My Cat is Sick and the Car is Dead.

Today, my friends, my most beloved readers, was a terrible, horrible, awful, no good, super fucked up day. So hold on to your butts, because this is going to suck on a level that may not even by scientifically possible. (See Holly's Law of Negativity.)

First off I awoke with the intention of working more on that hay storage shed that I needed only to discover that it was pouring down rain. Which I probably would have known in advance, except my Internet has been cutting in and out because ha ha why not? So anyway I get up and feed all the ungrateful hungry mouths, and then I am petting my cat Emoticon and she looks up and me and then I get one of those chills where it feels like giant spiders are crawling all up and down your spine cause not one but both of her eyes are fucked the shit up.

To explain further, she had always had problems with her right eye being cloudy, but now the whatever the fuck it was had spread to both eyes. So I grabbed the phone and called the vet and told them I was freaked out.

They gave me an appointment at 2:30.

So when I walk back inside to tell Scott, I find him in the middle of freaking out because last night he discovered that the drivers side front tire hub was hot and that probably meant that the wheel bearing was about to blow and KILL US ALL. Which meant that we had to pull the tire off and look at it.

In the rain.

When we had to be at the vets in four hours.

Luckily I had purchased one of those gazebo tent things at a discount store, with the intention of using it to shade me when I did jobs in direct sun because I am part vampire somehow. Except now we were huddled under it while rain dripped off the side onto our legs and butts. So we pulled the tire off, found out the caliper was super tight, beat it off with a sledge hammer, discussed the money this was going to cost, and then tried to remove the piece holding on the wheel bearing thingamajig. Which of course didn't come off. So we tried everything. Then we found that it was being held in place with some sort of clip thing inside of it. So we got some hammers and some pointy things and tried to remove it. Of course nothing seemed to be quite right, so we crammed a screw driver in there and proceed to break the tip off INSIDE the fucking thing.

Then we went inside to discover that it was a Dealer Only Serviceable Part.

Which was pretty much never going to happen. Which meant that we were going to have to go look for another car. In the truck, with the cat, in the rain. You know, the truck where the headlights may or may not work? The truck that we had to unload because it was filled with all the lumber for my hay storage shed?

That truck.

So we unloaded the truck, in the rain and take the cat on down to the vet. So we get to the vets and I bring Emoticon on in and then the vet has a look at her and then puts dye in her eyeballs so she looks like a motherfucking were-cat and then tells me that it looks like she has a somethingorother and if we don't stop the whateverhejustsaid that they could rupture and then in those cases they usually remove the eye.

Cue that record scratching noise.

I need to explain something here. I need to explain that eyeball stuff freaks me out. Like a lot. Like remember that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise had to chase his own eyes down the hallway? I can't watch that. I don't want to ever think about that ever. I almost died when my friend talked about his laser eye surgery. I feel like barfing right now. It. Freaks. Me. The. Fuck. Out.

So when I came back to planet earth I managed to say calmly that I wasn't very skilled at giving eye drops. Mr. Vet Man said he would take some blood and be back in a minute.

It was the longest minute ever.

I held Emoticon and I kept telling her everything was gonna be okay. I don't think she bought it though because I am fairly sure that I was saying it in the way most people would if they could see the nuclear bomb going off on the horizon.

So the vet came back in and the first words out of his mouth were “you are not going to like this.” Now let me tell you something straight up, when vets say that, they mean it. Because he then proceeded to tell me that I was going to have to give Emoticon three separate eye drops. Two every morning and evening and then one more every six hours.

EVERY. SIX. HOURS.

Ha ha ha every six hours. Haaaa haaaa haaaaaa. Every six hours. Ha haa haaaa haaaaahhh. Six hours. Hah hah. Which means that Emoticon was going to be living in Jack's dog crate for the next week. Which meant that I am going to get a crash course in staring into my cats diseased eyeballs and filling them with various liquids.

Ohsweetjesusgodtakemenow.

Ahem. Anyway. If this isn't love I don't know what is.

So after that we drove around to various used car lots where each one was shadier then the last before giving up and going home where I made a nest for Emoticon in the dog crate. Then of course I had to do home things like getting the eggs and resetting mouse traps, and then we planted tomatoes and raspberry's and weeded the garden a little and at some point we had dinner and I did the dishes and locked up the chickens and then we wrestled all three nightly medications into her eyeballs while she purred and it broke my heart because why does she have to love me so much when I am doing unpleasant things to her?

