Cabin Walls

A compendium of photographs showing our latest progress on the small cabin.  Slowly we are "drying in" the structure.  Application of the OSB wall sheathing goes over all wall openings and then we'll come back later to make the cut-outs for the windows and doors.  Our goal is to have as little scrap as possible leftover so we are patch-working some areas of the walls with smaller pieces of the sheathing which means more cutting (time consuming!) and gaps but it is going to be covered anyway with moisture barrier house wrap and exterior wall coverings anyway.

Logging with the Farmi

With cold, but dry weather over the weekend it made for ideal conditions to do some tree clearing for the homesite.  This will take a number of weekends to complete and we are hoping to have this done before the trees bud.  Fortunately we have some labor saving machinery to help make this adventure more productive and quite a bit safer than when we cleared the driveway.  Any trees that get hung up in a fall we can put the winch on it and pull it down with relative ease from a distance.  When we did the driveway we had to hook up a come-along winch (hand powered) with a rope.  The tractor powered winch will easily pull 3-4 logs at a time from the forest up to the skid plate of the winch where I can then latch them and drag them up to the wood shed area where we limb, buck and split them into firewood.

Chainsaw Accident Near Miss!

We started in on the homesite clearing this weekend.  Temperature was a comfortable 30 degree fahrenheit, sunny with variable wind conditions.  A decent day for sawyering. However since it's been almost a year since I was last felling trees I was a little out of practice but still full of confidence - a recipe for mistakes and potential injury!  Chainsaws are very dangerous machines that require full concentration and attention to proper protocols.  I had just finished notching an 8" diameter ash, completed the back cut to drop the tree and moved a safe distance away for the fall.  At that point I brought the saw across my thigh to rest it there and accidentally snagged the first inch or two of the chain bar on my thigh...thank goodness for my safety chaps!!  The chain cut the outer fabric of the chaps and caught the microfiber mat causing it to bind and slow the chain speed almost to a stop.  This little mishap was a bold reminder of how important it is to ALWAYS wear your PPE!!