Please pardon me, but I need a place to rest my weary soul.

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Dylan said:
What's a "scoot"??
Click to expand...

Dylan,

A "scoot" is a sled pulled behind a team of horses upon which logs were rolled onto , chained down and pulled out of the woods to a header or landing. There was a carry over when bulldozers replaced horses . The scoots got bigger and were made of iron rather than wood to accomodated the bigger loads. The great thing about the scoot was it kept the wood clean for the saw mills which did not have the de-barkers of todays mills.

Damn, I'm showing my age again.

Bill
 
We have some local teams here that still use scoots. The advantage of horses for lot management is that they don't tear up the land, are a lot quieter and keep you warm on the ride home :).
 
I gladly cede the "firewood in reserve" title to WTS. Welcome aboard, and congratulations.

And for your viewing pleasure, here's one of your counterparts in Pennsylvania running 3 Multiteks.
 

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Here's a few cords of the processed wood.
 

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BeGreen said:
We have some local teams here that still use scoots. The advantage of horses for lot management is that they don't tear up the land, are a lot quieter and keep you warm on the ride home :).
Click to expand...

Some years back, during one of the cold crisp days of late winter, I was logging a 30 acre lot in Greenfield, NH. It was a good day for logging and it was also sugarin' season.
The land owner and I were pretty good friends any how, but this day was special.

Kerry invited me over to his house to have homemade waffles and eggs before the workday started.. With a delicious breakfast under our belts he headed down to the barn to hitch up the team and I went to the landing to get the skidder warmed up. I made a hitch or two and from the corner of my eye saw the team of oxen coming down the main skid road with the sap barrel on the scoot. Steam coming from the nostrils of the grand old beasts reminded me of the way things used to be when I was a small boy.
I shut down the detroit diesel of the skidder so as not to spook the oxen. Well, they didn't seem to mind at all, as if to say, we all have work to do and could do it together. Kerry said, " come on with us for a turn !"
With a clik of his cheek Kerry told the boys to head to the sidelines where the sap buckets hung. The oxen seemed to know , turning into the windrow of snow on the roadside. And with power, grace and and sense of the mission pulled us along the way to the sugarbush. It was like having your best friend working with you where no directions or orders were necessary. They just did their very best pulling the ever increasing weight of the scoot. The peace and quiet effort was exhilerating.

It was one of the great pleasures of my life to be a part of that partnership of man and beast. We tend to forget our purpose sometimes as the world spins faster and faster. Newer technology only gets us more money, not the pure pleasure of just being alive.

Maybe we could all think about it some.

Best,

Bill
 
Eric Johnson said:
I gladly cede the "firewood in reserve" title to WTS. Welcome aboard, and congratulations.

And for your viewing pleasure, here's one of your counterparts in Pennsylvania running 3 Multiteks.
Click to expand...

Eric,

I've been reading the NL for as long as I can remember. I have that article opened as an inspiration. The shear volume and effort to keep the flow going is impressive. Hats off to those boys !

Best,

Bill
 
Bill---hello and a pleasure to 'meet' you.
Lovely story---we have a fellow in the next town who tries his best to live 'in the old days'---oxen, burros, hand-tools, long days in open fields. He writes a weekly column in the local paper and is well-respected and admired. If you find time, I for one am 'all ears' around this campfire and more of what you wrote would be wonderful. You made my day.
 
[quote author="Weigle Tree Service" date="1163091018]I spread the sawdust on the garden a little on the green side and ended up with a fabulous mushroom crop. Any suggestions? I'm a real believer that everything gets put to the best use.[/quote]

