Our First Anniversary 
Well, we're not doing much for our anniversary, but we are hanging out with Pat, Nancy and Sara (half sister). We played many games of pitch, which was a lot of fun. Joe and I went for a walk in the snow in the field with Brad the cat. Mom and Papa had sent the top of our wedding cake to the house. I included a picture of it below... Otherwise, we're going to watch some Firefly and we've been wrapping presents. It's been a fun day so far. :)

-Miranda


The cake didn't really like going through the mail apparently.

Joe and Brad out in the snow.

The pretty christmas tree. It's fake... A logger with a fake christmas tree.... go figure.

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Day Off Work 
I got the day off today. Pat went up to the site early (like usual) to load the trucks and he called Nancy to have her call everyone because it was crazy windy up there. It's been really gusty in town too. Up there though, it gets pretty bad and since we've opened up the hillside the remaining trees are more prone to blow down. So, it's a bit dangerous in the woods on a day like today. I get a three day weekend! :)

-Miranda

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End of the Week 
So Trevor (the truck driver) brought the two cables today as well as a heater for the yarder. So not only has my machine been having issues but the yarder's heater went out last week and there was beeping and smoking smell and everything in there. Apparently they blew a fuse and there was something more wrong with it. When Brad was up yesterday helping with my machine he checked out the yarder too, so that will be fixed soon too.
We finished working early today and everyone left but Pat and me. We changed two cables on the machine. The front winch cable (the one I pointed out on the picture) and the rear winch cable. You can kinda see it in the second picture. It's right above the hydralic hose. Those cables are really heavy. It went pretty smoothly though. We got a bit greasy.
Yanking those cables around for an hour after work... I'm gonna be a sore one tomorrow. :)

-Miranda

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Fun Work Week.... 
So a lot of stuff went wrong with the delimber this week. I posted the best pictures of the delmiber I could find in order to give some reference to what I'm saying. On Monday afternoon I had hydralic oil leaking out from the under side of my boom. I quick shut it off so I didn't loose too much oil. Pat found the hose that was leaking (it was attached to the very back of the boom (see picture 2). He said that those hoses (there are two back there) haven't been lasting long... We left an hour late because I had to fill my machine back up with over 12 gallons of hydralic oil.
On Wed., before 10am, my top grab arms stopped working (see picture 1). We got the truck driver to try to call Brad, the repair guy and a friend of Pat's. Until we got a hole of him we started taking all the oil valves in the head out to see if there was anything wrong. We found an o-ring the was in 3 pieces but we couldn't find where it came from. When we eventually got Brad, he said it was the cylinder (it controls the arms). So Pat and I pulled the cylinder out, which was indeed busted in two, and had to wait for Brad to get there with the new one. We got that put back together by quiting time. By this time there was a lot of wood backed up...
So, this morning I went in to work with Pat (5am) to help catch up. The machine tells you what the diameter of the log is that you're working on... After we changed the cylinder, the diameter measurement was completely off. Brad came back today to help fix that. There is also a cable on top of the machine that is attached to a cylinder and the cable was all twisted and not in good shape. Brad checked the pressure of the cylinder and it was 2000lb instead of 900, so it had been pulling the heck out of that cable, stretching it out.

Whew. All we need now is a new cable. Hopefully nothing else breaks....

-Miranda


picture 1. It's an old picture, but I left me in it cause I thought people would appreciate it. :)

picture 2

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Poor Cows 
So now that we have snow, the cows are getting crabby. They have to work for at least some of their food now. They're water is harder to get to them now too being the faucets for the hoses are frozen. So, today Joe and Pat got some wood as well as filled a 35 gallon water jug with water to bring down to the cows. They also dumped snow in the trough so that would melt (the water is heated so it won't freeze) and add some volume.

-Miranda


Picture of the backyard and the snow and you can see some mountains in the distance.

The crabby cows.

Joe stirring the snow into the water in the trough around with Pat watching.

The guys dumping the end of the water into the trough.

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