A few days, ago my longtime friend retired broadcaster Brian Wilson and I had another of our long-form chats, commenting about the state of the world. He posts these and other musings on his Substack account, Brian Wilson Writes. Feel free to indulge (or punish) yourself as our conversations are definitely no-holds-barred, not for the easily offended.
NB – Pictures from last summer
With a break in the brutal winter weather I got myself up into the woods to chop up that grove of black birch trees that came down last winter. The amount of firewood from this one incident of windfall is about what we should need next winter, but even when done here I’ll keep at it. It’s fun and good exercise.
The work site was quite the mess so I spent most of the first day just clearing brush, then got to work chopping my way up the trunks. I got two good truck loads of 6-8″ 16-inch bolts with the occasional 10-12″ piece, but those were almost outside my lifting ability. I followed those two loads with two more today.
Once I get to the biggest section of this tree, about 20 feet from the root ball, the pieces will be 20-inches in diameter or more. Those will be so heavy I will have to roll them to the tailgate and up the ramp into the truck. If past experience is any indicator each one of the biggest sections will yield 32 pieces of firewood that are manageable in size.
Another couple days and another couple truckloads and I will be done with harvesting from this site. Then on to splitting and stacking. I’ll use a system new to me I’m adapting from Mike Wilson, whose yootoob channel is one of my favorites. Previously I just spent way too much time stacking carefully to make everything “just so,” crisscrossing each layer for good stability and air flow. This new system should cut my time by at least half with even better air flow.
Then on to harvesting some more windfall elsewhere on the homestead.
Good thing my little 4WD S10 is strong and nimble. It may be dissolving before my eyes and maybe not reliable for long trips anymore but I’ll keep it until it runs no more
Now about a month out from our weather episode that brought three inches of snow, three inches of sleet, a half inch of rain, and another two inches of snow, we are starting to see some ground again.
These two picture were taken from the same spot, just turned 180-degrees. South facing slope? Grass! North facing slope? Glacier.
Tomorrow – harvesting firewood Day 1
Every winter brings about some damage to the waterline for the hydroelectric turbine, a/k/a the penstock. Usually this is because a tree branch has fallen on some of the 1100′ of 2-inch Schedule 40 PVC, which is cheap but gets really brittle when cold. I knew from the very beginning that replacing some of the PVC every Spring would be an issue but just accepted it as the cost of doing business. Last year was great, I had to replace and patch only two little sections. 2015 was the worst as I had to replace 600-feet of pipe.
Except for the last thirty feet all of the penstock is above ground. I did originally get an estimate to burying the entire penstock well below the frost line, but the >$75k+ price tag was a bit much. My hydroelectric system is more of a hobby than anything else, at least until the EMP or CME or some other grid-down calamity, so that wasn’t in the cards.
A shredded section of the penstock just before the ice storm.
This damage was peculiar because it was a compound spiral fracture which is only supposed to happen as a result of water freezing in the pipe and bursting it. Since I drained the system in November this damage was a head-scratcher. I am not looking forward to surveying the entire length of pipe once the snow and ice are gone.
I am now rethinking the penstock altogether. Rather than sticking with PVC I am going to check into industrial irrigation polypropylene line which is continuous and much more forgiving to the forces that bust the PVC. Since a pressurized/enclosed water line can run down to about -15 degrees maybe I could even keep it running year-round.
Stay tuned.
In the aftermath of the snow/sleet/freezing rain/ice/snow adventure of last Sunday you could definitely say we were disheartened at the sight of the collapsed greenhouse. The broken internal structure was clearly evident, in one place the end of the snapped off arched beam had poked through the plastic skin. Mrs. Barn rightly insisted on clearing off the ton of ice to assess the damage and get a plan for the reconstruction.
One thing we did not want to do was wail away at the shell and damage the skin even more than it was already. Finding the right tool was a conundrum. She tried with one of her gardening tools but it was a poor fit for the problem, plus she was too short to get up high enough to get much done. I’m taller and with my spiked boots I could get up on the snow/ice dam along the edge of the building. And fortunately I had just the right tool.
