Picking Chokecherries

 

We love chokecherry jam and syrup.  As a family we go out and find wild chokecherries and pick enough so that Teresa can bottle enough jam and syrup for a couple years.  Its kind of fun to pick the berries but it can also be tedious.

 

 

 

 



The girls picking

Hal and Quinn



This is what they look like.  Notice that they are in clusters like grapes.  Also the ripe ones are dark purple.  Red berries are not ripe.  In any case if you eat them they will pucker up your mouth.  Hence the name chokecherries.  After processing though it is a delicious flavor.

Wild Rose Hips.  We don't pick them but you could eat them as well.



A few fishing pictures from this summer

Wood Cutting this year

This year we decided to buy wood off a semi-truck rather than going through the forest.  Normally we go to The Forest Service building and buy wood permits to allow us to cut down dead trees in the forest.  It is usually cheaper but very time consuming.  Katey's violin teacher Melanie Moulton told us they were purchasing a semi load and wondered if we wanted to buy some from them.  Melanie's husband is Sean Moulton who is also our lawyer.  Sean's dad is Bishop Roy Moulton who is Bishop of the Driggs 1st ward and whom I served with as the Young Men's President before they divided the wards and we were moved into Victor 1st Ward.  A semi-load has multiple cords of wood and so we decided to buy 4 cords at $100 per cord.  Cutting it in the forest only costs around $10 per cord but its more work.  If you buy it cut and stacked its around $250 per cord.  We burn on average 3.25 cords of wood in a winter.  I wish I would have taken a picture of the pile of logs on the ground before cutting as well as the pile after cutting shown below.  It was a formidable task to cut that many trees in one day but as you can see below we did it with a lot of effort and back pain.  Sean's brother Beau also came and helped about halfway through.  It took us about 8 hours to complete and then later we hauled away the wood.


Bishop Moulton grabs a log with his backhoe which has a hook to grab the logs, then he swings it around and there's one guy with a chainsaw on each side of the log cutting until we get to the middle.  Then he picks up another log and we do it again.  In the foreground Sean is using the splitter and Beau is cutting in the back.  The other person is one of Sean's kids.

My pickup when stacked up in the middle is about a half cord of wood.

The Moulton's pile that his kids were working on.

Me in the brown coat.  At this point we are done and I'm just finishing a couple cuts.

Me alone in a sea of wood.

The splitter