Sometimes, it's the little things that will break your heart.

Or your car

Hay Storage the Walls and the Roof.

So after putting the posts in the ground and then waiting overnight we arrived bright and early to add on the floor and the roof of our little hay storage barn. Of course that sounds so neat and tidy, but in reality we didn't really have a plan. What we did have was a bunch of wood from the old barn that was stored under a tarp on the old pool deck, an impact driver, a level and a chainsaw.

So we would make a plan, pull out the boards we needed, measure them and then the fucking fun started. Now some of you might remember our adventure with the chicken coup where we brought down our portable generator to make cuts and run power tools. This time we decided that took too damn long, so we cut the boards to length with the motherfucking chainsaw.

You know, like well rounded adults do.

Anyway, since I didn't plan any of this and the hay is growing in the fields, I ran into a problem. None of the old boards from the barn were pressure treated. So in order for them to you know, not rot into the earth like all the previous structures I had to treat them with something. So grabbing the can of preserver I used on the log uprights I started to treat the underside of all the boards. Because once the base boards were down I couldn't reach the bottom of them.

So then the entire project turned into one giant race, where I ran around treating each side of the board before I lost access to it forever. This involved not just treating the bottoms, but also doing the sides and tops of the base boards, and then the bottom and sides of every floor board we laid down. Also, I can assure you, after all that, that cedar stain deck and fence preserver does not really get you high.

At all.

Which was almost but not quite disappointing, because during this paint-a-thon we hit major problem number two. Which is that decade old barn boards made out of oak are as hard as a rock. Or diamonds or someshit. Not only did we have to predrill all the holes in each and every board we would be screwing together, we also lost TWO motherfucking drill bits along the way. Also I learned that if you absentmindedly grab the drill bit after it's done drilling through two inch think oak floor beams, you will burn the ever loving shit out of your hand. Through your glove.

Just take my word on that one will you?

In fact, considering that I am talking about inhaling stain fumes and cutting up lumber with a chainsaw, just- just take my word on all of this.

Don't try this at home is what I am saying.

Moving along, after much swearing and getting stain everywhere, we finished the floor and moved on to the roof. Luckily we still had some left over boards from the chicken coup roof that were just right to go onto this project. Unluckily however was the act of getting them the fuck up there. See, when I cleaned off the site, I was just worried about clearing out enough old barn debris that I could get the holes dug and move around the thing. Except I kinda omitted thinking through a few things. Like ladder clearance. So while the boards could be got up the ladder without death, it took some, ah, creative energy. And by that I mean we did that thing where you try to keep all your weight on one side of the ladder so the damn thing won't fall over on you halfway through. So, it was an adventure.

Then there was the simple matter of trimming the logs off to the correct height. Well for me it was simple because Scott was the one doing it. For him it was terrible. Probably. But in the end we got them all trimmed up and nobody died and the tops didn't fall and crush anybody even though the chickens were all around us watching and muttering things in chicken that I didn't understand.

Then we put the roof boards up and after that it was too late to keep working even though we had hoped to get the metal roof on but that's just life so what the fuck ever. Then we went to visit my grandma and I hung out with my favorite nephew and we went down to the big ol' river that runs through the mountains behind her house and threw rocks in the water until it got too dark and the super no fun rest of the adults made us come back inside.

Because sometimes, life doesn't get any better then that.

Sometimes.

Hay Storage, Raising the Logs.

So in between going to work and whatnot, I managed to get a coat of that wood sealer stuff on my logs. I also added a second treatment to the below ground area which I measured out on each log and then treated with another preserver designed for fence posts because fuck rot that's why.

So then the next step was to get those suckers into the ground. So we hopped into the car and went off to buy some Quickcrete except we were trying to do this on a weekend. Which went pretty much exactly like you would think trying to find an open hardware store in rural West Virgina on a Saturday would go.

Luckily we found somewhere with super fun marked up prices and then carted our prize home. Then it was a simple matter of hauling the trees over to the holes, and standing them up. Except that when we put the first one in water came flooding up out of the hole because of course the holes would still be wetter then the bottom of the ocean.