That made me laugh. I have the same feeling, we're organic nut & crunchy's. I saw my neighbor collecting branches for an outdoor burn and asked if I could take them. He let me, and I chipped them up. I've been working on what to do with the chips since, I ended up with about 6 yards. I buried a little in some good dirt and planted some legumes. Well, the legumes sprung up, looked to be battling the chips for Nitrogen, lost the battle, and I now have a bare spot. I've got three worm bins, different types of worms. I feed them card board, paper, kitchen scraps, egg shells, etc. Wondered what affect it would have on them, worms don't have teeth but thought maybe something would happen. Yup, it dries them out faster and you need to moisten them more. I've been working on an experimental compost bin for a few years. I'm trying to create one that composts fast like a tumbler, but you don't have to turn and easy to make or understand. Also, no size limit (except height). Two experiments in one, play with my design and maybe find a purpose for branches/wood chips. I set it up and in a few hours it stinks! It wasn't an ammonia smell, my greens weren't off so I left it. The next day, it was the hottest compost ever. Definetely jiving with my bin design and another experiment popped in. What can I do with all that heat? A pre-heater tank I thought. I was toying with that idea in my head and then mushrooms grew, all over it! Could it get any better. A purpose for wood chips, shrooms for shroom compost, a pre-heating water tank idea floating in my head, and it's jiving with my bin! These mushrooms though, turned to slime on contact, couldn't be used for shroom compost. They also weren't specific where they grew, and started growing in the air channels I've been working on that lets it compost without turning. Eventually the shrooms clogged up the works and suffocated the compost and that was the end of my shroom compost, wood chip purpose, pre-heating tank, and quick decomposing without turning... until I solve that. I chuckled about your mushroom crop on your sawdust. The only purpose I have, is I read it's good if used as an ammendment in sandy soil. I turned some in a spot on my property, and it does appear to have improved it. I don't recommend it in places where the soil is already good, any Nitrogen seems to go to decomposing the wood first and deprives your plants, even legumes.
 
I put sawdust and chips in the walking rows between the raised beds. That gives you a nice, clean surface to walk on and helps keep mositure in the beds. Since I add several yards of compost to the soil every year, I need to keep laying in the sawdust to keep up with the increase in elevation. And yes, I get schrooms at the margins. Should probably try to learn more about them.
 
Weigle Tree Service said:
BeGreen said:
We have some local teams here that still use scoots. The advantage of horses for lot management is that they don't tear up the land, are a lot quieter and keep you warm on the ride home :).
Click to expand...

Some years back, during one of the cold crisp days of late winter, I was logging a 30 acre lot in Greenfield, NH. It was a good day for logging and it was also sugarin' season.
The land owner and I were pretty good friends any how, but this day was special.

Kerry invited me over to his house to have homemade waffles and eggs before the workday started.. With a delicious breakfast under our belts he headed down to the barn to hitch up the team and I went to the landing to get the skidder warmed up. I made a hitch or two and from the corner of my eye saw the team of oxen coming down the main skid road with the sap barrel on the scoot. Steam coming from the nostrils of the grand old beasts reminded me of the way things used to be when I was a small boy.
I shut down the detroit diesel of the skidder so as not to spook the oxen. Well, they didn't seem to mind at all, as if to say, we all have work to do and could do it together. Kerry said, " come on with us for a turn !"
With a clik of his cheek Kerry told the boys to head to the sidelines where the sap buckets hung. The oxen seemed to know , turning into the windrow of snow on the roadside. And with power, grace and and sense of the mission pulled us along the way to the sugarbush. It was like having your best friend working with you where no directions or orders were necessary. They just did their very best pulling the ever increasing weight of the scoot. The peace and quiet effort was exhilerating.

It was one of the great pleasures of my life to be a part of that partnership of man and beast. We tend to forget our purpose sometimes as the world spins faster and faster. Newer technology only gets us more money, not the pure pleasure of just being alive.

Maybe we could all think about it some.

Best,

Bill
Click to expand...

Thank you for slowing the spin of my own personal world.
 
Oh Rhonemas, the stories we can tell !

One of my great adventures was that big pile of sawdust. Now, it's very unlikely that we would have a Zoo close by, say within 20 miles, but we did. I mentioned my great scheme to my buddy Chucky and guess what ? He had connections with the zoo and said what I needed was some nitrogen to cook the pile of sawdust down. Ah-huh ! Yup, you get me some of that, I told him.

Next day here comes this 1961 Autorcar 10 wheel dump truck down our gravel road. Actually we could hear it coming about 1/2 hour before it turned down our road. It screaches to a stop, only because all the brake linings were long gone, and out jumps Chucky. " Got something for ya !" Yah, I can smell it, Dump it down back by the big sawdust pile.
My dog don't usually get up for old trucks, but this load got her real curious.

Rhonemas, do you know how much an elephant poops in just one day? Well, mix that with tiger, goat and all the other things that came over on the Ark and that was what I had. ...and ripe!
Chucky dumps the load and scratches his head saying the load probably had more when he left the zoo, but nitrogen evaporates quick, ya know. I kind of figured it was the holes in the bottom of the truck, but what do I know? It was free.

