Friday 24 August 2012

Milling on the Farm

 Out at Ruthies Horse Farm we have hired Neville Warner and his portable sawmill to fell and mill 60 plus old pine trees that bordered two of the larger paddocks and turn them into post and rail fencing and other timber sizes for which to build a new hay barn and stables. There is also two huge piles of firewood growing which we can sell next Winter.

 The impetus behind the decision to mill the trees was the worry that the 30 odd big pines bordering the highway would some of them cause expensive and dangerous trouble the next time we had a weather bomb, gale or cyclone by crashing down  across the road.The end result will be a horse stud with beautiful strong wooden fences just inside the original post and wire fences bordering the property and native trees and shrubs planted in between the two fences to serve as windbreaks, bird sanctuaries etc.Several times in the past Ruthie has had her time wasted by canny old country boys coming on to the property and waffling on about how dangerous those old pines were, how useless for milling, only good for firewood and they would take them away for firewood, leave a huge mess and not even charge her for their efforts.It's quite a large investment we are undertaking but very creative, the farm will look so good and also Neville has got at least one other job out of it because the farm borders a highway and all the local world passing by can see the big job in progress and he is a working, visible advertisement for himself. When he is finished here he is moving onto another property to mill some big Redwoods.