A Full Circle Moment

This past weekend I was part of something that I never thought would happen! Let me explain a little. When I was a little girl, we had a wood-burning furnace in our old country home. I remember coming home from wherever we had been and the first thing mom and dad did was go downstairs and either stoke the fire or make a new one to try to warm up our home. It was a cold place to be at times. Funny thing is it was the old house with the sawdust-type insulation in the walls. All that insulation had settled to the bottom half of the wall and the top part had nothing. That is where I slept on the bunkbed - no wonder I was always cold! Anyhow. Many hours were spent with dad cutting wood, hauling wood, throwing wood in the downstairs window and then stacking wood. I remember the contests my siblings and I had trying to see who could carry the most wood. Or thinking that the cowpiles looked remarkably like chocolate sundaes covered with icecream (snow) and sprinkled with nuts (sawdust). (Sidenote: We did not raise cattle but a neighbour did and that is where we went to cut wood) So, cutting and hauling wood was a part of my childhood and the smell of sawdust was a comfort to me. Fast forward many years to yesterday. We spent the whole afternoon and early evening at the new property either cutting down trees or tearing them out. I cut them down, hubs tore them out with the tractor. Yup, you read that right! I used the chain saw. To be fair, Jay cut the tree itself down then I cut it into its many pieces. It was a large double-trunk Manitoba Maple that was growing in the exact wrong spot and needed to go. So, there I was cutting it apart

while my little helper man was busy hauling the wood away in either the wagon or the wheelbarrel.

The smell of sawdust and gasoline brought me back to the years I spent doing that with my dad. Granted, the chainsaw he used was more of a yellow variety (Stihl) while the one I used was John Deere green but the full-circle moment was not lost on me. Once we actually finish with the area we were working on I will be sure to show you the result. I can say that using a chainsaw for that long really takes its toll on your arms and back. They are both sore today but I couldn't be happier with the progress we made.