I mixed the contents of that load into the big sawdust pile and figured if a little bit of nitrogen worked, why not a lot?
Down to Blue Seal we go and come back with 300 lbs of Urea in bags. ...and we mix all that in with the big saw dust pile. I had heard from a fella that you had to turn over the pile every so often to get air for the bugs to work. So, that's what I'm going to do. Two weeks later I drive the old Case ( 1968 , for you collectors of vintage iron) backhoe down to the not quite as big sawdust pile and bust into it. OMG ! the temperature guage on that tractor went up 20 degrees. Heck ! It was real close to boilin' over when I got TO the pile and this sure didn't help. Then, the engine started to sputter and just plain stopped. Some one later told me that engines need oxygen to burn the fuel. I think Chucky told me that.

After I pulled the tractor out of the pile I tried different methods to get air into the ever shrinking pile. The best way was to do it real fast with a bath towell wrapped around your head. That way you could still breathe and not get blisters on your face.

That old saw dust pile finally settled down after a year or so and at that point I got religious. We humans mess with too many things we just don't understand.

Ps. My old dog loved that pile of saw dust. Too bad she was a " long hair shephard".
 
Weigle Tree Service said:
BeGreen said:
We have some local teams here that still use scoots. The advantage of horses for lot management is that they don't tear up the land, are a lot quieter and keep you warm on the ride home :).
Click to expand...

Some years back, during one of the cold crisp days of late winter, I was logging a 30 acre lot in Greenfield, NH. It was a good day for logging and it was also sugarin' season.
The land owner and I were pretty good friends any how, but this day was special.

Kerry invited me over to his house to have homemade waffles and eggs before the workday started.. With a delicious breakfast under our belts he headed down to the barn to hitch up the team and I went to the landing to get the skidder warmed up. I made a hitch or two and from the corner of my eye saw the team of oxen coming down the main skid road with the sap barrel on the scoot. Steam coming from the nostrils of the grand old beasts reminded me of the way things used to be when I was a small boy.
I shut down the detroit diesel of the skidder so as not to spook the oxen. Well, they didn't seem to mind at all, as if to say, we all have work to do and could do it together. Kerry said, " come on with us for a turn !"
With a clik of his cheek Kerry told the boys to head to the sidelines where the sap buckets hung. The oxen seemed to know , turning into the windrow of snow on the roadside. And with power, grace and and sense of the mission pulled us along the way to the sugarbush. It was like having your best friend working with you where no directions or orders were necessary. They just did their very best pulling the ever increasing weight of the scoot. The peace and quiet effort was exhilerating.

It was one of the great pleasures of my life to be a part of that partnership of man and beast. We tend to forget our purpose sometimes as the world spins faster and faster. Newer technology only gets us more money, not the pure pleasure of just being alive.

Maybe we could all think about it some.

Best,

Bill
Click to expand...

You could / should write on working in the woods through the years. You have a gift with words!!!
 
Amen Bill, well put. You brought back some fond memories for myself as well.

I liked the the sawdust story too. Believe it or not, our local zoo in Seattle sells composted "zoo doo" for a pretty penny. And it goes in a heartbeat. At times there is a lottery for it, it's so popular.
 
Talking of the horses and oxen in the woods..great to be reminded of them! It is a partnership for sure..

One morning a couple years back a customer was logging up on the top of this steep mountain..told me to go up the work road as far as I could and walk the rest of the way through the woods to the top. It was a crisp fall morning around 6:00- 6:15. Had walked about 5 minutes from the pickup and the couple cups of coffee was asking for the door....The mountain had not been logged much over time due to the steepness and the maples were big..As I am talking care of business next to this big maple, the huge head of a dark gray percheron peers around the maple tree about 6 ft from me...Talk about good morning! I can still picture those big eyes and the breath curling out of his nose.

His partner was working up above and he was just waiting his turn in the hitch.
 
Bill---hello and a pleasure to ‘meet’ you.
Lovely story---we have a fellow in the next town who tries his best to live ‘in the old days’---oxen, burros, hand-tools, long days in open fields. He writes a weekly column in the local paper and is well-respected and admired. If you find time, I for one am ‘all ears’ around this campfire and more of what you wrote would be wonderful. You made my day
Click to expand...

Bugette---would you be talking about Sam?

Welcome aboard Bill!
 
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