Sawing Logs

We have, in the past, harvested our own trees off of the farm to make things for ourselves. Things like furniture. The men in this family like to do woodworking for a hobby. (A new desk, bed, or kitchen table is always appreciated by the wives.) My in-laws took that concept one step farther and used our own lumber to make all of the woodwork in their house...from floors to cabinets. They used a combination of different woods and it is gorgeous! (You'll have to take my word for it.) Anyway, Ted's dad, Jim, has won some awards for his stewardship of trees. As well as harvesting them, he plants them, too.

Recently, he decided to sell some. That involves people coming out to select the trees they want, bidding on them, and then the actual harvesting of the selected trees. It was an interesting process. First, they took a rifle and literally shot the big limbs of the trees near the trunk; that was so that when they cut the tree down, those limbs would easily break off without any damage to the trunk (which is the only part of the tree they want). The rest of the tree gets used for firewood by us. Here is just one of the stacks of large tree trunks (now called "saw logs") that is waiting to get loaded onto trucks. By the way, they mostly wanted walnut trees.

Here is a guy that came to load up some logs. He sat in this little crane attached to the truck and picked up the logs like they weighed no more than tinker toys.

He'd pick up a log with the large "grabber thingie" and swing it around. "Grabber thingie" is a technical term used only by people who know what they're talking about.

Then he sat the log down gently on the truck. (I think he's done this a few times.)

Then he'd grab another log...

swing it around and set it down.

Grab...swing...set...

He loaded a log about every 30 seconds. It was pretty amazing to watch.

Farmer Jim was there to say goodbye to his trees. (Well, he was there, anyway.) I imagine he's planning on where to plant the next trees. Did I mention that he's always planting trees?