Reconditioning Used Lumber

I wish I could write that my office remodeling project is in the can but it just “ain’t” so. To be honest I still have an easy week to ten days more work ahead of me. One reason this project has taken me so long is that I have spent a great deal of time reconditioning old wood. I’m one of those people who, when working on a project, will save the odds and ends that are left over and try to use them on future projects. Some scraps that are too damaged or small to reuse end up in my firewood box for the wood stove, but most of the wood is kept for future use. I also keep a lot of the old wood that I pull out of the house (another remodeling project, but that’s another story). The upshot is that I try to find a piece of “scrap” wood that can be made to fit my needs with just a little work. I’m sure that if I would drive to the local lumber yard I could buy some very nice, straight and nail free wood that would require a lot less work. On the other hand, the sliding doors, I will proudly explain to visitors, were cut out of the sliding doors that had once been in the house, and they were known to be at least 75 years old when I dismantled that closet.

The same is true for many of the other “parts” that have gone into the office project. One of the little details that will be in my completed office will be an early Twentieth Century glass fire extinguisher bomb. When we first moved into the house we found a number of these “bombs” in strategic areas and we had planned to save all of them but in moving them from place to place all but one have been broken. This last one will be on display in my office.

I am incorporating a number of other treasures into my office including two secured gun racks, several of my African mounts, spears and shields. I figure that it’s my office so I can make it comfortable for me—right? At least that is what I keep telling myself.

As for reconditioning old wood to make something new I don’t believe it is a step that far out of the hunter’s field to care about how we reuse wood but it enhances our outdoor experiences. If we consider who we are (anglers, hunters, etc.) and our place in the outdoors then we need to define ourselves in much greater detail than simply stating that we are anglers, hunters or whatever and then relying on others, such as Ortega and most recently Dr. Eaton. We need to define ourselves as participating in the stewardship of the outdoors, not merely benefiting from the efforts of others who manage the natural resources. By taking the time to recondition wood that would be tossed into the trash or burned it (not for heat) is, I believe, a step deeper into that relationship between each one of us and nature’s wealth that is the underlying truth of our journey into nature as hunters and anglers.

Some people argue, and I am sure that in a true cost to benefit comparison they are probably right, that the effort to recondition wood is actually taking up more that is preserves.
“Think of the calories you’ve burned pulling old nails, cutting out damaged parts, checking for bits of metal to avoid hitting a nail with a saw blade,” one friend commented. “Then there is the squaring and sanding needed to make the old wood workable and you realize that between your effort and the energy used by the power tools you’ve used more than you’ve saved.”

I disagree because there is the intrinsic beauty of the old wood when it is brought back to its past glory and that can be a powerful reward. There is also the knowledge that by not always buying new lumber products I am reducing the demand for new wood, even if I am only creating a drop in a rain barrel. For me the fraction of a breath of oxygen generated by a tree living for a few seconds longer because I recondition wood is a powerful incentive to recondition used lumber.

Perhaps I am this way because my mother had a deep love of trees and she would often recite the poem by George Pope Morris, “Woodman Spare That Tree.” (For the full poem go to: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/morris03.html).
Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.
'Twas my forefather's hand
That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy axe shall harm it not!

The irony of her love for trees (she once faced down a crew attempting to remove a tree from public land) is that her father, my grandfather Sala, was one of the Italian woodcutters living along the banks of Bear Creek near Petoskey, Michigan. (Yes, for the readers who might wonder if there was any connection between EH and the Sala family—there was.) She passed her passion for trees on to me and I let it materialize in my desire to see an old piece of wood, abused by the elements, time and people, once again show off its colors.

Take care and think about those trees. glg

office repair

Ouch! My office remodeling project has morphed into the never ending project which is made more problematic because I can’t work at the same speed I did a few years ago. I had planned to be finished with it by the end of this week but I am still hip deep in work. Like many people starting a home repair project I underestimated what I was facing.

The first problem I encountered was the extent of the water damage. I thought I would get by with pulling down a small section of the ceiling, replacing the damaged insulation, checking for any damage to the wiring and then putting up a new piece of drywall. It didn’t work that way and by the time I had finished tearing out all of the water soaked insulation and drywall at least a third of the ceiling was piled in my driveway. I also had to contend with several studs and supports that had become soaked and had to be replaced.

