Beaver wood

The beaver tree I last Bliped on 30 December 2013 finally succumbed to the chainsaw as the lack of a winter had not felled it as the beavers had planned. However they did have the last laugh - despite making all the cuts so that the tree fell on the field, a last second puff of wind blow it over in the direction of the river, exactly as the beavers had planned! It had to be pulled out with lots of effort & additional work.

The tree belongs to MrM, who used to be a farmer but gave up a few years ago. He still has much of the land but has sold off his modern tractors & equipment. We rent a field from him and he supplied a field for many years from which we made our hay. He phoned at lunchtime to ask if we needed firewood at a good price. Wasn't too keen as it's poplar with the worst volume/heat value ratio of all native trees, requiring twice as much quantity (=work) as oak or beech. In the end agreed to take a trailer load and drove over.

Well I guess the sawing & splitting will keep me out of trouble for a day or two and as they say, you do get warm several times when making firewood. Today at 17:57 Spring arrived officially, our Christmas cactus is just coming in to bloom and it might snow on Sunday. Today was simply wonderful, driving at full speed on the open tractor wearing a T-shirt! OK so full speed is only 24kmh but that is official too. Recently the parish seems to have invested in an electronic/radar speed warning board that gets moved around the village. Today I got a Smiley and the flashing LED's showed the magic 24 and that with (empty) trailer and raised, drag coefficient robbing, shovel on the front loader. Might try tomorrow without any attached equipment and hope for a following wind.