Many years ago my woodworking pal TomS gave me my favorite walking stick, about shoulder length with a bulbous knot near the top. Since the knot was gentle in shape I could stand and whack the ice until it broke up without risking more damage to the plastic skin. After about an hour of careful work the last of the ice slabs slipped off and the arched structure popped back to its original shape. Hallelujah! You can see that slab leaning up against the greenhouse, it was about six square feet of four-inch-thick ice/snow composite. It is several hundred pounds. So even though we have not seen each other in more than a decade, TomS saved the day!
I found just a couple of punctures to the plastic skin and repaired them straightaway. I still have to build four new laminated arches, but the necessary repair is much less than anticipated. I’ll get to work on the repairs as soon as we get a bit more warming.
I just checked and the outside temp is 16 and inside the greenhouse it’s nearly 60.
PS. Here’s a glimpse of what we were dealing with. We estimate it would have taken a month to clear the six inch thick ice slab on driveway with a pickaxe and shovel. It was brutal work for us septuagenarians. Thank goodness for hearty mountain men willing to work all night long in frigid temps with their monster machines. It was well after 10pm when we finally got to the top of the list. They finished with us and moved on to the next name on the list.
PPS A fellow at church told me he had seen some of the Amish kids skating in a field. Who needs a pond or rink? We certainly could not navigate our place without snow cleats.
I am happy to report that my broom-maker is on the mend and just before the snow/ice storm delivered some new inventory. I’ve got a couple events this year so he has a standing order to crank out polissoirs as his health allows.
But for now, everything is in stock. Ironically sales for everything has plummeted, about 40% in 2025 vs. the 2024 totals. Just as well as I am making almost zero on each 1-inch ploissoir sale. Good thing this is just a hobby at this point. Not complaining, who else can say they have a hobby that doesn’t cost them anything?
When I built the greenhouse last year I was determined to overbuild it. As the evidence indicates, I was wrong in my assumptions and execution of what I thought overbuilding was, The center laminated arch just snapped this week under the weight of the snow, sleet and frozen rain. A pretty substantial rebuild must occur before next winter, building bigger (and more) laminated arches. In addition to replacing the destroyed center arch I will build two more inside the greenhouse and one in the outer workspace on the far end of the structure. I’ll make them each 1-1/2″ x 3″ rather than 1-1/4″ x 2″. That calculates to a four-fold increased strength. I don’t know yet whether the plastic skin can be salvaged. Part of me was pleased to see the laminations remained intact, just the weight and the wind literally snapped the center arch.
Also, if I was so inclined and equipped, I could absolutely ice skate down the driveway. (I left my ice hockey days behind me many, many decades ago)
One thing I was very pleased about was the performance of my spiked-sole lumberjack boots. They made traipsing around the icy landscape a breeze. I was absolutely right to buy these a couple years ago. I was only expecting to use them when harvesting firewood on sloped ground, but they sure did the trick here.
UPDATE
The plowing crew finally came at 10.15 last night to dig us out. They brought three big machines. The first was a V-wedge icebreaker to bust everything up, the second was an 8-foot plow blade, the third was a 6-foot blade to make everything purdy. Was great to look out this morning and actually see the driveway, we can now get out after four days of being icebound. Free at last, free at last!
Right around zero at dawn this morning.
Although I have been spending any shop time over the past few months cleaning, tidying, and reorganizing the barn, I had long ago penciled-in this week as Firewood Week 2026/7. We are deep into Winter 2025/6 with an extended forecast of unseasonably cold weather, with overnight lows for the next fortnight running at or below zero. That was motivation to get a good jump on next winter and beyond (we’re fine for this winter).
My target was the cluster of windfall trees (mostly maple and birch IIRC) that came down in a storm some time ago, up the hill behind the cabin. The main trunks on these are all 18-24″, a few a bit more. The beauty of such a trove is that it is already down but standing above the ground, making it easy to get to while seasoning “on the hoof.” I’ll have to clear a couple of scrub saplings to get my 4WD S10 up there but if the ground is clear it will be a piece o’ cake.
