The Cutting

John had been mentally designing his bothy for a number of years, and through that process he had a rough idea how much lumber and what cuts he would need. Basically we needed lots of 4x4s for studs and plates, 3x6s for joists and rafters, 2x4s for purlins, 1x4s for battens, and 1x6s for floorboards. We also needed various sizes for trimming windows and doors, blocking, and a few other things. From that he took a stab at how many red cedar logs he would need to make all the lumber, depending on circumference and length (we pretty much stuck to 8 or 10 foot length cuts.). Some of the cedar logs he found online through people wanting to clear out old log piles, or people wanting to sell. The rest we cut from our farm, which has a lot of red cedar trees growing in various places around the property.

To cut the trees, we would first find ones that had sufficient girth and were straight enough that an 8 or 10 foot log could yield nice lumber. If the tree bends too much over the length of a log then you can't get lumber out of it when you mill it. We were always pretty happy when we would remember where there was a nice thick, straight tree as it meant we could get a lot of lumber out of it. Here's one we didn't cut as it lines our driveway, but it's a good example of one that is nice and straight and decent thickness, maybe a little on the thin side though.

Once we found a good tree, typically John would cut it down and I would limb it. To get the tree to fall where you want, it's best to notch them, then cut through it. Here's John notching a tree prior to felling it.

And here's John felling a tree with absolute precision....putting it right where he wanted it! If you watch closely I back up and to the side a few seconds before it comes down right in front of me. There wasn't any real danger, but John also isn't one to tell you to watch out....he prefers to let you learn on the job so you remember the next time. Old school.

Once the tree was down, we limbed it up, which is walking up the tree from the bottom, cutting off all the branches with the chainsaw. It's important to get nice clean cuts as close to the trunk as possible, so the log rolls well and the limb stump won't catch or hang on anything. Here's John limbing a tree.

Once the tree was limbed, we'd measure it to see how many and what length logs we could get out of it, then we would cut those. We had our friends up at the farm one day and here's Amadea, all the way from Singapore, helping cut and measure the logs. Since moving to Virginia she has become a real country girl.

Amadea's husband Pat was also helping out, but he's more partial to tomato picking it seems, and we don't let him too near any of the dangerous tools, for reasons that seem pretty obvious. He swears he is a wizard with all the tools and machines, but so far we've only cleared him for nerf frisbee and riding on the back of vehicles.

Once we had limbed the trees, we would pull together all the limbs into a big pile that we would collect up with the forks on the tractor and dump into a brush pile for later use and disposal. We have a wood chipper to process a lot of the brush that we then use for mulching and other things. Here's the kids being supervised by John as they spread some wood chip mulch onto the Nandinas that line our driveway.

We can get a decent amount of limbs and brush on the front forks as you can see from the photo below (from another time we were clearing up around the farm). John is the master at loading up the forks by pushing the limbs and brush in front of the forks...in fairness he's had a lifetime of practice, so he ought to be pretty good.

The logs would then be loaded onto the tractor forks and taken up to the barn, where we put them into piles based on some categorization that only John seems to know. By the time we were done we had about 140 cedar logs of various sizes and girths, all ready for milling. Here's a few of the logs stacked and ready.