Another block in place

Yet again, the gods of randomness have smiled upon us.  As regular readers will know, we had a minor accident in my mother's truck while moving logs in Colorado.  This week we finally had a time (and by "we" I mean Jeremy) to take it to a few body shops for estimates on repairs.  At the third and final body shop, the technician asks how the dent happened.  Given that the reason is fairly unique (jacknifed a trailer of giant logs), an interesting discussion ensued. 

Over the course of the discussion, the technician mentions that he has 5 acres of large cedars that he's clearing out.  Did we mention that the sill plates of the cottage will be made of cedar for the rot resistance?  Right, so Jeremy's ears perk up.  Local cedars would save us a lot of time hauling them from Arkansas this winter and given the price of gas would also save us some money.

Jeremy went to take a look at them tonight and found several that are big enough to be worth milling.  We will have to see if they will really be the right size for the sills or not.  If nothing else, we will be able to mill some cabinet thick boards to use for moth resistant closets and cabinets in the cottage.  We agreed to pay him to fell and limb the trees based on the size of log he gets out of it (more for thicker logs, less for smaller ones).  As a bonus, we may get some fence poles to use as we work on fencing the farm.  Here are some pics:

A sample tree that is about 12" in diameter

part of the cedar grove

Our new cedar supplier with one of the larger trees