There was also the issue of repairing the dog kennel. Cookie has had a few months more than five years to work on her kennel and I had to do some repairs on it as well, from replacing some well chewed studs to repairing the fencing that she worked on whenever she became bored.
Now I can honestly say the “repairs” are completed. After that milestone I patched all the holes that had been punched in the walls over the years to support photographs or serve some other purpose and completed a bunch of other small repairs, sanded the patches smooth, washed down the walls and ceiling and started the painting. As of now all of the priming is finished, I’ve painted, the indoor portion of the kennel and tomorrow I’ll complete the painting before turning my attention to leveling the floor to repair last winter’s frost heave that cracked the concrete.
I’ve got several more days of work before I can move back into my office and until then I am using a TV tray for a desk, which means I am taking up room in my living room. Not fun.

I suppose I could have shifted a few things around and made the office continue to function and avoided all of the problems I’ve had to deal with over the past two weeks but that wouldn’t have offered much of a reward for my efforts. This way, when the office is finished, I’ll have a sense of accomplishment that will be with me every time I sit down to work. When I do finish I’ll post a couple of photos just for an FYI for my readers. Until it is finished and I can again focus on my writing I’m afraid you’ll have to forgo any truly thoughtful writing from me. glg

Dog Kennel and Office remodeling

Lucky me! With spring now in full swing it is time to recondition the dog kennel, which means washing down the walls, scrubbing the floor of the inside part of the kennel, repairing breaks in the wire outside, and then putting on a fresh coat of paint. To my way of thinking it is something I have an obligation to do because of everything my dogs do for me. There is, of course, the affection and companionship they bring and for Cookie there is the work she does for me throughout the hunting season. So, I try to make their home comfortable. Some might even say I spoil them since the indoor portion of their kennel is 4x8x4 and is air conditioned in summer and heated in the winter. Their outside portion is 6 feet wide, 10 feet long with a concrete floor and is roofed. The inside kennel is at the far end of my office and I usually leave the door open so they can roam in and out at will

All of that freedom has had a price—flies and mosquitoes! Before this space became my office it was my shop and the sawdust seemed to keep the bugs down. I also admit I was not being too observant because I hadn’t noticed flies and skeeters bothering the dogs. Last summer, which was the first summer I truly worked out here, the flies and skeeters pestered me every evening, even when the air conditioner was running, and I had to keep spraying the dogs to keep the flies off, especially their ears. Maybe it was just a bad fly season but I was starting to have doubts about changing my shop into my office and if the winter drove me into the house I’d drop the idea. I held on through the coldest days and when I decided that having my office out here was what I wanted I also committed myself to doing something about the flies and mosquitoes. I decided to start by keeping the pesky bugs out of the outdoor kennel. For the past week I’ve been tacking, stretching and fastening fiberglass screen. (I opted for fiberglass because it is stronger and although the dogs are going to find some way to punch holes in it unlike aluminum screen the fiberglass will not cut their pads.)

My next project is to complete the conversion of the shop into a real office. I’m pulling out all of the makeshift book shelves, my plywood writing desk and the work bench that I’ve been stacking books on. Once everything is cleared out I’ll scrub the walls, ceiling and floor then paint the walls and ceiling before building new book shelves. Finally, I’ll put down indoor/outdoor carpet (so the dogs can still roam in the office) and move in the desk I bought at the auction. With a little luck I’ll have the job finished by the end of next week and I can settle down to some serious writing.

I guess, when everything is finished I can thank the dogs for pushing me to the remodeling job. My desire to insure they have a good home started me on this project and in the end I’ll have a comfortable home office.

Have a good week, all! Glg

Connections between auctions, wildlife and the land

This afternoon I went to an auction. Not really a big deal but I don’t go to many auctions. When we first moved to North Dakota we frequented quite a few of them that first autumn and the following spring, all with the intent of getting some of the “stuff” we needed to get started with our new home. We played it pretty close to the chest and always went with a list of what we wanted and how much we would pay. Usually that worked out fairly well for us except for the time we went to an auction where the main item to be sold was a Sixties era cedar wood boat. I wanted that boat and got into a bidding war and the price was up to a couple of grand when the guy who was bidding against me walked over and told me that I didn’t have enough money to outbid him. I stayed with it for another hundred then dropped out. Now, I am glad I did. That boat would have been a deeper hole in the water than the boat I’ve got!

