Tony’s Farm

We loaded all our gear in Tony’s dads truck and my truck and trailer. Sticking to tradition we stopped at the Cameron McDonalds for dinner and then finished the drive to the farm. There was no cutting or splitting to do in the dark but we were pretty busy getting ready for Saturday by moving the compressor, airing up tractor tires and then sharpening chain saws, drinking Natty and watching the Hangover on TV.

We were busy enough to sink a nail into my truck tire too.

We were in a barn house that was still being built and for maximum warmth we slept in the trailer inside the barn w/ space heaters running.

In the morning we got right to work. We had premade breakfast sandwiches microwaved and then started cutting stuff down. We started with this limb that looked like it could smash this old house.

It did not.

There were trees all over the farm that needed cut and we quickly developed a pretty solid plan to cut them them down.

Wrap up the trunk with some chain and drag it to the brush pile with the tractor.

cut all the brush off and toss it into the pile.

Then drag the trunk to the splitting area. Around 1 in the afternoon we had worked our buts off repeating this process and had a good brush pile and a nice selection of trunks and large branches. We ate several helpings of crock pot chili and then got back to work. With a little trouble we got the fire going and then cut all the trunks and branches into rounds and tore through the rounds with the splitting mauls.

While this was going on the fire got a bit out of control and we rushed over to stomp it back into shape. Several times for the rest of the day Tony pushed it back into a tight pile.

Sorry I am out of pictures. Oh except for these 2 showing off how nice the new place is looking.

After splitting everything we had cut we filled Tony’s truck and my truck and trailer and then stacked the rest. The stacking was a bit like torture because we were tired and hungry and it was getting dark and our arms and backs were done.

Once it was all stacked we debated where to cook dinner and put stuff away and as the last of our sunlight went away we swapped my tire w/ the nail in it for my spare. The we decided the least hassle was to cook on our bonfire so we brought all the dinner stuff from the house and got burgers, sausage and fries going.

It had been too long since I had home made fries and they were awesome. We ate and had a beer and sat around the warm fire for quite a while. We thought playoff football was on tv so headed up to watch and ended up having the day wrong and watching MMA fights instead. We sat in our sleeping bags in chairs around the tv and I drifted in and out of sleep in front of the tv before bed.

We were pretty well packed up so the morning went quick, we postponed any dinner until we got to the Cameron McDonald’s. However we didn’t make it that far, On one of the little rural highways on the way I heard a crash and saw my wheel bouncing down the road next to me. I thought the trailer had lost a wheel at first but quickly realized none of us had tightened the spare wheel down after taking it off the jack.  I was headed down a hill and as I laid on the break and horn I watched the wheel bounce along in the opposite shoulder then cross the highway, bounce down a hill, hit a barn and fly into the woods.

I think the truckload of wood and trailer load of wood helped to keep me pushed down and into the road and luckily everything stayed straight and in my lane. I put on the brakes and flashers and ran down the hill and into the woods for my wheel. As I was coming back up Tony and Jon had come back to check on me. Also the guy who saw me running through his yard with the wheel came over. He loaned us a jack and we got busy moving all the wood out of the truck and onto the shoulder and moving all the gear out of the back seat so I could get to jack tools. We quickly realized we were missing the 6 lug nuts and the posts they go on were pretty stripped. Tony took a lug nut off one of the other wheels and drove to Cameron for more. Jon got the drum back on the breaks and we stole lug nuts from other wheels making sure all wheels had 4. We double checked the tightness of everything then Jon took the jack back and I loaded the bed.

The guy told him there was a dent in his barn and all the tools from that side of the barn were knocked into the floor but it was okay. We slowly drove the truck and trailer on back roads into Cameron and met up with Tony at McDonald’s. We replaced all the missing lug nuts, double checked tightness again and drove it all home on the highway.

This last weekend I replaced the back breaks, looked for any unseen damage, plugged the tire, replaced the posts and the new lug nuts that had gotten stripped from the previously stripped posts.

Good as new.