We managed to fell 2 cedar trees and partially debark them, but not all of the bark came off. Our homemade spud tools were sharp enough, but the bark is still frozen to the trees.
Feeling defeated, we collected our gear; the chainsaw, our homemade spud's, safety glasses, coats and gloves and went back to the farm. B's brother had some encouraging advice for us... it's just not the right time of year. While we were told that you could easily debark in the months that had an 'R' in them, it wasn't the case on Saturday. So, we're just going to keep trying to debark every couple of weeks and see when the sap is running in the cedar's so we can debark much easier. To be honest, if we had the struggle to debark like we did Saturday morning, I'm not so sure that I could handle 100 logs or more!
We got over our disappointment and instead went to the sugar bush to help B's brother collect sap for the day and spent some time in the sap house watching him boil down. All of our efforts were rewarded with some homemade venison stew for dinner and some fresh maple syrup as part of our dessert.
It turned out to be a great weekend!
B retrofitting a hoe into a spud
Good morning Mr. Golden Sun!
Our 1st and only debarked (well, sort of) cedar log
B looking defeated
Onto better things for the day - tapping maple trees!
B on Big Blue, goin' to collect barrels of sap
That's a lotta sap
Pumping sap from the barrels to Big Blue
Sap runnin' romance
Boilin' down!
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