.jpg)
I managed to get a couple more hours of rest and it was good, because it was my first day of wood chopping and I didn’t want to be that guy that got his fingers chopped off from being too tired to pay attention.
[Editor’s Note: this is not a jab at Christian’s grandpa’s brother who actually had this happen to him- I’m just saying I didn’t want it to happen to me]
It all started with a quick tractor ride to the CHOPPING ZONE i.e . the area where we worked. And yes, I rode in the bucket of the tractor, which I will say, will always tickle my fancy since it is one of those things you just don’t do very often. After we got p the property a little ways, Christian cleared some of the piled up snow out of our way and then lowered the klævermaskin into place.
“Wait? Klævermaskin? Woahwoahwoah! What happened to lumberjacking, yo?”
(or so I would think someone would say)
Today, we didn’t technically “chop” wood how most westerners, myself included, would think to chop wood. The wood was already chopped in smaller pieces from an earlier trip to the tree farm and what we did was essentially chop it up even further by setting it on a guiding track and having a very powerful metal arm push it towards an industrial strength axe-head. And I when I say industrial, I mean, it really wasn’t that sharp, but with the torque of the extendo-matic robot arm, this thing was splitting big-ass frozen pieces of wood. Even though I only lifted the handle to being the arm-moving-process, I still felt like a badass when that wood seemed to cry out to the world. Unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears because it was just SO AWESOME! I did have a small part to do with it, seeing as I would lift the heavy, ice covered pieces of wood onto the tracks. It gets to be quite a workout not because all of the pieces were massive, but they are frozen, which means that maybe a 3olb piece of wood could easily now weight 35-40lbs. Do that for a couple of hours and you got yourself some MUSS-KULLS! Christian and I switched jobs after an hour or so. My new task was to break the ice on the wood that was frozen together and stack it next to the chopper dude (which was now Christian) and then stack the wood he cut. In between all that, I would do small things like shovel some snow from around the stacks, or axe small pieces of wood that were a waste of time on the machine, etc.
After a couple hours, we walked down to Farmor’s house to dry-off and warm up over some coffee and cookies- and some good conversation. Once again, Farmor was a champ and slowed down her speech for a little bit, but thanks to the easier Kristiansand dialect, I was able to pick up more than before. I contribute this partially to being rested, but also to the fact I pick up on things quickly. In any case, we mostly talked about how the weather was going to take a turn and it wasn’t a good thing, but then Farmor remembered she had shown me an olddddddd school perfume bottle from 1742 and this set her off on a history tangent, which, I thought was absolutely amazing!
Farmor showed us:
1. A pair of scissors that were probably, if not certainly, used by the tailor-trade Wathnes back in the old days;
2. A busted up flint, that we eventually also said could have been a fishing weight;
3. A HUGE ass pipe one of their relatives used (remind me to tell you this story as a follow-up post);
4. Pictures of said guy who used the pipe;
5. A Flint-lock from a rifle that was found in the ground;
6. Small, horn-looking things that Christian and his brother had found as small children;
7. A powder-tobacco horn;
8. And her families collection of generation-spoons [every generation imbibes a silver spoon as a sort of commemoration. This has been going on for thousands of years. The earliest I can remember was 1718).
Of course, there was probably more, but these were the ones that stuck out the most. Seriously, people pay butt-loads of cash to go in a museum and see an item with a caption that says something like “Found on Wathne, 1718” and here I am –ON Wathne (the property is their family name)- and talking to the family historian about all of this cool stuff that is hardcore history…AMAZING!
Eventually we went back out to work for another hour or so, but then we left to get ready for….
JULTREFESTEN!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment