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TIMBERRRRRRRRR!!!!




PAUL USING CHAIN SAW














WHY WON'T YOU GIVE US DELICIOUS
MILK IN THE WINTER??






LARA SHOWING OFF EGGS










ARE YOU THE ONE WAKING US
UP EVERY MORNING?


For only the second day since we've been here, we didn't get to spend the whole day together. We spent the morning together in the cabin, having breakfast, doing chores, and each independently working on our separate projects. Jen is categorizing the books; there are a LOT of books, so there is no end in sight for this project. The categories books must be divided into are: self sufficiency, gardening/farming/composting, construction/d.i.y building/mechanics/electric, wildcrafting/plant identification, crafts, food/cooking/eating, health/nutrition, history, and outdoor activities. While these categories seem to cover all matters, there have been many instances Jen has been uncertain which category a certain book should be classified in. For example, if a book instructs you how to build a gardening shed, does it qualify as gardening or construction? If a book tells you how to prepare a wild herb, is it plant identification or cooking? In real life things aren't always simply in black and white; unfortunately these books each must have a color for its respective category. There is no grey area, nor double categorizing, so it's a head-scratcher. It doesn't help that all of these books are covered with inches of dust either. Jen's hands are now also covered in dust and paint markers which she is using to mark their bindings.

Aaron is working on creating a full blown manual for the entire water pump system that supplies water strictly to our cabin. It is a free-standing system that collects water from one of the 250 local springs in this valley. In short, the water emerges from a spring, flows through a filtration system into a tank, through a pump, into another water tank, and is gravity-fed to the cabin. Aaron is in charge of drawing and explaining all of the mechanical and electrical schematics of the water system as well as creating a troubleshooting guide. This is proving impossible, since he a) cannot draw well, b) is not a mechanical engineer, c) is not an electrical engineer, d) will only have a few more precious hours to work on this before we leave at the end of next week, and e) is not exactly sure where to find said water pump. Paul is painstakingly trying to teach Aaron about the ins and outs of this system, but it is clear this overambitious project (Paul himself struggles with understanding this system--and he built it!!) and it will probably never reach completion by the time we leave. Aaron does hope to learn as much as possible until then.

In order to fully recover from the sniffles and to not get sicker, Jen spent this afternoon indoors, working on the book classification and making the official Coweeta Heritage Center Recipe book. Aaron went down to work with Paul and Bill again to do more clearing. Because we're not lumberjacks, this is all new to us. First, you cut down the tree with a chain saw. In order to be in a safe zone while a tree is falling, you must be standing one and a half times the height of the tree away from the stump in a 45 degree angle away from where it is falling. For safety, we just walk really, really, really far away. Once the tree is grounded, all limbs are sawed from the trunk of the tree and dragged away, forming small piles with the butt of the limbs all facing the same direction. Then the tree is measured and cut into lengths that can be used for beams which will get cut at the saw mill. Smaller parts of the tree must be split with an axe and these "small" parts can be over 3 feet in diameter; these are VERY difficult to split. These split pieces are then put into other piles and will some day warm someone else's toes. It's all very physically demanding labor. The tools used include a roll-over tool to aide in rolling over very heavy and large logs, wedges to ensure the tree falls in the proper direction, mauls and axes to split wood, chain saws to cut trees and limbs, chains and a tractor to haul away fallen logs. Ear plugs are a must.

This morning for breakfast we tried to be adventurous: we made grits. We were quoting from "My Cousin Vinny" because what else does someone from New York do when eating grits? Clearly this was the immediate reaction we both had. "What is a grit?" and "Any self-respecting Southerner don't make no Instant Grits." We now know why grits fell out of favor and Corn Pops into favor. They were slightly better than the rice cereal we tried last week, but we'll be returning to oatmeal tomorrow morning. We made a quick lunch of pb & kiwi j on our second loaf of homemade bread along with a grapefruit and of course popcorn. For dinner, we had a great salad and some pasta shells sauteed with cauliflower, broccoli, scallions, carrots, and garlic flavored with a bit of pesto and a bit of some leftover marinara sauce. It was the quickest dinner we've made since we've been here, but it was still mighty tasty.