There was something that bothered me about this auction—what people were paying. There were some very nice antiques sold at this auction but they sold dirt cheap. I wasn’t interested in antiques but I did have four items on my list and all of them are for my office. I also knew what I was willing to pay providing the quality was there. When I arrived I walked around and checked the items I was interested in, wrote down what I would be willing to pay and then did some shopping, mostly in the boxes of used books. That was a bust.

When the bidding started my first item was a nearly new color TV to replace the little B&W TV in my office. I had finally gotten tired of trying to figure out the weather maps in shades of gray and wanted a color TV. In store price for a like model TV is $200. My cost at the auction was $5. I was feeling pleased and a little surprised but I figured most people had been frightened off by the digital thing and didn’t realize that if they are using cable it doesn’t matter.

My next item was an office cabinet with an enclosed safe. The condition was excellent and it was what I wanted. I dropped out of the bidding for it after a few bids because I realized the guy I was bidding against was more determined than I was willing to deal with. When I dropped out he got it at a steal. I wasn’t worried, there was a nearly new desk that retails for $400 and I wanted to try and snag it because I am remodeling my office, opening up wall space for books and getting rid of this wall desk I cobbled together.

I never open a bid on anything and when the auctioneer tried to start the bidding at $100 I was ready to pack it in, except no one opened. He tried $75 and still no takers. He dropped to $50, then $25 and finally $10. I raised my hand and he tried to get the bid up to $15 for the desk. He couldn’t even get anyone to raise the bid to $11. I had my desk and I was happy with the price but feeling a little guilty. The auction was the selling of someone’s life history and it was going for a song. The only other thing I bought was a box of nice wine glasses for $1. At past auctions I’ve seen a box of quality wine glasses sell for $50. I doubt that at the end of the day the auction brought in a full $15,000. A lifetime of living in that farm house and it was only worth that much? Something is wrong. One of the auctioneers told me that this year sales are off more than he had ever expected. "People don't have the cash to buy," he said.

On the way home I passed by something else that troubled me and suddenly the prices at the auction made sense—land that had once been in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was being put to the plow. I stopped and watched the tractor go over the field and I was expecting to see some grouse flush from in front of the tractor but I guess the birds were already gone and looking for a new home. An auction that didn’t bring any money after a lifetime and a CRP field being returned to the till may not seem connected but they are—both are symptoms of an economy in trouble and those troubles are still upsetting homes—human and wildlife. We don’t think about the economy hurting wildlife except for the loss in revenue for wildlife agencies but there is another cost, one that is unseen, and it is in the wetlands and the grasslands where the wildlife is being uprooted by peoples' need to try and salvage something out of this mess. Something for us to think about the next time we read about the recovery finally starting.

PS I also saw lots and lots of nesting ducks including a half-dozen pair of redheads. That is good. glg

From a Little Brown Bird

My goose hunting was a bust. When the roads into the areas where I wanted to hunt were finally passable the snow geese had moved on. We do have a lot of Canada Geese and a variety of ducks hanging around the sloughs to nest and raise the broods. Come fall, if the weather doesn’t chase them out, we’ll have a healthy waterfowl population.

There was one casualty of the long, cold winter—I found an LBB—Little Brown Bird—in my yard. It was at the base of the clothes line pole and I found it when the last of the snow had melted away. The bird had sought protection from the freezing cold, probably during one of the early winter storms, by huddling beside the pole. It had frozen to death there and when I found it the bird hadn’t been discovered by any of the neighborhood’s stray cats so it was in the same huddled position it had been in when it was overtaken by the cold and died.

What bothered me about the bird’s death was that it sought shelter beside the metal pole, a pole that would transmit the freezing cold down from above the snow to the ground. The bird had no chance of survival but yet its instinct had been to seek shelter there. I wondered if its instincts have been altered by human manipulations of the world and the reason it turned to the steel pole that was sticking above the snow was because it connected the pole to people. Have we spent so much time altering our world that the wildlife that once depended on their instinctive wits to survive may have turned too much to us? The thinking that set these thoughts in motion came from the essay I’ve been working on for a month or so. In the past century and-a-half, since Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, the relationship between people and animals has undergone a drastic change. Neither in the Romantic period nor in the Age of Enlightenment was there a concentrated effort to establish a kinship with animals such as exists today, but among some people Darwin’s views have inspired this kinship. When I was holding the nearly weightless little bird and feeling its light, feathery softness, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt. Should I have been feeding the birds around the house more food? Or, was the little bird’s death just nature acting out her own population controls?

