Mountain Lane Homesteaders

Pole gathering Day 2:

Back up in the woods only better prepared this time. We were ready. I had been appointed kubota driver.

At the beginning of the day I was terrified and couldn't believe Sam really thought I was going to drive that thing. Sam had been given precisely one lesson on this contraption and had never actually driven it himself yet there he was giving me instructions! He informed me of what all the levers and such were suppose to do and then told me, "Okay, now turn it on." "No." Patient waiting and funny smile. "Turn it on.......". "NO!" (higher pitch than the first time). More smiles while he waited for me to get my nerve up. When I finally agreed to turn it on we had to go through the same conversation each time he wanted me to try each new lever! By the end of the day I was whipping around with no troubles at all and only one teensy little headlight poked out as a casualty to my learning.

This time the routine was that once the tree was cut and bucked (delimbed), Sam and Stan would get the cable all hooked up with one end attached to the back of the kubota and one end wrapped around the tree to pull it out of the woods. Sam was positioned near the base of the tree, Stan was on the road so he could see each one of us. I would sit on the tractor waiting for the hand signals to tell me when to start pulling. Since my back was always to Stan one of the kids would ride on the side of the tractor facing backwards to relate the hand signals to me. The hand signals worked for stopping or starting but since the trees would get hung up on branches or brambles we discovered that there were a lot of directions to "Go 4 feet forward" "STOP!" "Go 2 feet back." "Okay, go 4 feet forward" "STOP"! I don't remember how we happened to have our walkie talkies up there but it was a good thing we did. Eventually we got down a pretty clear system of beeps that Stan was using to communicate the stops and starts and then he could just tell me the forward/backward feet he wanted me to go.

This method worked like a charm until the time when Stan and Sam happened to switch places. I was doing my thing you know, forward.....backward........forward......and then all of a sudden Sam SCREAMS into the walkie talkie, "STOOOOOOOP!" Seeing as how I had not been given the afore mentioned beep that meant stop I slammed the tractor to a stand still and swung around to confront Sam who must surely have been going to accuse me of not following directions even though I had NOT received the stop signal. You know, Sam was quite a few feet away but somehow he managed to get the jist of my mood pretty quick. He was very quiet when he announced that he hadn't known which button Stan was using for the "stop beep". So, with my big rig handling skills not in question, we managed to come out of that moment without any furthur marital discord!

Once a tree was successfully pulled onto the road it would be cut according to the 7" rule and then we would use the forks of the tractor to lift the logs and poles onto the back of the flatbed trailer. This was another lesson in marriage communication as I was to interpret all sorts of hand twisting motions to know whether they wanted me to tip the forks forward and back or move them higher or lower according to how they were trying to position the logs on the trailer.

At one point I was in process of getting the tractor into position to lower a full load of logs onto the trailer while Sam and Stan were repositioning one of the long poles. All of a sudden over the sound of the tractor I heard a loud shout. I raised the load of logs out of my line of vision so I could see the guys and there was Stan.......lying on the ground UNDERNEATH the pole. I jumped off the tractor to race in that direction and Sam was shouting to me to get the camera. As I could hear laughing I figured there had been no major injuries so I grabbed the camera and ran to take a photo of the moment.

Have you ever had the experience of working together with 2 brothers that are only 15 months apart? How about in the woods, with chainsaws and big equipment? Let's just say that the phrase that was coined during this experience was a determined, "Just let me do my THING!" So somehow, while "doing their thing" Stan ends up underneath a long and HEAVY pole while his younger brother is standing there laughing. And how's this for sobering. Uncle Stan had just minutes before asked our son Caleb to move aside a log that was lying in the road. For "some reason" Caleb had not gotten it done and it was that log laying there that kept the pole just high enough up that it didn't completely squash Stan. Caleb has enjoyed telling us that he was glad he had not obeyed!

At some point during the day, our church pastor (a former logger I might add), made it a point to come up and see how we were doing.  We were feeling much more successful on our second day out having gotten something like 17 poles compared to 7 from the day before. However, if you do the math, the numbers did not look good for us to get out all 100 poles by the end of Sam's week off from work. Pastor Jim said he would see what he could do about getting some guys to come up and help out the next day.

Once our trailer was all loaded up (and the logs were secured this time!) we traveled back down the mountain to go take them all off the trailer and stack them in the wood yard. This didn't take quite as long as getting them onto the trailer but we were pretty tired by this point and backs were giving out. It was good to be getting finished for another day.   

A hot pot of tea was calling.  Time to get home and rest up for the grand finale of the pole harvest!