Greetings and welcome!
It has been an interesting week in weather. Monday we hit almost 90 degrees. Tonight we are under a frost advisory where we could see 35 degrees for a low.
The most intense weather was yesterday, last night and today when we saw close to an inch of rain, a decent thunderstorm overnight, and very strong winds today. At one point the forecast had us for a level 3 severe weather potential. Thankfully the line of storms came through late at night and were less severe than they could have been. Today’s wind was very strong. It stripped the pines of dead needles, took down twigs and small branches and one tree that I saw.
People will welcome tonight’s frost. This week the gnats and mosquitoes were plentiful. It would not bother me to work outside without the bugs.
This Saturday is the Silver Cliff Soup & Chili Fest at the local picnic grounds. Here is a pic of the sign.
The fall colors are getting there but the big show is not here yet. This week a lot of the choke cherry had yellow leaves. The sumac is a cool iridescent red and green, and some other species are starting up. There is a species of maple that are bright red already. The wind today stripped a lot of the color leaves, but there wasn’t much that had changed yet. A lot of the trees are getting ready to pop, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Saturday night after dark we officially begin the fall season. The shorter days are already obvious. The sun now sets at about 7pm, shortening the work day by almost 2 hours since the longest day of summer. I am not a fan of that, especially when I am scrambling to do my outside work like firewood and getting cars ready for winter.
This year I cheated on firewood and had a logger friend drop off about 5 cords of dry oak. It is saving me a ton of time in the woods, but it cost some money. About half of that pile is already cut, split and stacked in the wood shed.
A
big help this year was trying a different kind of saw chain. I always ran Oregon chains and cut down the rakers a little to be faster in big wood. I saw on an arborist site that Stihl had a chain that was harder steel and much more aggressive cutting. The downside is a high kickback risk.
I am strong enough, safe enough, and have a couple of decades of experience running aggressive chains, so I bit and bought a Stihl 33RS chain with the yellow dot instead of my usual Oregon 72 chain. On my 65cc saw this is just a beast. My goodness what a machine. It is really dangerous if you are not careful, but it was the chain that I have been looking for. I can cut a foot thick oak log in under 3 seconds, and can actually slow down the 4.6hp motor on my saw if I push it. It is ready for a file touch up after 2 full cords, but is still cutting great. That was nice too. Most of you won’t care about this but a couple of you will be very happy that I shared my secret.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB