Burn Pile

We have been NEEDING to cut some of our trees down at my parents house for years.  Since 2012, we've had some really bad wind storms that have knocked over trees and a horrible ice storm that broke several of our trees.  A lot of those have died since then and they needed to go.  Last year dad bought a wood splitter for $100 from some guy in Rainier.  It has made the work splitting it really easy since we did it the old fashioned way with an axe.

A few months ago, we fell some of the larger, more dangerous, ones in the backyard.  A lot of them have been dead since that ice storm.  Every time we had a wind storm we all go anxiety.  You never knew which one was going to give up and fall.  Before today, mom and dad fell trees three other times.  If you've ever cut down a tree it makes a giant mess.  Since it's rained off and on since April we didn't get to do much over the weekends.  No one really wants to do work outside when it's raining.  The mess sat for a while.  Dad went out there every once and a while and put stuff into piles.

We all got organize and planned to burn a lot of stuff and we chose today to do it.  Doug was here figuring out car stuff and stayed the whole weekend.  Ben and I headed over to the house to help burn stuff.  Mom and dad recently bought a used truck.  That made it way easier to move piles to the burn pile.

We got there during the late morning and needed to know where he wanted us to start.  He told us to drive the truck over to the piles near the back yard driveway.  There were two piles and there was a lot of branches.  At one point Ben grabbed a huge weird looking stump log thingy and slipped.  He tried to catch himself and smashed his finger between a rock and the stump.  It swelled up fast.  Mom gave him an ice pack and he chilled for a bit.

We loaded and unloaded at least three full truck loads of branches from the back.  From the front I think we loaded up two loads.  We burned a lot of stuff.  A lot.

We ended up getting a butt ton of wood out of at least five trees.  Some of it we took over to Grandma's house and stacked it in her sheds to season before we burn it this winter and we took some over to Grammie and Grandpa's house and stacked it on their pallets.

Mom made us some food on the BBQ for dinner and we relaxed a bit before heading back home to get some stuff done there.  We all were going to be sore the next day.  Good thing we did it on a Saturday instead of a Sunday.

I know more trees will have to come down but we will have to do it in sections or it will get overwhelming.  At least they will have firewood for a while right?

Next Adventure:  World's Largest Rubber Ducky, Disc Golf and Bon Fire Game Night