"I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing." - Johnny Carson

It's about priorities when you gotta get out of your house NOW.

Donald Trump began receiving national security intelligence briefings. Something about that seems oxymoronic.

It's getting officially hot here, as in setting records hot. High 90's tomorrow and triple digits Friday. We'll be spending that day on the coast, packing a lunch and enjoying mid-70's temps. I don't kow what time we'll begin the one hour drive home, but whatever the time, we'll return to heat. Saturday it will "cool off" to the upper 90's.
Accordingly, I've decided to pass on the winery race Saturday at 6 p.m. It's about an hour south of here where temps typically run about 5 degrees warmer (hotter) than here.
The thermometer sitting between us as I type this says it's currently 88 in here. That's warm.

Charlie finished his logging work this morning and Robyn, the Dept. of Forestry officer, came and gave everything her official approval. We still have a load of logs that Dick will come back either tomorrow or Friday to haul to the mill. Then it's all on me. I have about two dozen logs to cut into rounds, logs that were either too small for the mill or big enough, but too diseased. But they'll still work for firewood. I'll have LOTS of it by the time I'm done cutting and splitting. And I think I see a rented log splitter in my future.

So, here are the before and after pics.



This pair was taken from our front porch. (I don't need to label which is which, eh?)
In the lower picture you can see the burn pile to the left. You don't get a sense of the size of the pile, but it's about 10' tall. They actually call it slash, and it will get burned as soon as burn season opens, usually October 1 assuming we get the normal Sept. rains, otherwise they delay it.
I have to get a special permit and call the day before I burn so they can give me the go-ahead.

That bare ground isn't as bare as it looks. There are pieces of branches and bark everywhere that I'll have to rake up. And the dozer and hoe chewed up the forest floor so it's nothing but a fine brown dust. My footfall raises a little cloud of dust.



This is the same area, the before & after view from the porch of Fred, our one-room cabin.

You can see one of the fully dead trees to the left, one of about 5 that were brown, top to bottom. And Christine, the state entomologist, said the engraver beetles and their offspring will move from one tree to the next as they look for fresh cambium to eat.

Besides the gaping hole where we used to have beautiful tall fir trees there's a lot more sun getting through, both to the ground and to the west-facing windows of MoHo.
That would be OK if we weren't in the middle of a record breaking heat wave.
We'll have a great area for fruit trees and an expanded garden.
And maybe goats?

This is the view we had coming down our driveway, approaching MoHo; you can see the corner of it to the left of this pic.

I never tired of coming home to this view. Even in the rain it was beautiful. Tall trees and native forest floor flora underneath. God's landscaping.


Now?

The trees you see in the distance are on the other side of the creek, the slash pile in the center. If you click to expand the "before" pic you'll see the satellite dish so obvious in the "after."

If we decide to do goats they'll go off to the right, where the dozer is parked. I don't know what we'll put in as our "curb appeal" view. I've been reading about pasture grass, or maybe some fruit trees?


Some observations at this point in the process:

• As I wrote in an earlier post, The Person who planted all those fir trees also created the beetles that were killing them, and connected the two. As Job said, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" (Job 2:10). So while I'm more than sad to see how drastically things have changed I'm committed to accepting it as his best.
• Pam asked the question, "If it had looked like this when we came to see it on our property search would we still have bought it?" We both agree the answer is unquestionably yes!
• We are VERY pleased with Charlie and Connie Green, as in C&C Timber, and thankful that Someone led us to them (Monte, too!) They're good, and genuinely nice folk. 
• We won't know for about a month what our share of the timber proceeds will be; it takes that long for the mills to issue payments to the operator and the owner (us). But when we began we didn't know we'd get anything out of this, and might have to pay to have the bad trees removed. Whatever we receive will be a blessing and provide at least a good start to whatever we decide to do with this area. 
• I've got a TON of work to do just getting those logs cut and split, never mind a goat pen & shelter and tree planting. The winter rains start in Oct. with an average 3" and increases in Nov. to 8", so I'll get to work tomorrow morning with the chainsaw. Boredom is not going to be a problem, but that's the way I like it. I do much better when there's work to be done. 

We're also going on an outing tomorrow that should provide some cool pics for tomorrow night's post. 

That's a tease.