Saturday Feb. 10, 2018 through Tuesday Feb. 13, 2018

If we are not ready to go on time, it is not because we didn't try.

There is a really pretty snow pack in the woods. This picture was taken on Saturday the 10th.

Friday evening Feb. 9th, Brad and Bob cut yet another tree for

the floor joist of the loft.

This is one of our "old faithful" maple trees,....Bob says this tree has many pics on the blog. He says that this is one of the first trees that we tried putting 3 single taps on instead of 2 doubles increasing our sap collection.

Below is the inside cut of the above tree. The guys have gotten a little soft hearted, the log below was supposed to be a floor joist, seemed like the grain was too cool to do that so plans changed.

 

Saturday brought both time and help to work on the loft some more. Most of this day was spent in planning, measuring and engineering the loft. Evan , Brad and Bob worked on that while Kelsey and Gerri did some cleaning in the camp. Deep cleaning, the kind that involves a shovel, a large magnet, a trash dumpster and small fire. Dale and Karen came to visit after Kelsey and Evan headed back to Mansfield.

Bob contacted friend Rob Wilson to shed some light on the "dark ring". He thinks this is either wind shake that created the dark ring OR Bob counted back the rings, the dark ring would land about 1988 (major drought). Either way a pretty cool looking cross section! This 23 inch log turned into only 12 inches of usable log. the black layer went from the ground to the first crotch which was 30 feet. Win some, lose some.

Saturday am they got the vertical beams set in place and began to place the joists by late afternoon.

It was plenty cold and a bit breezy today. Today's fun fact .....the out house door is frozen shut. Bad situation!

 Sunday the guys set the joists and cut up a couple more logs to make planking for the top of the roof. Dale came over and helped Bob put up about half of the decking on Tuesday late afternoon. We marvel at this picture.....doesn't Wally (our tracker in the corner) look small!

Bob is like a small child who cannot wait to see what the new tank will look like, he lifted the tank up with the forklift and Gerri crawled up and took pics so he could see the approximate size of the space we have on each side.

The woods is beginning to come alive. Gerri saw a squirrel on Saturday afternoon. There are bunny tracks everywhere.

More fun to follow this week we are certain!