Bough Cutting and Traces of Snow

  We have talked about cutting balsam boughs for the local wreath making business for a few years now and finally actually did it this year.  Of course, we got a late start, so only made a few loads (so far), but have discovered that it is a bit of work to get full loads, but it is good outdoors work that you can do at a pace you set yourself.  Once you know what you are looking for (telling balsam apart from other kinds of pine), and find a good spot with a good grouping of trees, its not too bad.  After a couple days of cutting, you do start to see balsam in your dreams and you look for balsam automatically when you are just out driving around or running dogs, but its some extra money that we can, of course, always use.  We've been bringing the two best behaved (stay close and always listen when called) little house dogs, Brute and Spike, along-good exercise and a fun time for them.  We tried taking Thunder, our main leader/house husky, with, but he likes porcupines too much, having found one on each of the two days we took him out, and naturally getting a noseful of quills both times!

Our second load.

Our next (last) load-a bit bigger.  You can see our "helpers"-Brute and Spike sitting on top. 

Sometimes there's neat stuff out in the woods-this is an old Chevy truck that had a homemade camper on it.  probably a hunting camp a long time ago...

A porcupine calls the camper home now-you can kinda see him here.  He scurried underneath before a good pic could be taken.

The line we had to wait in to sell the boughs on Halloween.

  In other news...we are finally starting to see traces of snow occasionally.

This pic was taken during our first 20 miler of the season on Thursday (Nov. 1st).

  So the countdown to sleds has begun!  Bring on the snow!  We're always hopeful for the 1st of December...


An interesting piece of machinery we've seen twice now on our runs that we've been doing in Hurley, Wisconsin, which has been a nice area to get longer runs in with the truck. Its some kind of trimmer that the utility company uses.  The photo sucks, because it was too close to get a full picture of, but you can see the cutting blade on the end of its telescoping arm.

If we ever have a Zombie Apocalypse, I want this machine!