February 17, 2018 Sooley Cabin Day Trip: (27 Photos)

 

27.   We are now seven weeks into 2018 and this weekend the Shed-Headz Crew finally got out for an outdoor adventure. The weather this winter has been terrible with very little snow and extended mild spells meaning there is no old snow on the ground and very little ice on the ponds here on the east coast.

 

 

26.   We decided to head out to Sooley's cabin for the day to cut up and stow away firewood and replenish what we've burned over the last couple years. After cleaning up an overnight 5cm snowfall French and I hit the highway west to Whitbourne, Sooley was already at the cabin having left earlier and Maffer would be joining us a little later.

 

 

25.   Last winter during our annual cabin trip we hauled down a bunch of firewood from the new Nalcor transmission line, we could have hauled more but one of the wood trailers broke. 

 

 

24.   There was also a lot of wood already sawn that just needed to be split and stowed in the wood shed.

 

 

23.   With everything scoped out we set to work with French on the chainsaw, Sooley hauling and I began splitting the big stuff.

 

 

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18.   Maffer and family finally arrived around noon with his Can Am 800 beast in tow.

 

 

17.   Maffer made a couple upgrades recently including a new LED light bar and over 1000 screw in studs planted firmly in his Maxxis Mud Zillas.

 

 

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13.   Later in the afternoon French started experimenting and made a Norwegian Cooking log or fire log. He took a dry (seasoned but still left outside and frosty) spruce chunk about 20" tall, 18" diameter and made 8 cuts down (about 3/4 the way down) dividing the top of the log like a pizza

 

 

12.   Next he stuffed the chainsaw grooves with wood shavings and birch bark.

 

 

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10.   He lit the shavings with a lighter and it caught easily.

 

 

9.   As the tinder burns it lit the log pretty quick and burned down to the bottom of the cuts and continued to burn slowly to the outside edges of the log.

 

 

8.   With the tinder consumed it's now ready for a frying pan or kettle rested directly on the wood. The fire burns really well and stays structurally sound to hold a pot or kettle for well over an hour.

 

 

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6.   This is not only great for cooking bur also for easily starting a campfire. As the cooking log burns you can begin adding more fuel as you will have a hot bed of coals to ignite new even green fuel. The logs we used today burned well over two hours on their own.

 

 

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3.   By the end of the day we had all of the outside wood cut, split and stowed in the woodshed. We organized the frosty outdoor wood on the Left hand side to burn next year, and kept the already dry wood separate on the Right hand side.

 

 

2.   At the end of the day Sooley and I went down to the pond to check out the ice. We drilled a dozen holes and found a consistent 6" of hard clear ice in the middle of his small cove which may mean we can walk out and do some ice fishing next weekend weather depending. This is the least amount of ice we've had in 20 years of our winter trip a testament to the mild weather we've experienced this year.

 

 

1.   As darkness fell we put away the bikes and loaded up for home. Our annual cabin trip is less than a week away, although the weather hasn't set us up with great conditions (snow or Ice) we're all still very much looking forward to our 20th annual winter trip!

 

Cheers, MIKE

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