A forklift is a forklift. This one is much bigger maneuvering in a muddy uneven minefield, but I seem to be recalling enough of it to make all you former Tonka Truck owners jealous.

I think Tonka Trucks must have hit their “big time” very soon after I was of age as I don’t recall ever owning one. I think I was more of a Hot Wheels guy. I do recall touring the Tonka factory in Mound on some school trips. My younger brothers owned several though, that I am sure to have messed around with in the glorious mud. Those were the days!

Continuing the sawmill saga started a few days ago.

I didn’t get called back to the sawmill yesterday because the regular guy was back in the loader. I think it was a combination of being caught whipping around on the 4-wheeler later on Tuesday (when he claimed he had a bad back) AND seeing that Herman found a suitable replacement so easily. Kids these days…

Today being Thursday, I didn’t expect them to be operating but as I was finishing up breakfast for everyone, I was surprised to find Uriah, one of Herman’s sons, at our front gate asking if I had time to work a few hours. So much for my plans.

  • First off was a flatbed trailer loaded with large crates of apples that needed to be unloaded. The Amish are very community oriented and Herman ordered apples for their entire group so had 7 gaylords + a 55 gal drum loaded with apples waiting in his yard. I jumped on the loader at the mill and drove it down to Herman’s place to complete that task before returning to the mill. All of the other Amish were clopping by in their buggy’s all day heading for Herman’s to pick up their allotment. There will be a lot of canning going on soon in those households.
  • Back at the sawmill, 3 of Herman’s sons were going to process more cedar logs to complete an order for cedar posts they started previously. After cleaning up the yard a bit, I headed to the field behind the mill, where the cedar logs are “stacked” (more like dumped).

Check out how that went:

Apologies for the motion sickness. The camera was
mounted to my glasses and my head was on a swivel.

Once I had the mill head loaded up with enough logs to keep them busy for hours, I did some more clean up and was getting ready to hop back in the golf cart and return home.

Just then, a 1-top pickup swung in pulling another long (empty) flatbed trailer. It was a local farmer picking up his 3 bundles of 1x8s. This wasn’t something I’d normally be doing but the boys thought it would help to get those bundles out of the way so I agreed – after warning the farmer I was a rookie on the loader.

Of course that meant moving/shifting other bundles out of the way to get to his, but I managed to get them all loaded without damaging his truck or trailer.

All-in-all, it was quite a bit of “practice” – on my day off and I got home just in time to feed the feral cats their dinner and the chickens their afternoon treats.

One HUGE perk of all this is that while picking up the logs in back, I found one that was only 10 feet log that was embedded within the 16 footers. The boys said they couldn’t use it for that order but instead agreed to saw it up for ME. I requested 3″ (thick) by however wide they can manage out of that log (and it was BIG – a good 12″-15″ wide at the base). At home, I’ll be trimming off 3″ slices,1/2″ at a time and will be able to complete trimming out our house with that aromatic cedar. I’ve already completed the living room with what I had, but have the rest of the house to complete and was looking for a good deal on cedar before I could do any more. This will be ideal!