"Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge; others just gargle." - Robert Anthony

Today was a mixed one, and that's a major understatement.

The good news includes more progress on the current writing project while at the coffee shop.
I came home and got to work on Fred, cleaning the lower level and then doing the touch up painting on the ceiling, wall, and wainscot.

George stopped by with the piece of beam he thought might work for a desktop. Here's a picture I took of it this evening. It's just basic pine, and the dark area is where I took a rag to wash off the dirt. It's still wet, hence the dark color.
It's 60" long but only 21" wide. The standard desk is 30"-32" wide, so this is narrower by quite a bit. And though you can't see it well here, the long sides both have some splitting along the edge.
I looked it up, and the Ikea desk I used in AZ (the Malm) was 55" long and 25 1/2" wide (deep). So, I'm thinking about how I can make this work and save the $$$ of almost any other option. I'm thinking I'll take my Skill saw and take just enough off each edge to clean them up, get rid of the splitting. I'll also take some off the ends, including an inch or so off the one at the bottom in this pic because it's got a little rot. Then I'll get some wood to put an edge around the whole thing with corners mitered to 45 degrees. Maybe some redwood, some cedar, or maybe old barn wood if I can find it. If I get 2x4 lumber it will be just a bit thicker than this beam, which is 3 1/8" and take it out to a width very close to the Ikea desk I had. I could even do two woods, a thin strip of poplar and then a 2x4 of something darker.
The question: should I sand this down, stain, and varnish it, or just wash the whole thing. The advantage to sanding is a smooth surface that would work as a desk instead of spending the money on a piece of glass to get a smooth surface. The plan is to sand on the other side, which has enough damage to qualify as the underneath side and see how it turns out, and then go from there.

Money has suddenly become a significant issue, as of about 4:30 p.m.
The timber guy sent me an email this morning saying he'd be stopping by with his cutter between 3:30 and 4:00 to look at the six very big very dead white fir trees, three on each side of the creek. True to his word, Daniel - 50-ish - arrived with Gary at 3:45. Gary was NOT what I expected. He's got to be 70, walks with a very slight limp (pretty good for a guy who had hip replacement surgery six weeks ago), and has been cutting timber for 41 years. OK, so he may not be the freshest buck on the block but the word expert applies.
Gary is not a talker, and at least half of the sentences he starts don't get finished. The percentage seems to drop by half if he's answering a question. Daniel had told me Gary was "different," and he was right.
Bottom line, I have an infestation of the Engraver Beetle which has attacked every white fir on our property. Some of those trees succumbed a few years ago and are nothing but very tall, very thick sticks. Some are showing the early signs of the infestation, signs that Gary pointed out. It starts with a spot the size of your pinky nail that's tan. Touch it and it falls apart like sawdust, because that's exactly what it is, the point at which the beetle chewed through the bark and got just underneath it to the critical cambium layer. From there the beetle chews through that layer around the circumference of the tree, severing that layer and cutting off every part of the tree above that point from the nutrients that flow through it. It's called girdling. It can take a few years for that girdling to happen, and then another couple of years for the tree to show signs of death, but once the beetle is inside the tree its fate is sealed.

Every tree in this pic is a white fir, and there are more you can't see here. It's pretty much all the trees between the burn pile and the creek. They will all come down, either because they're cut or because they rotted to the point that a stiff wind blew them down. And in this case that's the wind that blows from the west, across the creek, and toward all the structures on our lot.

Gary isn't interested in taking them down. It's going to require some pretty significant equipment to drop them where they need to go, which is NOT across the chicken coop, or Fred, or MoHo. It will also require someone who can climb some of the bigger trees and de-limb them, something Gary understandably doesn't do anymore.

I've got some research to do. Step one is contact Robin, the lady who works for the OR Forestry Dept. and is the one who will give me formal permission to have these trees harvested. Then I have to go the the local county office and get a harvesting permit. Then I'll call Daniel back and he'll put me in touch with a guy he's used as a subcontractor and who has the necessary equipment and skill to essentially clear cut this whole area of our lot.

They call it merchantable timber, and it refers to trees that have been dropped and are therefore now called logs, and can be cut up into boards. They pay you for those. Then there are the trees that are so far gone that they're just chippers - wood that gets ground up for use as ground cover or compost. They'll buy that, too, but the price per load is so low that it can cost more to remove than what it generates for the buyer.
So now the question is, how much of each do I have?? Is there enough merchantable timber that I'll break even, or will getting these trees out cost me money? (Daniel and Gary agree the chances of making money on this are almost zero.) I won't have the answer until Daniel's sub has been in here to look things over.

We were drawn to this lot because it had us living in the woods. Now we know that a good portion of the woods are terminal.
Yeah, not such a good day.