The really unfortunate part, however, came from the fact that, when you gather only the biggest logs, they might be a tad bigger then the holes. And because I had marked all the logs to paint on an extra layer of sealer, we got to see exactly how far off we were. So after a lot of swearing and doing arcane things with the pry bar we gave up, got the backhoe and then proceeded to shove all the logs down into the holes using the back bucket.

You know, when it really comes down to it, is there any problem a backhoe can't solve?

Anywho, then it was time to level them. At first we tried using two levels, but of course upside down tree trunks are not perfectly straight so in the end we went with the 'aw fuck it close enough' method.

So while Scott held the trunks at that mysterious 'pretty much level' spot I poured in the Quickcrete. Which was kinda sad because the more Quickcrete we poured in, the more water would pour out the top. Also I learned that the 60 pound bag is really fucking hard to pick up. It's kinda squashy. And also lacks handles. Also the bag is made out of like, paper or some shit so it's like ridiculously easy to rip it and end up pouring like, way a lot too much into the hole.

I'm just saying is all.

So then I poured in the Quickcrete and added a final layer of dirt on top and then we tamped everything down and then felt really victorious. So victorious that we went and cut a whole mess of thin boards with the motherfucking table saw to make up the sides, since I want the sides to be somewhat open to allow air to move through.

Then I felt really good about myself and what we had done. Until that is I discovered I had some sawdust in my left eye that no one could see but that I could feel was there. And then I freaked the fuck out and shined a flashlight into my retina and tried everything I could think of and the Internet told me I had a scratched cornea and that I was going to go blind and/or die and then I got really freaked out and made Scott look at my eyeball like a billion times until I think he thought I was hallucinating.

You know, because those sawdust hallucinations are so common around these parts.

After like, the entire fucking evening I was pretty sure I was going to have to go to the clinic and explain how I had gotten possible imaginary sawdust in my eyeball when I decided that I should probably just go to bed. Luckily overnight it worked itself out and I was able to wipe it out of my eye in the morning. Less lucky were all the dreams I had about being in Ohio during a tornado and trying to both evade the twister and the evil ranchers who were trying to price me out of my cattle farm.

Look I don't know why my brain associates sawdust in my eyeball with Bonanza and the Wizard of Oz the Ohio Version, but it does. Okay? Stop judging me.

I could have got that sawdust in my eye FROM A TORNADO.

Or you know, a railroad tie. Tornadoes are fickle like that. Or at least the imaginary dream tornadoes I invented to make a point are.

Look, I think the real lesson here is that sawdust is an asshole that will get you even through safety glasses.

Asshole sawdust.

A Rodent Car Surprise.

So about a week and a half ago, I started noticing that things in the car were looking a little, well chewed. It didn't seem to be a big thing. A corner of a bag here, an old ice cream wrapper there, nothing major. I had assumed that a mouse had gotten in somehow, and had feasted for a while before returning to his home.

For those of you that have ever had car rodents, you can laugh at me now.

Unfortunately, we didn't discover that we had a real problem until we hopped in the car to go to some yard sales and I heard something moving. In the dash. Right above my feet. Which meant that the mouse was in the dash directly in front of my feet. Scott was all “open the glove compartment SAVE THE REGISTRATION!”

And I'm all like “I AM NOT OPENING THIS WHILE I AM STRAPPED INTO THE CAR!”

So he pulled over and we armed ourselves with whatever we could find in the trunk. So I had a chisel and Scott had a miniature crowbar that was only about six inches long. I'm not sure what the owners of the house whose driveway we were at the end of thought, watching us approach the glove box like wary Indians, armed with what looked like half a wood carving set, but I am sure it was nothing positive. Which probably explains why we are known as those people. Then I make Scott rip open the glove compartment and out falls a giant nest made out of plastic bags, tissues, bottle wrappers, and cables.

I think I may have freaked out a bit.

Of course not enough to make me skip going to any yard sales. I could miss priceless treasures. Like the three dollar red antique suitcase I bought. Couldn't pass that up. Isn't even haunted. So that's a win in my book.

Anyway, so we stop by a few stores and buy some glue traps for the mouse. Of course we had to work the next day, and of course it was in the city. Not only did this mean that we had to wake up at but ass stupid early, but that we really had to get our extra passenger out of there. Although on the plus side, if he did jump out at me on the highway I probably would not have had to buy any caffeine that morning.

