Chương 27: Harvesting Logs

After our hearty, if not appetizing, breakfast, Colin and I hopped in my tractor and made our way as close to the downed trees as we could. We took a slightly different route than before. This route got us within a ten minute walk of the downed trees. It was a longer walk from the homestead, which is why Colin hadn't used it the first trip, but with the tractor we didn't care about the extra distance if it meant a shorter path to haul logs. We brought the twelve-foot saw, as well as the smaller handsaw with us.

We also brought a ten foot metal bar, and almost as important, our lunch. The almanac said that we would need nine layers of logs if we had twelve-inch diameter logs to make a "proper" twelve-foot by twelve-foot cabin, nine feet tall. We would also need logs for a roof. We'd need one more log for the front side of the cabin so that there would be a slope to the roof. Now, this wasn't exactly the proper way to put a roof on a cabin.

We should build a gabled roof that would slope up with the peak coming over the door. But, I didn't plan for this to be my long-term living situation. This fall we'd need to build at least a tier 2 farmhouse to add a second plot. We'd need a tier 3 farmhouse to go up to four plots. The tier 2 cost 1, 000 gold, and the tier 3 cost 2, 000 gold. Not cheap, but perfectly attainable if our potatoes brought full price.

The almanac said that the forty-eight inch diameter logs we were grabbing would weigh a metric boatload if we cut them at fourteen foot lengths like I wanted to. If my math was good, and honestly it rarely was… These logs would probably weigh close to 7, 000 lbs. That was a lot. I had some pretty amazing strength these days, but I wasn't a superhuman by any stretch of the imagination.

Since we were going to have to cut boards out of the tree, I decided I'd like to make my cabin out of one foot square logs since they'd be much easier to carry from this site to the tractor. I'd seen some pictures of cabins with square timbers in old pictures of frontier houses before. They weren't as cool looking as the round log cabins, but I felt like they'd be easier for novices like me and Colin to put together. Some of the trees we were cutting down were close to two hundred feet tall.

That meant we didn't have too much variation in diameter if we were good about picking out our fourteen-foot sections. Once we found thirty logs that we felt were the right size, we cut all four edges off of them in preparation for cutting them into one square foot sections. The twelve-foot-long, two-person saw was almost miraculous. It cut at least as fast as any chainsaw I'd ever used back home. The teeth on the blade were incredibly sharp.

The blade was also very thin, which meant even less resistance cutting through the trees. Once the magic wore off, the blade would probably be close to useless. There was no way the teeth would hold up, and the blade would probably snap if you were even slightly twisted while cutting. But as long as the magic held, it cut through wood like butter. It only took us a few minutes to get into a good rhythm before the air was filled with sawdust and the smell of fresh cut lumber.

We were moving so fast that within ten minutes we were so hot that we took off our jackets. We both laughed about how it looked like steam was coming off of the other as the condensation from the sweat evaporated in the cold air. It only took us a few minutes per cut to cut the logs into fourteen foot sections. We arrived at the trees at 9 a. m and by 11 a. m. we had all of the initial cuts made.

After that, I used a metal bar that Emily and Colin had brought from their last homestead to lever the sections free and roll them onto some smaller logs that were lying around. This would give us some space off the ground to make our edge cuts, so we could square the boards. Because our System AI could be programmed to show exactly where to make each cut, the whole process was so much easier than I'd been prepared for. It only took us about fifteen minutes per log to make all four edge cuts.

At home, I would have spent ten minutes just measuring, and then re-measuring everything to make sure I was cutting in the right place. Not to mention looking for my tape measure after every cut when I inevitably misplaced it. Even with this relatively quick time to cut each log, that still meant it would take us eight more hours to cut all the boards. Then we'd still have to haul them out. With nasty weather on its way, that just wasn't feasible.

I decided we would do half of the logs today, then we'd start hauling them back to the tractor. Everything was off the ground, so the rain wouldn't hurt anything that we'd already cut. When we took a lunch break of more scrapple… I remarked that I'd kill for a good BLT.

"What's a BLT?" Colin asked between bites. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Oh. A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich," I told him. I should have clarified. They probably didn't use that acronym here.

"What's a sandwich?" Colin asked. I just stared at him dumbfounded for a moment. Then I thought back to my world. It was a fairly late invention, but people had to have used two pieces of bread to hold meat or something before that.

"You use two pieces of bread, then put meat or whatever else in between those two pieces of bread to eat them without getting your hands filthy or needing any utensils," I said, cautiously.

