Pictorial Essay: Your Life

Normally I don’t go for that stuff – but that was well done. Good enough for me to show it to my kids in fact…..like a ‘you are here’ moment.

hey stucky, this is kinda neat. i enjoyed it. though i think you left out the cranky old fuck stage, which for me began at age 32.

Hey, Stucky –

I dropped by for a look at TBP today and find this.

After my first experience of you, I had written you off as a complete a-hole.

My opinion has now been amended in your favor. (Which fact, I recognize, counts for exactly zip but I thought you should know.)

DaP

The universe is in your hands .You were born free .You will die free …..but will you live free ?

Stucky , are you on drugs ? Your beginning to sound like some new age guru . Other then that good job.

I needed this today Stuck.

I’ve been building and sanding, fixing and sanding, patching and sanding and finally painting and now sanding for what feels like months.

I’m tired and needed some motivation to go forth and accomplish more.

Thanks for this.

Hugs.

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On Sunday morning we were up before first light, something that happens with a lot these days as we head into Autumn. I made the children a big breakfast; creamed chipped beef on toast, fried eggs, roasted potatoes and applesauce from the first harvest of the year. They drank milk from our neighbors farm poured out of half gallon mason jars and I enjoyed watching them fill their bellies with healthy food to start the day.

While they got dressed I got out the tools for the day; chain saws and files, a peavey and fuel cans, hammers and wedges, a maul, an ax, a coil of rope, earplugs and helmets, chains and a breaker bar. I hooked up a well worn pair of kevlar chaps and tossed some plastic bottles filled with water into a bucket. By the time I had finished the children had come outside and were heading out to the sugar orchard with the dogs to help me harvest firewood for the day.

During the busiest part of the Summer we rarely get up into the forested part of the property. As Fall approaches it begins to come back into focus as the site of our hardest work of the year. trees that have fallen or dropped limbs must be cut up into blocks and stacked for splitting. In many places we can make our way in with the tractor or the gator to load up the wood, but in other, like the one we were working on that day are too steep, too bouldered to be navigable by anything other than foot and here each piece must be carried out by hand. This is the kind of work where even the youngest can not only help out, but make a difference that counts.

I had selected two large rock maples for harvest, each one standing deadwood that had gone out of production in the past several years after a century and half of vigorous growth. Dropping a 100 foot tree in a densely wooded lot is a tricky proposition that requires a great deal of thought and planning. The act of harvesting trees of this size is something that takes two or more years of preparation if it’s done in a working sugar bush. The under story must be cleared and the brush pulled into bunny piles- beaver dam looking mounds of saplings and lower branches collected from the cut and placed in depressions to decompose. In the first couple of years they become home to numerous species of wildlife- rabbits, ground squirrels, field mice and nesting birds. As they decompose they fill in the low spots with a rich humus of decayed carbon that feeds the orchard. Smaller trees that are misshapen, too many of any given species in competition with the sugar maples like hemlocks and beech are felled for firewood or boards and removed in advance of the big cuts. If you scope out the proper lean of the tree to come out you can, if all goes according to plan, drop it precisely where you’d like it to fall without doing further damage to the younger trees coming up for replacement, or snapping off branches that get hung up in the canopy creating “widow makers”, dangerous deadwood waiting for stiff wind or time to bring it down with enough force to kill a man.

As the younger kids pulled brush onto the pile I set to work bringing down the maples. The first cuts remove a wedge from the side of the tree where you’d like it to fall, the second relief cut is made behind and above the wedge cut and allows the tree to topple to the forest floor. Even when done properly these kinds of cuts are extremely challenging and pose risks based on the grain of the wood, unseen hollows within the tree and a multitude of factors that simply cannot be accounted for with any degree of certainty. Everyone working in the area removes themselves to a safe difference and watches the top of the tree for signs of lean while I cut. It is one of the few times when I feel apprehension about what I am doing, but some times you have to either fish or cut bait. As they would say these days, the tree ain’t gonna cut itself. As the tree falls the sound builds; the soft snap at the butt where the grain breaks free, the movement of the leaves high up swishing like they would before a thunderstorm- then the crack of branches the displacement of air as the speed builds and the explosive report of 15 tons of carbon connecting with the earth in one final instant. The vacuum of sound that follows is immense. A few stray leaves flutter to the ground, everyone looks to each other as if to confirm that something that big just happened and then smiles break out spontaneously, five sets of white teeth sparkling in the gloamy green of the forest.

