This is the view when you walk up to the south end of the fields. The two Norway pines in the left foreground were inside the edge of the woods at this time last year. It looks quite different now!
Chuck Hueckman is back at the Ottertail with his skidding equipment. I'm amazed that the skidder will acutally crawl up out of the gulley at the South end of the property....
This is from the new clearing looking back toward the lodge. The light green on the ground is some grasses that grew up during the summer on the freshly cleared earth.
Here Chuck is pulling a couple of big maples up the hill. The old Ford tractor would not even make it up the hill, much less pull anything. It does O.K. on flat ground, but this hill is ginormous (a new word in the dictionary this year).
Here is a shot looking down into the hole. The South property line runs right through the open swamp area at the bottom. When you're standing near the south line, you can see the Ottertail Springs about 100 yards to the Southwest.
As you can tell, I was impressed with that skidder!!!
Yes, the looks have changed. In the past, those two big white pines in the background were only visible if you were close to them in the woods. Now they are readily seen from the grounds of the Lodge. This is the project that has kept me busy for several hours a day for the last two weeks. I was lazy today and only worked two hours, then sat in the recliner and slept through Antiques Roadshow and some other shows???? It's Sunday and raining lightly this afternoon and evening. It was cloudy and windy earlier while I was in the woods, but not raining. It could rain like this every day for a couple of weeks and we would still not be caught up with the drought conditions in Northern Wisconsin.
Will need to get going on Peg's house again and finish a couple of projects, the attack the siding on the garage. The project list does not seem to get any shorter. Oh, well, it's my own fault..
I gotta go, Carlo