"Really?" he asked I couldn't believe I'd just invented something new.

"Yes? Have you really never heard of a sandwich before?" I asked. He looked at me earnestly and shook his head.

"Huh," was all I could say in response to that. At my look of genuine surprise, he laughed so hard he almost fell off the log he had been sitting on. With difficulty, he finally pulled himself together enough to say, "You should have seen your face! When you thought I'd never eaten a sandwich before. It was hilarious!" He laughed some more before he said, "I hadn't heard the term sandwich before. But I've certainly eaten meat between two pieces of bread." That cheeky little turd!

I was impressed, even if I would be forced to retaliate at some point. It was good he seemed to trust me enough to joke with me like that. I mostly had Emily's trust. But she was still guarded. Colin had clearly become fully comfortable around me already. He did admit he'd never had a BLT before. The more I thought about it, I wondered if there was mayo or something lubricating available. BLT's seemed like they needed something extra. But I bet an egg or two would provide some much needed moisture.

If there was one thing we had in abundance, it was eggs. I'd have to ask Emily if she would make a BLT once we had tomatoes ready this summer. I'd do it myself but she was fiercely protective of her stove so far. After lunch, we got back up and got to work. By 3 p. m., we had half of the logs cut to specs. They were still pretty heavy. I didn't have a set of scales for my UI, but I guesstimated that the almanac's conversion table was correct and they weighed around four hundred and fifty pounds on average.

Some were probably even a little heavier than that. I could barely pick one up on my own now, but I doubted I could carry it over this rough terrain all the way to the tractor without breaks. In the end, with me moving a little farther in on the log, and being in front so the slope helped even us out, I could take a majority of the weight of the log. It still took close to twenty minutes for us to bring the first log down. This wouldn't be quick.

In the end, we only got ten logs packed down before the rain began in earnest. I hastily chained them up, and we headed back to the homestead. If it kept raining for any period of time, we wouldn't be back here tomorrow. On a positive note, I wouldn't need to water the potatoes right away either. Taking extra time to get the logs out wouldn't hurt the potatoes. I still had three weeks until I needed to go do my militia training, and then plant my corn once that was done.

Hopefully, I could get my cabin built, and my ditch dug in the meantime. On our drive back to the homestead, I managed to fascinate Colin by using the windshield wipers on my tractor. He was an easily amused teenager. When I told him as much, he didn't even do his customary look down at the floor; he just smiled and kept watching them as I shook my head and laughed at him. It was 7 p. m. when we rolled into the barnyard area, and Emily came running out of the cabin, both of the rabbits in tow.

Apparently, even they got to go into the house! They were just tiny murderbots for System's sake! It was dark enough already that we had the lights on, so she'd seen us coming from some distance away. By this point the rain was coming down pretty good. It wasn't exactly a downpour yet, but if you spent five minutes outside you'd get soaked. As soon as we got to the fence, I turned off the tractor and we both got out of the cab quickly since it was clear Emily wanted us.

"Hello," she shouted out.

"I see you got some of the lumber before the rain hit. Good! For now, will you two help me round up the goats and pigs? I think the clouds will really open up soon. I would like the animals penned up for that. We really need a barn for the animals for this kind of weather." I'd need to add a lean-to of some sort to that never-ending list!

"Sure thing," Colin and I both said at the same time. But before either of us could get moving, the two rabbits made barking noises towards us, then bounded off. Two minutes later, they had the goats rounded up as we stood there watching. Three minutes after that, they had the pigs in their pens too.

"You're sure they can't be herd leaders if we can't see their tags?" I asked Colin and Emily.

"Absolutely positive," Emily replied with a hint of doubt in her voice.

"I've never seen anything like it." I was slightly hungry, but didn't want to wait around in the rain. So I asked Emily if there was any food ready for me right now.

"Can I get some dinner for the tractor?" I asked.

"It's too cold to eat under the porch tonight."

"Oh," she said, looking back at the overhang that ran the entire width of the cabin. With its eight foot overhang it was keeping the area in front of the house dry. But it did nothing for the icy breeze, or my damp clothes.

"I was going to have you in for dinner. We can talk about our upcoming plans for the homestead, and your militia duties. Does that work?" She smiled in an amused manner that said, I bet you didn't expect me to do that, did you? I wasn't sure if I'd heard correctly or not.

"I can go in?" I asked.