POSTS!!!

What a day I had yesterday!!!  My neighbor Dan and I worked so hard we thought we were going to drop in our tracks!  But we accomplished the miraculous..... we cut posts!  Not just a few posts.  Not just "good enough" posts.  We cut awesome, straight, eight foot posts.  It was amazing.

We didn't have any plans for the day and Dan just kind of showed up.  He wanted to know if I was in the mood to cut posts.  This is not a question that you answer "no" to!  Sure!  let's go cut posts!  First we headed back to the north side where I am trying to plant my orchard.  I showed him the big ol' hedge I had found while doing some other work back there.  We stood on the ground and counted several times over and we both thought we could get at least ten posts from the tree.  That is a lot!
  Dan made his first cut and got the chainsaw wedged.  But that was post one.  He went to the other side of the tree and cut down another section.  He wedged the chainsaw two more times.  The tree came up on a large trunk then split into four sections.  Each of those four sections were also pretty large trunks.  Dan cut down the largest of the four that had a good sized spur on it.  We kept clearing and limbing and standing back and saying things like, "I think if we make the cut here, this section will make a post."    From about half of the tree, we were able to cut sixteen posts.  The tree just seemed to keep giving.

All of the posts got drug out to where they will be used.  I had already started the holes in order to clear the grass and to mark their location.  So by each small hole there was now a post.  I should say most of the holes.  But we were painfully close to the goal.  We broke for lunch and afterward tried some trees that Dan had scouted out earlier.  In the afternoon the temperature went up and we were working in a pocket that was getting no breeze and the sun was  beating down on us.  Dan took out three more hedge trees.  These weren't so spreading and shot straight up, which is uncommon for a hedge tree.  Each tree was pulled out and limbing was pretty straight forward this time.    We got four to five posts from each tree.  By the time we were ready to drop from exhaustion, we had cut thirty-two or possibly more posts.

We had gotten the post hole digger on to Dan's tractor, but neither of us felt like we had any strength to go on.  We will save the hole digging for another day ... soon I hope.    We made giant strides forward but there is still so much to do and the grass is running low in both front horse lots.  So, I continue my existence living between  exultation and a panic attack.  Either way, yesterday was a really good day!

Louie