Submitted by Kaare Askildt, former Preeceville area farmer in training. This one of a series on getting settled in Hazel Dell.
All those logs that Anne and Nels bucked up for us had to be split. However, I procrastinated and now I'm paying for it.
We have an electrical motor driven splitter outside by the spruce trees, and it doesn't work that well when the temperature drops below +2C. I was able to do a little bit the other afternoon in +4C and sunshine, but there are still a lot of logs to split!
First I thought that I would stretch a tarp over the splitter and plug in an indoor electric heater under the tarp. I went over to the barn and found a tarp that was covering some square hay bales. Marion is down with a cold and won't notice that I borrowed the tarp, or so I thought. I got the tarp over the splitter, but it was a matter of securing it in such a fashion that all the heat would be contained around the splitter. I couldn't see that well under the tarp, and kept running into bucked up logs and debris from previous splitting, and I had a hard time keeping my balance.
Add to that that our dog Lady thought that I was playing, and she would bark and attack the tarp every time she saw any movement.
Then Marion came out to see what all the commotion was about, and I got busted! Because it was snowing ever so lightly, the tarp had to go back and cover the hay bales or my quality of life would dramatically change, or so I was told! I guess she has no sense of humour when she's suffering through a cold! Oh well, perhaps my old wine carboy electric heat belts might do the trick. I have two of them, so I'll give that a try and wrap them around the splitter, and perhaps I can start some serious splitting this afternoon!
The heat belts worked, the splitter decided to cooperate, and I got to work. The splitting station is right under a spruce tree, and the spruce tree is where a family of squirrels live, and gather feed by breaking apart spruce cones to get at the seeds. The squirrels were not amused by all that noise and commotion right under their tree; they came down and more or less told me off in squirrel language. I was wearing a pair of sweat pants that were open at the bottom of the legs, and one squirrel got inside my right pant leg and started to climb up my leg on the inside! The sharp claws cut into my skin and hurt like hell. I tried to get rid of it by shaking my leg, but that only made the animal climb up faster! I clamped my left hand down hard between my legs, in an effort to secure an important part of my anatomy, while trying to redirect the squirrel with my right hand.
Lady came over and thought I was playing because of my waving arm; her front part went low to the ground, her rear end was sticking up and the tail was wagging faster that a rotating fan! Then she saw the squirrel moving in my pant leg and jumped at it knocking me on my butt! I had to let go of my protective left hand grip, in an effort to catch myself on the way down and before I ended up on my back!
The squirrel ran to the top of my pants, I hollered out loud and tried to shoo the squirrel away with my right hand; and in doing so I managed to hit it! The squirrel turned around and ran out of my pant leg! Lady chased the squirrel back up the tree, and gave a couple of barks for good measure! The other three squirrels had already run up the tree, and when the last one joined them, they all disappeared into their nest up there chatting away. Before I could get back on my feet, Lady came over and put her front paws on my chest while she proceeded to give me a facial!
I had forgotten my own "safety rules" from last time I operated this gizmo, and while holding a small log in place with my left hand and operating the "piston" with my right hand, my little finger sort of ended up in the groove between the log bed and the outside guide, and when the log split it expanded sideways and squeezed my little finger!
Man did that hurt! It was like deja vu as I did the same thing a few years back! I got a memory like a steel trap, but sometimes it is rusted shut!
The following is supposedly a true story:
Two bowling teams, one Swedish, one Norwegian, charter a double-decker bus for a weekend bowling tournament. The Swedish team rides on the bottom level of the bus, the Norwegian team rides on the top level.
The Swedish team, down below, is whooping it up and having a great time until one of them realizes he doesn't hear anything from the Norwegians upstairs. So, he decides to investigate.When the Swede reaches the top, he finds the Norwegian team staring straight ahead at the road, frozen in fear, clutching the seats in front of them with white knuckles.
"What's going on up here?" asks the Swede. "We're having a great time downstairs!"
"Ya," screams a terrified Norwegian, "but you've got a driver!"
