1/28-30/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at noon. It was a balmy 35 degrees and there was less snow on the ground than last week. It looked like it had been rained on quite a bit. The driveway had been scooped out so there must have been quite a bit of new snow before the rain. The trails were all okay to walk on with boots so I didn't have to spend time making trails.

After I moved in, I carried the planks and 1x2s I had used for moving Gus back up to the building. Then I tried out my new scriber after fitting it with a new pen. It worked slick and fast. Since this device will accumulate errors, I'd better use it only for every other cut and use the string method for the others. Not that it will make much difference, though, because I only have four or five ripping cuts left to do.

After the scribing, I ripped the last cut on that log and got two planks. The cut went pretty well, but not as well as that one record-breaking cut two weeks ago. I skidded both planks down to the gwiz station before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday, it snowed all day. I changed the chain on Mother Sow back to the cross-cut chain in order to buck another log. The ripping chain is wearing so close to the end that I don't want to wear it out any more than I have to.

I dug the next 10 feet of the log out from under the snow. Where I needed to cut, it was pretty close to the ground so I got a spade and dug the dirt out from under the log to keep the chain from going into the dirt. Then I bucked the log. The diameter of the log was bigger than the length of the bar so I had to cut from both sides of the log. This is the last log I will harvest from that big tree. There is about 5 or 6 feet of the butt left but I don't think I will use it for anything.

Next I rigged up chains and two tandem come-alongs and pulled the log over to the ripping station. I was wearing a raincoat but not rain pants so I got soaking wet. My pants were soaked from water running off the jacket, and my shirt was soaked from sweating on the inside. It wasn't bad while I was working hard cranking the come-alongs, but by the end of the day, when the log was finally rolled up on the rack at the ripping station, I started getting cold. It felt great to go into the warm trailer to dry off, wash up, and get warmed up. Five inches of new wet snow had accumulated by the end of the day.

On Thursday morning, there was no new snow but it was lightly raining instead. That made clumps of wet snow come crashing down out of the trees most of the morning. I decided I didn't want to be working in the woods so I decided to do some gwizzing. First I changed the chain on Mother Sow back to the ripping chain, and then I gwizzed 5 planks. They really look beautiful. The cuts have been better recently and my gwizzing technique is getting better so the planks look really nice if I do say so myself. I stacked the planks at the end of the porch just under the anchor in the F3 purlin anchor where I will attach the winch cable. I didn't see any jays all week. I left for home at about 1:00.