Another log truck with a full load of pine logs is just leaving as I type this. The work has been going on now for a couple weeks, and even with some delays for rain, the progress is impressive. There is only one guy working, with a chainsaw and a skidder, and by the end of the first day he had a good sized yard cleared. He's cleared most if not all of the pine that was good for logs out of the areas closest to the house, and for the last couple days has been working farther back to get the pine out from those areas. What's left near the house is pine and hardwood for pulp which he'll be taking down soon.

It is of course pretty messy looking. But there's really no way around that. The rain we had all summer did not help because it left the ground saturated, and even with the recent drier weather it's still pretty muddy.

Besides our logging operation, the man who owns the property behind us is having some hemlock logged out. He has a right-of-way that crosses our land, and in order to make it accessible for his log trucks, he is going to have the top layer of loam scraped off and replaced with gravel. His ROW takes a sharp turn so they will need to create a good base with a large enough turning radius for the trucks to maneuver. His logger has been working just past the property line to create a log yard and they are now getting to the point where they will be ready to improve the ROW road. They brought in a huge excavator this morning to stump the yard. I'm not sure when they will start scraping down the loam although it should be fairly soon.

So, at one point this morning there was an excavator, a skidder, a log truck, and a logger with a chainsaw, all working at the same time. I wonder what the neighbors are thinking?

Here are a couple photos of the log truck and driver operating the grapple.