So we get home, bait the traps with some cinnamon raisin bagel (it was what he was used to) and go about our day. Well, right before I am thinking of getting ready for bed, I remember I haven't locked up the sheds so I head on up to the driveway. As I am locking up I here a rhythmic thumping. Puzzled I walk around until I realize it's coming from the car. Where I walk over and see ALL FOUR glue traps , strung together with a Gatorade bottle wrapper are being beaten against the underside of the dash, right under the glove box.

Carefully I reached down, grabbed the last trap and pulled. They came free and I saw that the last one was covered with a layer of gray brown fur. Then I hear something. Something roughly the size of, oh I dunno, a refrigerator or maybe a small tractor clawing it's way up into the dash. And that's about the time I said “oh shit.”

I walk back in the house and tell Scott that we are going to need a bigger boat. No wait, that was Jaws. I tell Scott that motherfucker is a rat. What followed was a hopeless montage of me looking everywhere for my rat traps. See they were all being stored in the while metal shed. The same white metal shed that had been crushed by Super storm Sandy. The same metal shed that we had taken everything out of and emergency dumped into any other structure with enough room to store that shit. Which meant that my chances of finding a rat trap were about as good as my chances of winning the lottery.

And I don't even play the lottery.

So I came back to the house and asked what the hell we were going to do. It was already an hour past when I was supposed to sleep, there was a rat the size of Volkswagen Bug in my car, and we all we had to kill it were some ridiculously undersized mouse glue traps.

It was then that Scott had an idea. He ran out of the room and reappeared a moment later holding some antique squirrel traps that he had bought from some toothless dude on the side of the road for like twenty bucks.

MOTHERFUCKING BINGO PEOPLE!

So we smeared a thin layer of peanut butter on the triggers, carried all three of them up to the car, and carefully, -hey-don't-even-breath-carefully, we set them in the car.

Then we waited.

So in the morning I was in the house, smearing cream cheese over a bagel and thinking that working for money is bullshit, when Scott remembers that we filled the car with spring traps and goes up to check them.

Which is really, probably the weirdest trap line ever.

After a few moments he returns. I ask if we got that sonuvabitch. Scott says “I am going to need the gun.”

I was like “HOW BIG IS THIS RAT!?”

So then I had to follow him up to the car where I found one very alive, very stuck, very large and very pissed off rat. I will spare you dear readers, the unpleasant details of how he was caught and how I removed him and the trap from the car, but will resume when he had been successfully lowered onto the gravel driveway.

Scott checked to make sure the gun was loaded with the right shot and fired. Then before I could move the flashlight away he fired again, looked up at me in the cold white beam of the light, and said only two words.

Double. Tap.

Which is probably why we are known as those people.

Finishing the Bridge or Gravel Time.

So today we finished the bridge. This involved putting a backhoe bucket load of gravel on each side to make a ramp. But not the cool kind of ramp that you can use to jump a van over a row of flaming school buses. No, the kind of ramp that allows one to drive up onto the bridge because we didn't inset that bitch into the earth.

Of course it would be like, 91 degrees today, meaning that we had to finish all of this before noon or else our faces would melt off from the heat like that one dude from Raiders of the Lost Arc. So after I did some other work around here, like feeding all the pets and working on the logs and doing laundry and hanging it out on the line and getting the tools we would need we were ready to began!

First off, with a backhoe, you would think you can do that cool thing where you ram the front bucket into the gravel pile and it will fill itself up and then you can high five. Except that it doesn't really work unless the pile is, like, full. When you are getting low on gravel all that will happen is you bunch the ground cover up and get a light coating of gravel in the bucket. Which of course meant that we had to shovel all the gravel into the bucket by hand.

Did I mention it was like, shit balls humid?

It was shit balls humid.

Anyway we get the first load in the bucket and then we head on down to the back acres to dump it. On this side of the bridge. Also known as the easy part. So we dump it and rake it out and give the frogs minor cardiac events because they think the backhoe is the god of destruction now. Or possibly they think the backhoe is the bringer of the deeper pool. It's hard to tell with frogs, really.

So after raking it smooth we head on back up to do load number two. Load number two effectively killed my enthusiasm. Mainly because the day heats up as it goes along. Now of course we faced the tricky part. The tricky part was that, in order to dump the gravel on the far side, Scott has to drive the backhoe partway onto the bridge. What's so bad about that? You might ask. You designed the bridge to driven over. That is why you built the damn thing in the first place, right?

The answer is that yes, we built this to drive over, but that doesn't mean it's going to work.

