to come with dring harness was these heel chains that i never seem to see anymore. the trees had solid rings in them and the heel chains hooked to the tugs by the bitter end and passed through the rings on the single trees and came back and hooked back into the heel chain with this clevis ring so it was adjustable and had no extra chain slapping around. i had mountains of it and even used it for a while, but if you broke one (and you could in the woods) you had to have one like it to keep going, so i changed to straight chain. can’t seem to find any left around. oh well, snows falling and hope to get in the woods after new years. good luck out there.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey john, find me a farm tool or some machine that wasn’t invented or improved on by a scotsman. you might find a few but the other list will be longer. the three point hitch on henry fords tractor was invented by harry fergusen.
sounds and looks like you will have a white christmas over there. best wishes and happy christmas. mitch and penny

[Author]

Posts