Saw Mill

The saw mill is one of several pieces of equipment that has to be running to keep a farm growing. It creates a usable commodity out of a natural resource. If you have a chainsaw that will start, a tractor, a sawmill and some suitable trees, you can make lumber. Equipment, like old farmers, has a useful life span. Equipment sitting unprotected outside has a lot less lifespan, soooooo, I am trying to get a roof built over the sawmill. Ironically, I don't have enough lumber. With this in mind, I got the mill going this fall in hopes the weather would stay warm and dry while I milled the small amount it would take for the roof. Unfortunately, the roof over the sawmill was only one of the projects that needed to have posts in the ground before it froze. So, I put the posts in the ground for the sawmill, tied them together and braced them off with temporary bracing which would be used as part of the staging for building the roof.

Once the poles for the mill were in, we moved to the new fence for the goats and put in those posts. The weather was closing in and we stayed with the fence project until it was done. We needed it for a breeding pen this fall and next spring it would be useful to separate the goats during kidding season. The fence used up a lot of lumber which could have been used for a roof over the mill.

Sooo, as luck would have it, (or poor planning and cold weather which came punctually in December) we soon had a mill buried in snow, in need of wood for the roof and temporarily braced off making it impossible to mill wood until we got the roof far enough along to take down the temporary bracing. There is always a solution to these things, and it always involves lots of additional unnecessary work. After my teenage years when all work seemed a waste of my time, I made peace with the idea that work was a necessary part of life. I never completely conquered my resentment towards "unnecessary" work. "Additional unnecessary" work which I caused by poor planning was always very frustrating. Experience, however, has taught me I will be working at "something" everyday, "what" only matters that day. Being frustrated about it isn't helpful and makes it worse.

With a determined crew consisting of my daughter Hannah and her husband Buster(who graciously didn't point out how much easier it would be in warmer weather), we built the beams that will support the roof and allow me to take down the temporary bracing.

Now, I will mill lumber in the snow, so, I won't have to mill lumber in the snow. There is a certain cosmic, circular irony here that I will have plenty of time to contemplate while I am shoveling and milling.