I cut the butt end into two eight foot sections for lumber, inch thick boards that will be milled and dried during the Winter for floorboards, cutting boards and chopping blocks. On a tree this size from a sugarbush the entire periphery is marked with tapping scars, dark indents where a hundred years of sap has been drained each Spring, one drop at a time. As the tree grows it not only expands in girth, but ascends upwards carrying the oldest spile marks upwards, sometimes as high as twenty feet. The boards made from these marked pieces are coveted by master furniture builders and craftsman and bring top dollar when they come to market. Above these butts we block the wood into 24″ pieces which my oldest son goes to work on with wedges and sledge hammer, splitting them into four pieces that weigh 150 pounds or more each. The younger children take a keel- a red wax crayon for marking timber- and a stout branch pre-cut to length to mark the trunk and leaders for cutting. I go to work and follow behind them, pushing the blade into the wood, a shower of creamy chips blowing into the leaves and loam.

By noon we have disassembled what took the Sun and the rain and the soil 150 years to make and begin the process of carrying it out of the woods one block at a time.

Our friends stop by later to visit- the younger children have lost interest and at this age its best to let them go- so the husband and my son and I finish up at the splitter and quickly crank out three cords or better before darkness pulls the plug on the day. The women and children are in the house, you can see the golden light of the kitchen spilling out across the granite slabs of the porch before fading away at the edge of the lawn. Inside food is being prepared, conversations run one on top of another in a pitch just under what my chain saw ears find audible and outdoors, exhausted, filthy, and gazing towards the last light in the west we stand together without a sound and regard the pile of split wood that marks our harvest.

When people visit the farm there are a couple of things they always say to us, the most frequently heard comment being, “It must be a lot of work.” I think that they mean it as a compliment and so I take it as one, but what it seems to mean underneath is that we are doing something very few people would ever want to do. We live in one of the most work averse eras in human history, as if rest and relaxation were the panacea of existence. Yes, it is hard work to provide for oneself, to seek out sustenance not in the grocery store but from the soil, to harness energy rather than tap into a source someone else maintains and provides, but it is fulfilling too in a way that no distraction or entertainment could ever approximate. It marks our place in the world as something other than a bystander or spectator, but rather as an integral part of something bigger, something older, something profound.

Later, after our friends had gone and the children were asleep in their beds, my wife and I spent some time as we always do when we’re together, talking about things. After all these years there is nothing as pleasing as to watch my wife smiling and laughing at something I have said, or telling me some story about something she did during her day and being close to each other in our own home with the dogs laying outside the door to the kitchen, fast asleep. By the time we wound things up we were both bone tired and we leaned against each other as we made our way upstairs to a rest that we had earned. I have said to my children that when I die I hope that they cremate me and spread my ashes on the fields, so that I can give back something to the land that has given so much to us. They think I am joking, but I am not. Everything is harvested in its time, energy becomes matter, matter returns to energy and the cycle continues until the end of days. I only hope that what we’ve done while we were here is as valuable as the trees we took down and that somehow we’ve grown as they have, rooted to the land.

Hawkings said he was an atheist. He’s pissed because GOD tied him up and put him in a wheelchair.
Good job Billy , Stucky needs to be made fun of every now and then.Keeps him humble.

bb,

I trolled Stuck for my own amusement, not to teach some lesson… it was just too good to pass up… it was almost like he was begging for it…

I didn’t really mean anything by it, just having some fun…

Meh… guy can’t even get cheap laughs around here anymore without getting everyone hacked off…

Billy , I know you were just playing with Stucky.For what it’s worth , I was to.

Gayle , would you pray for me .Seriously , I need all the help I can get.Something like Lord watch over bb and little bb .Keep them out of arms way.Little bb is always with me.Thanks.

thanks for enlightening us T4C that purportedly peer reviewed scientishism is greater than God.Hawkings ..we are truly not worthy.

http://www.voxday.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-greatest-medical-scandal-of-all-time.html

Thursday, September 25, 2014
“The Greatest Medical Scandal of All Time”
Dr. Bernard Dalbergue, a former pharmaceutical industry physician with Gardasil manufacturer Merck, declares that Gardasil has “has absolutely no effect on cervical cancer”:

The full extent of the Gardasil scandal needs to be assessed: everyone knew when this vaccine was released on the American market that it would prove to be worthless! Diane Harper, a major opinion leader in the United States, was one of the first to blow the whistle, pointing out the fraud and scam of it all.

