October 17, 2013
Update            


Over the weekend of October 5-6 we had about a dozen friends working on the clean up.  Most of the work was on the south boundary where many uprooted trees were hung up in the branches of trees that had not fallen, causing a dangerous situation.  Mike has a good friend who works for the forestry service and he came on Saturday to take most of those trees down without anyone getting hurt.  The rest of the crew spent most of their time limbing the remainder of the trees and clearing the brush.  The limbs and brush were loaded onto two trailers that were then driven back and forth from the boundary to the middle of the pasture.  After an enormous pile of brush was stacked in the pasture, Mike poured deisel fuel on it and set it on fire.  It burned most of the afternoon and into the evening.   Heather and I and Jill, another friend, spent all day Saturday chipping branches and brush that we had piled up around the clearing.

I didn't get pictures of the south boundary or the fire, but here are two from the clearing.

Here is the chicken yard before we chipped all the brush and limbs.

. . . . and after the brush piles are gone.

Here is a picture of the crew at dinner on Saturday night.

Front to back on the left: Mike, Heather, Fran, Neil, Mikkel, and Stu

Front to back on the right: Steve, Michelle, Berit, Jill, and Darren

Somewhere there is a picture (I'll see if I can find it to post later) of a raisin stuck to the ceiling, as the result of a raising flipping contest.  Steve was the winner with one raisin skillfully flipped into the light cover over the table.

And yes, we had all had a few drinks!

Mike has also purchased a new chain saw with a 24 inch blade.  Here is a pile of logs that had been stacked last year.

And then Mike got to it with his new saw.

And I finished it off with the splitter!

We'll stack these properly in the wood shed once it is fixed.

Annie and her six chicks are still doing well.  They come up to the front door each morning, along with a few other chickens and a turkey or two, to beg for treats.

The other chicks were out of the picture on the far right exploring the bench that sits on the porch.

Tomorrow, pictures of our weekend in Auckland.