WE BUILT TWO CABINS...FOR $100 EACH

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We found that a simple wedge could be used to head off most of these felling problems before they happened. By driving one or two of the tools into the cut we made as we sawed a tree down, we could "steer" the spruce in the direction we wanted it to go. The wedges also helped us keep our saws from being pinched and stuck and—in general—aided in preventing dangerous situations from developing.

As each tree was felled, we'd limb it, cut it into six- to nine-foot sections (the longest lengths that the sawmill—and the two of us—could handle), and move the logs to a point where they could be loaded into the pickup.

The easiest way to get freshly felled timber from where it lies to where it can be hauled away is to skid it out with a tractor, a horse, or an ox. (Oxen are still quite popular in this area. They may be slow, but they're also quiet, dependable, hardworking beasts that can get the job done long after you've run out of oil and tractor parts.) We, however, haven't purchased an ox yet—and we didn't, at the time of our logging activity, own a horse or a tractor—so we ended up moving our logs with a couple of peavies and a good deal of muscle power. (A peavy, of course, is one of those pointed poles with a cant hook at the end which you ram into a log so that, by prying on the tool's "handle", you can turn the trunk over.)

Actually, the muscling out of the sections of downed trees wasn't nearly as big a job as you might think. What we did, you see, was cut one nice round log into a few two-foot-long "rollers". It was then a simple—and relatively easy—matter to raise even a nine-foot section of log enough to get a set of these rollers under it and "wheel" the heavy trunk right out of the woods! (if you've ever moved a big piece of furniture by slipping a piece of pipe under its front edge, pushing the massive weight forward until it runs off the roller, and then slipping the pipe back under the front of the weight again, you'll know exactly how we moved those logs.)

Hoisting our nine-foot-long chunks of wood into a truck was almost as easy. We just [1] laid a support timber on the ground parallel to the vehicle's tailgate, [2] balanced the larger log across it, and [3] backed the bed of the truck under the end of the balanced log.

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