Bucket, bull, chainsaw, tree stump

A busy day today.  Last night I put an ad on Craigslist to sell an old loader bucket from dad's time.  The bucket sat in the backyard from when dad was alive.  A few weeks ago someone placed an ad on Craigslist looking for a bucket.  He looked at my bucket and said he would buy it.  A few days earlier I had a major hassle trying to cash a check for an account at a Wells Fargo bank.  The bank wanted two forms of id, my fingerprint on the check, and then $7.50 to cash the check.  I returned the check to the friend who wrote it and asked for cash.  I will never take a Wells Fargo check ever again!  The guy who bought my loader bucket said he could pay me in cash, but it would have to be the next day once he got the money.

The next afternoon the guy called all apologetic and said earlier that afternoon another person called and offered to sell his loader bucket.  That bucket was brand new as the guy wanted a larger bucket for his new tractor.  So I lost out on a sale.

This morning another guy called and came and bought my loader bucket.  So everything worked out in the end.

Then after I went into the house Calvin called me.  One of my cattle was in the part of his pasture with his vehicles, trailer and stuff.  I went over and found Toby the bull there.  He had pushed again the corral panels and both strands of twine holding the end panel to my fence were broken and Toby slipped inside.  None of the other cattle noticed until I closed the panel.  Calvin came outside to help me but Toby took a look at us and walked over to the corral panel where he had come through.  I moved the panel and he walked back into the pasture.  It was so easy it is unbelievable. Because cattle do not forget I pounded two more steel fence posts against that panel.  I also used three strands of wire to hold the panel to my fence.  In the evening, as the cattle grazed, I saw Toby walk along the corral panel fence.

I am done chain sawing logs for the year.   I have more logs left to cut but the chain is now so stretched it barely stays on the bar.  Too dangerous to cut.  The chain started really stretching the past few days.

I have other projects to work on so I will get a new chain later and cut the logs next Spring.  Over the Summer I have taken time here and there and I have more than enough logs split for firewood this Winter.  It is unusual... I usually start the major push to complete the splitting about this time of year.  That's not to say I won't split more firewood as I have some logs that are soft and need splitting sooner than later.

I then gathered up the logs I had cut over the past few days.  Below are the soft logs I will split later, along with tree branches I had cut for firewood.  The other logs I had cut were hauled earlier to a stack of logs for future cutting next year.

I had completed cutting up the tree trunk to this tree.  Some of the larger branches will be cut for firewood next year and the rest will go into burning tree trunks in the pasture.

Here is a view of some of the tree trunks I plan to burn.  I had cut up the tree trunks for these trees last year.

When gathering logs I also removed one tree trunk. This is the fifth stump I removed from the pastures this year. This tree trunk had rotted and with a little digging and then hooking a chain to my pickup I was able to pull the rotted trunk from the ground.

After the stump removal

The removed tree stump

In the evening I burned two other rotting tree stumps.  I'll have photos of that in another post later.  A light rain shower started after dark - earlier than predicted.  Tomorrow I'll see if the smoldering continued to burn the stumps, or whether the rain put a stop to that.