Bragging Rights

We had a family work time last weekend.  It happened organically, but once it started, we made the boys stick it out to the end.  We moved and stacked several trailer loads of logs that Ross had split earlier this winter.  In the process, I learned a couple of things: our kids are starting to become useful humans, and they know way more about trees than I was even aware.  The second part of that is particularly shocking because they have been obsessed with logging and tree cutting for at least three years.  

Both boys can identify all of our local tree species.  I knew that from walking through the woods with them.  I didn't know they could identify them by...smell.  We were stacking firewood that Ross will sell next year.  It was oak and madrone.  Mostly.  Apparently, there were a few pieces of fir in the mix.  I didn't know.  They were logs and missing branches and bark.  Sawyer stopped me from stacking a log and said it was fir.  "How do you know," I asked?  He sniffed it.  "It's fir," he assured me.  I looked at Ross.  Ross looked at the log.  

"It's fir."

Mind blown.  

You can keep your prodigy pianist and your fancy pants math wizards.  My kid can smell-identify trees, Sucka'!

Obviously, I'm very proud.  I'm not sure what you do with that ability, but I guess arborist is a respectable career choice.  Actually, he wants to be a logger.  It used to be a singing logger, but as I may have previously pointed out, musical ability really isn't so much our thang.

These boys use butter knives to "log" their bananas.  Fischer presented me with an apple slice he had "notched" with his teeth at lunch today.  They spent their work money on new wedges.  They have watched a logging movie for "movie night" every Sunday for four weeks and counting.  They begged their grandma to making them shirts with a picture of a feller buncher on the front, and she did. 

If you don't know half of the words I'm saying, don't feel bad, neither did I. 

The boys basically clear cut one corner of our property with their handsaws because I was distractedly talking to a neighbor.  By the time our conversation was over, five pines were on the ground.  They drag them (skid them) to the sandbox and limb them, then cut them into perfect little six inch logs.  They are supposedly selling these logs to their grandma for her woodfired cookstove, but every time she comes over, they have some excuse for keeping them.  I think they just like looking at their neat little pile and can't part with it.  

If anybody needs manzanita cleared, smallish trees cut down or trees limbed, we are running out of things to cut over here, and I have two very energetic boys who would be happy to "log" your land.  Just brush up on your barber chairs, back cut, front cut, and general logging terminology.  You don't want to be schooled by a four-year-old.