Bob's Eyes

Monday January 1, 2024 Guerneville CA.

Heck of a noise

That’s what I woke up to this morning. My brother Tom is having a tree removed in his yard. It’s a big bull pine tree and they were chipping the limbs which was making all the noise.

Once I got it going I walked over there to get a couple pictures. They’d just started so there wasn’t much to see yet.

It’s the big tree in the middle and there’s a guy up in it cutting off the limbs.

 

This is the tree and there’s a guy on the ground handling the ropes as they lower each limb and head to the chipper with it.

 

There will be more to see later once they get most of the limbs off, but I’m not waiting around for that as that chipper is real loud, so it’s best if I head up into the forest to do something.

Putting Skiddy to work

Since it stopped raining for a couple days, I took off on Skiddy to go take a couple small slides off my cousin’s road.

I headed up this road. It’s about a 20 minute ride up to her place. This will give me some practice running the new machine.

 

It’s hard to take pictures when you are doing work up in the forest and are on a machine so I didn’t get any of the work.

Break spot view

But I did make it to our break area for a break. As you can see it’s a nice day with sun and just a few clouds in the sky. It’s supposed to  rain some more tomorrow so this was a good day to take care of the slides.

 

Better get home

When I looked at my watch it said 4:30 so I better get on home before it gets dark, although Skiddy does have some pretty good lights on it

Only another quarter mile to get back home and I beat the dark, just by a little.

 

I was too busy to check on the tree and a bit tired out too.

Nice day.

Sunday December 31, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Happy New Year

Seems like a good time to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Here’s wishing this next year goes well for everyone.

Forest puttering

That’s what I plan to do today, just putter and don’t work too hard with lots of chair time.

I rode on up to this spot that I saw yesterday. Water was running down the road which is not a good thing. I needed to get some exercise and repair it.

 

This is what is causing all the water to run down the road. This spring is running full blast now. I knew this spring might cause a problem when I put it in a short time ago but decided to wait and see what it was going to do.

 

I took my shovel and made a small ditch across the road. I’ll do a better job with Skiddy later. Some might say I need a culvert here, but I don’t use them as they plug up and wash everything out and make lots of erosion and require lots of maintenance. If I put the small ditch in, that should take care of it with very little maintenance required.

 

I continued on up this road to retrieve my Pulaski tool that I need to do some more ditching up a trail.

 

Break time

My Pulaski tool was by this chair, so I took advantage of it and sat down and enjoyed the forest for a bit.

 

My forest view from the chair were I rested.

 

Rock crossing

After a good break at the chair, I continued on up the road going across this crossing. Another place one might say I need a culvert.

 

But instead, I used these larger rocks to make a dam to hold the gravel bed back which makes a nice crossing. I plan to put some more big rocks in this spot eventually.

 

Up the trail

I continued on up this trail where I needed to make some small ditches across the trail to divert water off the trail when it rains. These are very small ditches that are hard to see. I make them like this so they are easy to ride or walk over.The key is to not collect the water and instead dissipate it so it doesn’t do damage and wash stuff out. That’s all it takes to keep the water from running down the trail.

 

Here’s the small ditch across the trail from the other side of it. I have more ditching to do up along this part of the trail.

 

Break area

I made good use of that little log. It’s a nice place to take a break and I spent some time on it as it’s right by where I needed to do some repairs.

 

The plan

My goal is to keep making little repairs as things need them until eventually, there are no erosion problems on this property. I’ve been doing this for years now and I’ve got most of the property under control as far as very little erosion.

I had one more spot to fix just up the road so I did that one which was an easy one and rode up to this overlook to sit for awhile. The day was overcast, but being down in the trees I didn’t notice until now.

 

Nice day.