Daddy Time

Beau overseeing the logging operation

It’s Saturday morning and Rachel is away for the long weekend, so what does that mean for seven year old Elsa? Daddy time!

In this cold winter weather, “daddy time” could mean playing dress up, a matinee of a Disney movie, or maybe a round of Chutes and Ladders, but not for this farm girl. (Have you seen Frozen? One hundred times? There’s a Princess Elsa. Nuff said.)

Stephen had been doing some logging on our property, wielding his chainsaw and using the skidder to pile up logs that will become firewood for our house and his. (I’m more excited about the views that open up when tall trees come down.)

On Saturday, he drove up to drag off some massive oak trunks that have the potential to be gorgeous hardwood floor boards. (It sounds like Santa’s sleigh coming up our driveway with the skidder tire chains jingling. Stephen, though, has no resemblance to the Claus whatsoever. No stub of a pipe or bowlful of jelly. Come to think of it, the tooting of the horn sounds a bit like a “ho, ho, ho.” Hmmmm…..)

Stephen hopped down from the skidder first, followed by Elsa in her purple snowsuit, ready for action. At one point she was alone in the skidder working a lever that reeled in a chain attached to a massive log while Stephen shouted directions from the ground. I assure you that she was perfectly safe, and for those of you who saw Stephen’s epic “Chainsaw Elsa” photo, rest assured that she doesn’t actually operate that saw…. yet… maybe a smaller one? Notice that she’s wearing hearing protection. Safety first. (That’s our Little House in the background.)

Anyway, about kids and safety. I am not an advocate of kids riding in cars without car seats or riding bikes without helmets on busy roads, but if you’re as old as I am, you may recall when we didn’t even wear seatbelts. If my mom was driving and I was sitting in front with her (on a bench seat, of course), anytime she applied the brakes, her arm would fly out to keep me from hurdling forward through the windshield. Very dramatic. How did we survive childhood? Dumb luck.

But I digress. (What a shock!) Not only did Elsa get to operate the skidder, but she learned that math is important for logging as well as cooking.  Arithmetic, that is. I haven’t used calculus for cooking. (Okay, okay. So I never took Calculus. We didn’t have distribution requirements when I went to college in the hippy-dippy seventies. We didn’t even have a prom at my high school. It wasn’t groovy.)

Anyway, Elsa helped mark the logs for Stephen to cut them to size with the aforementioned chainsaw, and she helped chain the logs up for transport (as in dragging).

Then it was go time! Stephen, with Elsa in his lap,  took off with the logs in tow. Below are a couple of still shots, but do click here to go to my YouTube channel for a short video of the skidder passing Booty Family Farm on Mount Israel Road. You’ll get to hear the jingling and tooting. Daddy time is fun!