Gardasil is useless and costs a fortune! In addition, decision-makers at all levels are aware of it!

Cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, paralysis of the lower limbs, vaccine-induced MS and vaccine-induced encephalitis can be found, whatever the vaccine.

I predict that Gardasil will become the greatest medical scandal of all times because at some point in time, the evidence will add up to prove that this vaccine, technical and scientific feat that it may be, has absolutely no effect on cervical cancer and that all the very many adverse effects which destroy lives and even kill, serve no other purpose than to generate profit for the manufacturers.

Gardasil appears to be literally worse than useless, because it has demonstrably harmed many girls and young women without any reduction of cervical cancer rates. Gardasil was introduced in 2006. As of 8 September 2013 there have been more than 57 million doses distributed in the United States. The result with the latest available data from the CDC:

2003: 11,745 women in the United States were diagnosed with cervical cancer
2011: 12,109 women in the United States were diagnosed with cervical cancer

Needless to say, the pro-vaxxers are already attempting to destroy Dr. Dalbergue’s reputation

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/breaking-mmr-vaccine-autism-cdc-coverup/
Breaking: MMR vaccine, autism, CDC coverup
Aug20 by Jon Rappoport

Breaking: autism, MMR vaccine, CDC coverup

by Jon Rappoport

August 20, 2014

http://www.nomorefakenews.com

Sources: Age of Autism, Focus Autism Foundation—

Age of Autism 8/18 article: “Senior government scientist breaks 13 years’ silence on CDC’s vaccine-autism fraud.”

CDC research scientist comes forward, anonymously, comes clean, tells Dr. Brian Hooker that the CDC has known about the MMR vaccine connection to autism for at least 11 years.

Has known, and has intentionally covered it up.

The CDC and the US government have gone to extreme lengths to assert there is no vaccine-autism connection.

This CDC scientist has spoken with Brian Hooker, a PhD in biochemical engineering, many times.

Hooker states he has seen raw CDC data not included in any study. And the data show that:

African-American boys who receive their first MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine before the age of 36 months have a 300% increased risk for autism.

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Much appreciated Stucky, nice work as usual and thought provoking as well.

Another eloquently written and refreshing story by Hardscrabble where he takes what most would think is a simple story about a necessary seasonal chore and turns the whole experience through his words into a vision of a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover from days gone by.
Well done sir.

Stucky,
Great job, much appreciated. You sum much of what I say to my kids so wonderfully. I will be sending this to them.
Thanks again,
Bob.

Gayle, this place won’t darken too much but it will be darker after your gone. What is there to look forward to? A heavier concentration of Billy. He’s OK if you have a racist bent. His humor is the kind Bill Tomey once described as “makes you want to hit somebody”.

There for a while we had a heavy rotation at work and everyone who left said, I won’t forget you guys, I’ll call. We never heard from them again. And if I were unscientific about it, I would have to conclude our dumb-ass boss was the cause. They finally kicked him upstairs to stop the bleed out.

Billy has the technique and the words, what he lacks is a brain. I can’t believe he tried to patronize me saying I ended my rant on a weak note. Violence, even verbal violence is all he knows. Here’s an idea, Billy, stop reading the porn magazines, the same way your body exudes the smell of sausage, you writing stinks of a porn mentality. Do yourself a favor and do as Gayle recommends, read the literature you claim illegals love. (That was a strange claim but you must have seen some non-white reading when you were in the Army).

I tried to warn you guys but Billy was the loud one posting pics and derisive comments so that a few began to give him thumbs up and that got the ball rolling. This place is no longer a free community, it is a group held in thrall by the white equivalent of Al Sharpton, his word is gospel and none dare contradict the Grand Dragon Billy.

Stuck, I hope your not hurt, I hope you opened your eyes to this pariah. This mocking hyena. This human Ebola. This Garbage truck on Google auto-drive. This back flowing toilet. This shit stain on Old Glory.

Bye, Gayle, you held on long enough, asking you to stay on with Billy shitting the proverbial bed is too much to ask of anyone.

Stucky that maybe your life but it damn sure ain’t mine.

Stuckys says: You ….. conformed. Is it any wonder you feel confused and hopeless?

Stucky do another cooking post.

For Gayle