So we loaded up and then Scott and my worked out a signal for the bridge is going to collapse and the backhoe- also known as the most expensive thing I have ever bought- will end up in the ditch. I settled on the double back up motion, but Scott was all in favor of my screaming as loud as I could.

Once got down to the back I positioned myself on the far side of the creek and watched. Scott carefully eased the front tires onto the bridge. A few of the top boards creaked and groaned, but then they stopped and everything was still. It held.

And somewhere in my mind I heard that opening song from 2001 a Space Odyssey start up.

As the bridge held and Scott dumped our load of gravel on the far side the crescendo hit and I felt pretty damn good about our bridge making skills. Then we took the backhoe up to the house, grabbed some wood sealer/preserver and treated the top boards like the motherfucking champions that we were.

So all in all, I'd say this went pretty well.

I know. I'm surprised too.

Building Bridges Day Two, The Rocks.

The first problem today, was waking up to temperatures of around 40 degrees. Which is a whole lot colder then I want outside to be. So we kind of got a late start because cold is not a big motivator for me. Well, unless the heating system has broken and we are fighting to fix it, then it's a huge motivator. Unfortunately for the graveling-the-ends-of-the-bridge-because-hey-we-didn't-make-it-level-with-the earth-plan it had rained all night. Meaning that the road, the road that we had already tore the shit up with the backhoe and the pickup was a big muddy mess.

A big muddy mess that we didn't want to take a backhoe full of gravel down.

Still undeterred by the coldness and clouds we gathered a few tools and went off to the back to build the stone extensions that will keep the gravel from spreading out all over the meadow when we drive the truck over it. Well optimistically we assumed we could use the rocks we had unearthed when we dug out the culvert pipes.

Which was of course totally not how that ended up working.

What we came to realize, is that most of the stones King the backhoe had dredged up were huge. Like we can't move them even with two people huge. Like, I hope we like where these rocks are because they sure as hell aren't going anywhere anytime soon huge. Abandoning that plan, we did the next logical thing, which was to go into the forest to find rocks.

Now I have to explain something about the forest. So gather round readers and listen.

The forest floor has a lot of rocks on it. But you can't move those. They are the mere tips of the iceberg. They are held in place by tree roots as thick around as your thigh. They are wedged and crushed by the trees until it seems like you are trying to pull up the very roots of the mountains themselves. So you must go to the creek, or find slopes where the rocks are exposed by water erosion. Which of course means that you are collecting heavy ass stones on a angle.

Which meant that most of my morning was spent hauling arm fulls of rocks up an embankment.

To answer your question, no it was not fun.

Although it made that goddamned bridge motherfucking beautiful. It's an art people. So we stacked the stones and used dirt fill between them, and then we back filled each side of the bridge to make it look less weird that we hadn't thought to inset that bitch into the earth.

Although at one point during all this I was bringing rocks back in my pockets. Dedication people. Dedication. I also saved three snails. Mostly to make up for Froggate or Frogmageddon or whatever you want to call it. Not totally because I think that snails can grant wishes and are probably magical or someshit. Nope. Not me. Ha ha ha that would be crazy.

So anyway by that point I was super ridiculous hungry so we gathered up the tools and then we headed back up to the house to eat the grilled cheese sandwiches of accomplishment.

Which of course, is a lot better then the sandwich of loneliness or the ice cream of remorse.

Actually the ice cream of remorse sounds pretty good right now.

As long as it's chocolate chunk remorse.

Building Bridges (and not the Metaphorical Kind.)

Today we decided in order to get more house lumber, that we needed to build a bridge to access our far fields. Basically we have something that is not really a stream, but almost not really a drainage ditch to span. What was there was mostly buried plastic pipe that was slowly being eaten by the earth.

Basically, the lamest sarlacc ever.

Anywho our first step was to get King the backhoe, and head on down to the back where he made short work of digging out where the piping had been. It was at this point that I discovered two things. One that the previous owners, when faced with the original pipe sinking into the ground, had just placed a second pipe on top of the first one. Which was, I don't even know at this point. Especially because the second pipe was not really a pipe. I think it was one of those round fiberglass concrete molds. Anyway, it wasn't really intact anymore.