Rather than put the bird in the trash and condemn it to the landfill I decided to bury the bird. I dug a little hole in the still frozen ground and buried the bird beside our rhubarb plants. I put it back into the cycle of life. After that chore was finished I went back to raking the yard. For the past two weeks while I have been noting the ducks, geese, grouse, pheasants and partridge I have also thought of the little bird. In a strange, very mental way, the Little Brown Bird made a small part of our world a bit clearer to me. The distance between the game birds I have been watching and the LBB is very narrow. We understand that our support of game, whether it swims, flies or runs, also supports all other species and to prove this we usually offer the habitat argument without really explaining the deep connections between all wildlife, habitat and ourselves. But, the LBB was, for me, proof of the argument. It isn’t Darwinism that has created the kinship but how we have altered the world. The more changes we make the greater our responsibility is to the world and as we recognize that responsibility we develop a deeper relationship with nature. The Little Brown Bird was, for me, a reminder of just how deep our responsibility is. The truly sad part is that the person who condemns hunting (or fishing) is ignoring that relationship and trying to replace it with an artificial Darwinism that is feel good emotion and not science—hard or soft. It isn’t the kinship with animals that insures their survival, whether a Little Brown Bird or a Giant Canada Goose, but is our willingness as people, hunter or non-hunter, to accept our responsibility to the world and to act on it.

Thoughts? Glg

Copyright, 2009 by Galen L. Geer.

Thinking about hunting ethics

This spring has been a roller coaster ride of weather and nature constantly waving her little finger over the land causing floods with evacuations, roads being washed out, and in general making life difficult in North Dakota. There is light ahead because in some areas the rising waters are beginning to stabilize—sort of—there is still a lot of water in the fields to flow down to the rivers. Shoot, the way it is going it is going to be a few more weeks before I’ll be able to go fishing. Right now however, what I’d like to do is find a field that I could actually reach that is under the flight path of the thousands of geese around here. In time I know the rivers will return to their course, the bogs will shrink to sloughs and the ground will be dry enough to walk on without sinking past your ankles. If I am lucky it’ll all happen while the snow geese are still in the area and I’ll be able to get in some good snow goose hunting. Until then I’ll have to be content to watching the thousand-bird flights that pass over my house several times a day. Maybe tomorrow on my drive to Fargo I’ll be able to get some photos of the geese rafting on the flood waters. It is an amazing sight!

How many of you are familiar with the writings of Jim Posewitz? He hasn’t written any best sellers but he has written two books that I believe are very important to the future of hunting, Beyond Fair Chase and Inherit the Hunt . These are small books and each one can be read in just a couple of hours. What I believe is important about these books is that Posewitz tackles the tricky question of hunting ethics.

The question of hunting ethics is the source of many debates and I often find myself being at the heart of many discussions over hunting ethics. What has caught my eye in Posewitz’s book Beyond Fair Chase is that he has offered a comprehensive ethic for hunters and I’ve been working with it in the last installment of my three-part series for Whitetails Unlimited. Here is what he has posited as a Twenty-first century ethic for hunters:

“A person who knows and respects the animals he hunts, follows the law, and behaves in a way that will satisfy what society expects of him or her as a hunter.”

This is on page 16 of Posewitz’s book and in the next few chapters he takes the short, three-part statement apart and offers his evidence on how and why it works as a hunter’s ethic. What I have found, in my own work, is that Posewitz has written what I believe is a workable ethic. There is a great deal more to the discussion around the question of ethics in the Twenty-first century but the Posewitz Ethic can be applied to nearly every problem—at least that is how I see it.

What do you think? glg

Ice Markers from flood

I took these photos in Mayville, North Dakota and they are interesting because they show the levels the water reached, then frozen before retreating and leaving the ice markers behind. In some of the photos the ice markers look more like fungi growing on the trees and the playhouse than ice.

The ice table that was left behind really impressed me. Across the river you can see the huge slabs of ice on the banks.

glg