The Contrarian Technologist

Category Life in Cape Breton
The Calendar says that spring will be happening soon but most people will tell you that Cape Breton never has spring - it's winter one day and summer the next. So while it will be warmer and the days are certainly longer, we could still have cold wintery weather well into April (last year we had a freak 6" of snow on May 15th). But regardless of what the weather the calendar says it's spring next week which means that burning season is over, and road weight restrictions are in effect. The end of burning season means that all the brush and fallen trees need to be cleaned up and the remnants burned or the work will need to wait until late next fall. The road restrictions don't impact me, but this is the only place I have ever lived that uses them. Basically, once the ground starts to thaw, large trucks are prohibited from the secondary roads to eliminate wear and tear. If you saw some of the roads here you would probably wonder what additional damage they could sustain as they seem to be constantly decaying. Since I had the final remains of a giant maple tree to get cut up, I decided I might as well deal with next year's firewood all at once. So I ordered 3 cords of wood which came in 1-2 foot tree sections. The large maple had unfortunately been cut down during the process of clearing for the house and most of it had been cut up last year. However the base remained which was about three feet in diameter and basically too large to completely cut with a chain saw. The only way to cut it up was to cut down through a section as far as the saw would go and then use a wedge and a sledge to split off a chunk so the saw could be used. My friend Donald and his able assistant Johnny showed up last Friday and we spent the better part of 4 hours cutting up the tree. Once we had it in big sections, I spent a day splitting the blocks into cook-stove sized pieces. It was a lot of work, but I now have almost half a cord of what looks like 2x2 pieces. I'm working my way though the other firewood pile with the splitting mall and have so far managed to split and stack about 2 cords. Again, a lot of work, but when I'm done, I'll have almost 3 years of wood stored and drying. The little Jøtul 3B can really heat the house very well all by itself, but by using it to supplement the radiant floor system seems to be the best combination. (My feet stay warm, my heat bills are lower, and I don't have to spend all day hauling firewood into the house.

Of course interspersed with all of this physical activity - if I keep it up for another 20 years I'll be a real buff old guy -- I'm finally getting requests relayed to me from L2 support asking for WMC server installs with various trace switches turned on - so hopefully I will have good news on that front soon.