Then came the disheartening forecast last week for a Storm of the Century!!! with somewhere between 12 and 24 inches of snow. Such an event would disrupt my firewood harvesting and processing plans. Not an existential problem, but I did have my mind set on it. Then came the Snowpocaplyse. Big whup. Not even enough to get out the snowblower.
The forecast is still for very cold (for us) weather so I’ll see if I can work in well-below-zero wind chills. My old Minnesota home town has wind chills of minus-60 so this isn’t all that bad in the cosmic scheme of things.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE
The monster snowfall never materialized, but the gradual deposits from the storm front wound up to be about three inches of snow, followed by three inches of sleet, all encased in a saturating half inch of freezing rain. Even my 13hp snowblower choked on that combo. We spent yesterday hacking out two of the vehicles and will spend today and tomorrow working on our long driveway. It’s like clearing demolition rubble as I first have to break everything up then shovel it out of the way.
Probably like many of you, as I watch the paroxysm of manufactured “rage” throughout urban America I am almost continually running an OODA Loop especially when I leave Shangri-la and go out into the larger world. (OODA is the military acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, a decision-making model for use in uncertain situations.) In the environment that is the USA 2026, OODA is in my mental background like a virus scan. Since many/most/all(?) of the “spontaneous” riots are conducted by trained out-of-state professionals provided by entities like Crowds on Demand, Inc. (a real LA-based rent-a-mob temp agency!), the need for OODA is an imperative. I for one am curious about the money trail for the rent-a-mobs.
But ruminations on OODA are just the gateway for this post. Almost all of us of a certain age have had our awareness formed, at least in part, by two classic dystopian novels we read in high school — 1984 (1949, George Orwell) and Brave New World (1932, Aldous Huxley). However, my favorite novel of this (or any other) genre and roughly contemporary to them, and one that I am unreservedly recommending to you, is the far less known 1945 C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength. When reading THS I find many of the parallels to 2026 to be inescapable. It is almost a fictional recitation of the seduction Hannah Arendt described as “the banality of evil” but set in the campus and village of a small British university. It brings to mind the old quip, “The smaller the boat the meaner the rats.”
The understanding from this trilogy of dystopian fiction is IMHO foundational to being a modern grown-up. Not the full foundation, but still foundational. Read or reread them for a refresher course in the human condition and of the evil that men can do. And if you are unfamiliar with That Hideous Strength, pick it up and be edified. Every time I reread it I find myself saying, “Holy cow, that’s just like now!” Yes, it is a semi-fantasy, but the parallels are too powerful to ignore. It is not a fast read, not because it is turgid or difficult, but because you might just find yourself pausing by necessity to consider the implications of the tale for our modern, debauched world.
For extra credit when exploring the dysfunctional human condition take a stroll through The Minor Prophets of The Old Testament, Hosea through Malachi. Since the books do indeed chronicle accurately the nature of the human condition, like me you are likely to pause and reflect that the truths therein are as current as tomorrow’s headlines.
Since finishing the fourth floor of the barn fifteen years ago I’ve used that space for a lot of things; a meeting /presentation space for Groopshop, a video studio, a classroom, a Gragg chair workshop. With the demise of my teaching schedule here the function of the space has (d)evolved into primarily storage especially for extra workbenches and such. Over the years I’ve probably moved benches from the main floor to the fourth floor (and back) a dozen times or more, using my compound block-and-tackle hand hoist.
But here’s the part where the story gets very mysterious.
Somehow the benches gained weight over the years, and I was at the point where hoisting them by hand was problematic. What was once no big deal is now a very big deal. And, since in recent months I’ve been reorganizing and reducing the contents of the main floor, I was faced with the task of hoisting several benches up and out of the way.
Hmmm.
The solution? Buying and installing a Harbor Freight power winch. Their smallest 120v plug-in model was more than adequate. I bolted the winch unit to a 2×8 then lag-screwed the 2×8 into a number of the 2×6 rafters. The new system works perfectly and moving heavy things up and down to the barn attic is now a piece o’ cake.
© 2024 Don Williams
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