Over the weekend, it warmed up to the low 30’s.  That made it a good time to collect some black walnut from a tree that had uprooted a couple months ago on a friend’s property.  You can see it down there in the ravine in the upper center of the photo below .  Did I mention we had to pull the logs up and out of a ravine?  Anyway, there was snow to ease the moving of logs and the little creek was (mostly) frozen over.

It helps to have your fifteen year old son along for work like this.  Keeping that refrigerator stocked is starting to pay off.

This tree has some twists and turns, former side branches, and so on.  Not great for someone who wants long boards, but, with many short clear sections, beautiful for bowls.   We just had to work for it.  After splitting the sections (part of the design process too) into more manageable sizes, we plopped them onto a sled and pushed them over to the bottom of the ravine hillside.  After much comical pushing and pulling, we got them to the top, through the yard, and into the truck.

Now, a few pieces are at my house.  The tree in the ravine still has more to give, and I’ll go back someday.  Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to make something worthy and give part of this tree a second life.

On another note, I noticed that the “follow” link that I had listed to the right was more specifically for WordPress users.  Now there is one (see the upper right corner) more easy to use, whether or not you have a WordPress account.  So if you’d like to get an email when I post something new, it is easy to sign up with your email address.