Woodworking 101 and My Escape to New Hampshire

Me on my tractor!

In case you haven’t heard me mention it before…..I chucked my entire life at the age of 52......4 grown kids and a husband of 31 years (actually we chucked each other) when I ran off to build a log cabin in the mountains of New Hampshire. I also kind of chucked my mom who was reasonably happy with lots of friends in a posh retirement community that closely resembled a country club.  In my defense I should mention that I did ask her if she wanted to come along with me. Whereupon she looked at me as if I had sprouted two heads. 

I suppose I should clarify what building a log cabin really meant in my case.  No, it did not mean that I personally chopped down a bunch of trees and turned them into hand hewn logs.  I hired the first company listed in the local New Hampshire phone book by the name of Crockett Log Homes (sounded pretty darn woodsy to me) and Jeff, a rugged looking bearded mountain guy helped me pick out a cabin plan. With a several modifications it became and still is to this day their model named “The Holly!”  I kid you not!!! http://www.crockettloghomes.com/holly-log-home.html

As I mentioned in a previous post, I spent that first winter in a wobbly, one room stilt house with no running water and a small wood stove for heat while my cabin was being built.  The cabin construction was like watching giant Lincoln Logs being stacked together, and I was beside myself with excitement to move in when they finished in February.  It had been a very snowy winter.  The day before moving day a blizzard dumped 3 more feet of snow just when I needed to drive to the nearest airport which was several little states away in Massachusetts to pick up my moving crew. 

Several of my grown kids and their friends were flying out to help me move my furniture from storage and into my cabin.  My new/used 4 wheel drive truck had inconveniently decided not to start buried in snow in my driveway.  I dug a tunnel down through the snow, rolled over on my back and shimmied underneath it in order to hit the starter and anything that remotely looked like it with a hammer, while receiving these instructions on my cell phone from a mechanic friend back in Wisconsin.  Nice idea but no luck!  My helpers had to stay in a hotel for a couple of days until I could get it repaired and pick them up. 

The rest of the move went very well and pretty soon my lovely cabin was looking quite cozy with all of my old furniture hauled out of storage.  My moving crew flew back to Wisconsin, and I enjoyed the rest of that glorious winter snowshoeing in the surrounding forest and stoking the 2 wood burning stoves that the builders had installed. 

By spring, I was running out of the firewood I had purchased and stacked next to the cabin during the winter.  I knew that there was some wood under the snow that I would be able to use, but as the snow melted, I realized I had severely underestimated the amount.  In fact, I was slightly horrified at the pile of fallen trees that littered the mountainside! 

Looking up at my cabin.

Let me take a moment to clarify what happens when you have a cabin built in a forest on a mountain.   Many trees are removed to make room for your cabin and also for large equipment to drill a well, dig a basement and make a driveway etc. What I didn’t realize was that all of these trees would be scattered helter skelter down the hill from my cabin.  There was also another huge pile of construction lumber left over.   They apparently don’t clean up after themselves.

Cleanup crew...my son and trusty dog, Raven!

I was not one to shrink from a daunting task and in fact rather loved a challenge. So, I immediately purchased an airline ticket for one of my sons to fly to New Hampshire and help me out.  My next purchases were a really neat hydraulic log splitter and a chain saw!  I wasn’t fond of using the chain saw, but I was about to start a long term love affair with my log splitter!  My son cut up the logs and we split and stacked them together.   We made quite a team and in a short amount of time the wood piles were starting to look like a stockade.

 I cheated and rented a tractor for a couple of days to haul more wood up to the cabin from the pile below.  Did I mention that the ground was littered with lots of rocks and boulders?  They were actually quite beautiful rocks, some like large crystals, but rather impossible to push a wheel barrow full of logs over. 

 

I won’t go into details about flattening my thumb in my hydraulic wood splitter.  It took a few seconds for me to figure out why my thumb was hurting so bad. After all, I was the one controlling the lever.  It took a few more seconds for my brain to send a message to my other hand to reverse the lever.  Note to self:  Keep your fingers out from behind the log that is being split! It made for a slight interruption of the log splitting caper for a trip to the emergency room.  Over time my thumb resumed its normal shape.

Holy Smokes...that's a lot of wood!

As fall approached there were still some really big trees that needed to be cut up, so I hired a local guy named Vern to come and take care of it.  He suggested that I gather up branches and brush to burn while he cut up the big stuff with his hefty chain saw.  It was a rather windy day, but there was some snow on the ground so Vern assured me that a bonfire was a good idea.  He didn’t notice that the large tree he was cutting down had caught on fire in a crevice above him until I pointed it out to him.  Then Vern conveniently disappeared when I wasn’t looking never to be seen again.  I spent the next hour packing the fallen tree with snow in the dark to put out the fire. 

Vern and the flaming tree!

Not contented with having two wood burning stoves, I decided that I needed to have a wood burning cook stove as well.  Luckily the locals in those mountains were always very helpful.  It only took two guys and me to wrestle a 600 lb. wood cook stove through the kitchen door and into place.  Never mind a couple of gouges in the new pine floor.  The distressed look only added character to the place.  I even cooked an entire turkey dinner in it when my kids all visited the next Christmas.  They don’t really warn you about how much heat those big old stoves give off.  The dinner was great but it was probably 100 degrees in my kitchen in the dead of winter. 

Me and a turkey!

I have had a special relationship with wood since then.  It’s been 13 years since I ran away and lived in those glorious mountains for 2 years.  I didn’t even come close to working my way through that stockade pile of wood and left it behind for the next inhabitants to enjoy it at their leisure.  Over the years I had several more wood burning stoves back in Wisconsin, but no big forests to harvest from.  I have only recently gotten over my urge to pull over and start throwing road kill wood into the back of my beaten up Toyota Matrix.  You would be totally amazed at the amount of wood you can fit into those little cars!