Bushman Acre Updates

The day has come folks for me to say goodbye.......to a cold house!  Heck yeah!  The temperature finally dropped enough to give the new wood stove a couple of nights of burning

Last night when I got home it was 62 in the house.  I fired the stove up and within a couple hours the house was up to 72.  It was very warm.  So warm I didn't even put anymore wood on the fire.  I started it with 5 pieces and only added two more and the last one went in at 8:30 pm.  When I got up this morning it was 70 in the house and there were a couple small, glowing coals left in the bottom of the stove.  I added a piece of paper and two small logs and blew a little air at it and 'poof' back to life it came.  So far I am pleased with its performance.

Alas all things are never just good.  There is always a catch.  This time it was one of the worst.  I had made a deal with a guy to trade the wood stove for labor.  Well he is down from Alaska for his fall hunting.
Unfortunately we never discussed actual work/dollar value etc.  So he dropped the bomb on me last Saturday morning.  I had to haul 22 face cord of firewood rounds out of the woods and split and stack them.
That is a lot of wood.  176 foot long, stacked 4 foot high.  Man I was not happy.  I did not think that was fair at all but my dumbass already had the stove installed in the house.  Up shitz creek without a paddle I was.  That guy gave me the wood allright.  So Saturday morning I started hauling it out of the woods via tractor and trailer.  I couldn't split it right away because the splitter was in use elsewheres so I had to stockpile it.

The pile pictured above is less than half of what I stockpiled that day.  I didn't take a picture at the end because my hands were shaking so bad and I might have vomited if I looked at that pile one more time.
I started at 8 am and finished at 6pm  I stopped once for a sandwich.  The average round weighed in at 60 lbs or so.   The joyous part was I still had to split and stack it all.  I wasn't even sure if I had enough stockpiled to reach my exorbitant sum of 22 face cord.
Sunday rolled around and my step son Joe was going to help me.  He had no idea what he was in for and as a matter of fact I haven't seen or heard from him since.  Ooops!
We split and stacked that entire pile and finished at 5pm Sunday night.  Grand Total of 16 face cord.  Mother Fuc&%!!!!!!!!!!!

The worst part was picking all those pieces up three times.  Once to load them in the trailer, once to unload them from the trailer and once again to get them up on the splitter.  If Joe hadn't helped I may have........well I'll leave that to your imagination.  I have to go back this weekend and finish.  Then I'm gonna give that guy the bird and peel out in his driveway!

I finished cleaning and harvesting the garden as well.  Got a heck of a last pick on the peppers.

Also had another addition to the farm.  Honey Bees!

My friend needed a new place to winter his bees so I offered up the farm as a winter retreat for these little winged guys!

The chickens and the 2 ducks are getting along just fine.  Yes 2 ducks.  I had to get Louie a girlfriend.  Say hello to LuLu!

It has been very tiring around here .  I need to just get all this crap done so I can go hunting and relax and enjoy fall!

I'll see ya later,

-Bushman