The second, and more alarming thing, was that we had just caused frog armageddon. My little amphibian friends must have been convinced that the world was ending. As the backhoe was working they were freaking out jumping around and flailing their limbs, possibly begging the God of Frogs to save them from this terrible fate and have mercy on the believers. Or maybe they were convinced that this was in retribution for sinning, like a frog version of Sodom and Gomorrah

At one point I think I shouted, “jump AWAY from the machine!” But they weren't having any of it.

So I was pretty convinced they were all dead.

Luckily, after we were done digging they reappeared. Looking very unhappy, and also muddy. And no I am not just making that up to make you feel better. They made it. After that we laid some cover down to keep the weeds at bay, and then we laid plywood down to make an even levelish surface for the railroad ties to go on. Then came the shitty part. Well, shitty for me. While Scott got to sit in the backhoe cab that was hotter then the surface of the sun, it was my job to use the lumber picker to grab a rail road tie, heave it up, wrap a chain around the middle and hook it to the bucket, signal Scott to go up, run over to the stream, scramble across the ditch, guide the thing into place while directing Scott, place it, take the chain off, physically pick up the end and shove the rail tie tight into the other ones and then run back over and start the thing all over again fourteen more times.

Yeah I know. It's tiring just to read it.

Needless to say I quit after that and Scott put the top boards on by his damn self. So tomorrow all we have to do is add some gravel because we didn't inset the bridge into the ground. So obviously if we want to drive shit over it we have to you know, make a ramp of some kind. Which of course means moving gravel around.

I also kinda think it would have looked better inset, but as Scott pointed out it's only a matter of time until it is because everything sinks into the earth here eventually anyway. Of course now that we are counting on it happening it never will and the bridge will probably find some way to eject itself from the earth and end up in some other county. Or space. 

Possibly from an explosion of some sort.

Or witches.

It could go either way, really.

Debarking and Logs for that House.

Today we debarked. And I learned a thing or two. I'm sure you all remember my adventure with the stomach flu, and me throwing my back out. Well, now I understand why those things happened. I hit upon a piece of good luck so singular it is hardly to be believed. Because it turns out that if you fell trees the best time to debark them is in the spring. Which means that you are not using the draw knife and weeping into your hands because the bark is glued to the tree and you haven't made any real progress even thought it's been like, a fucking hour.

Instead we had the bark come off in great slippery chunks and all we had to do was loosen it up and pull. Which meant that I spent some time yelling about how we were freaking debarking wizards and then I accidentally threw my own shoe at the logs.

Possibly in a misguided attempt to high five them. With my foot.

Although in my rush to explain to you, gentle readers, about the good news, I forgot to start at the beginning. And the beginning was getting the house logs, the biggest motherfucking huge ten foot long and a foot thick motherfuckers that were still in the forest.

In the rock bar.

So optimistically we drove Sue, our pickup truck down in the back and loaded him up with the first two logs.* The first two logs that were notably smaller. However the last two were demons made of heavy from the heaviest part of hell. We tried pushing them through the rock bar. We tried pulling them. We tried taking the ratchet strap off of the ratchet and using that to pull the logs. Which is when I learned a valuable lesson called when you are failing to drag logs out of the woods, wrap the strap around your non-dominate hand.

Trust me on that one.

So after about, oh twenty minutes of failing so hard I am sure they could hear it a few states away, we decided to get King, the backhoe. Of course this was no easy task as we had to shove and push our way through all the tree dead fall to get down into the back acres. See when super storm Sandy showed up and bitch slapped us around a good number of trees lost there tops. But I don't mean lost as in, they fell off, no I mean lost as in they mostly came off but then they didn't fall because there was just enough to hold them onto the tree. Basically it looks like the tree is trying to be a gentle man and take it's hat off for a lady, only instead of a hat it's just holding out it's top branches.

Right in the way of the backhoe.

Of course Scott was all do you want to ride in the backhoe and I'm all like, hell yeah I do. So I wedged myself in there and we got in a few boxing matches with trees and then we drug the logs out of the forest like it was goddamned nothing. Then we had to roll them close to the front bucket and play some sort of fucked up cats cradle to keep them there. Of course the whole thing was stupidly easy compared to the lets-destroy-our-spines-forever method.

Then we returned triumphantly back to the farm yard and dropped them into our backyard where we had laid out a storage/debarking area.

And the rest, as you know, is history.

Awesome history.

*Sue is a boy. We named him after Johnny Cash's song, A Boy Named Sue. Because this is the fucking country.