Winter Wood and Weariness

  

 This is the new view from the top of the yard after my OH and I got busy with the chainsaw earlier in the week and felled three of the old Ash trees.  There is a lot more light coming in now and we have more of a view too.  It is nice to be self-reliant but I can't help feeling if we relocate TOO near civilization when we do finally move, we will be considered the modern equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies . . .

These ivy-covered Ash trees at the top of our yard were diseased and leaning and had to come down.  Fairly straightforward, but we had to rebuild part of our neighbour's fence . . .

There's a LOT of firewood there, but boy, there's a heck of a lot of ivy too and removing that is a job and a half.  My job and a half in fact, as my OH uses the chainsaw and I wield the axe to remove the ivy (some of it is as thick as my wrist). 

 


And here's some we did earlier!  This is some of our woodpile for next winter.  The orangey pile in the centre is an Alder tree which had been brought to us by the river, already seasoned, and just needing to be carried, split and dried.  Today, in advance of the rain promised for next week, we shifted most of that pile - over half a ton - into the woodshed.  Now we both feel like we could sleep on the head of a pin!  At the top of the yard are some  lengths from the dead tree which brought down our phone line - we thought it was only right it should pay the price for its untimely fall . . .

The Carmarthen Journal had a couple of paragraphs about our lack of phone line this week, but I think perhaps they didn't quite believe our tale that we had got a rope across from pole to pole for BT, so just to prove that we did - here is the photo.