A Busy Weekend

This weekend was a very busy one. Rick's brother Dale came up with his wood splitter so we had two going,but their friend Scott had to work,so it was only Rick,Brian,and Dale working on the woodpile for a while. Zach was very helpful. Dale would use the chain saw to cut some of the bigger logs,Brian would split them with the splitter,then he would throw the split wood into the trailer on the back of the lawn mower,and Zach would drive it to the other side of the garage,unload the wood,and come back for more. Rick worked on the other pile, but it was very humid and he could only split for a few minutes before having to take a break. I was in the house finishing up housework,until Rick came in and asked if I could help outside.
We had a pile of wood from over a year ago that hadn't been touched. It was already split,but when Rick had his stroke,things were put on hold. So we were finally getting to this older pile,and I was threw all the previously split pieces into the bigger pile. Then I ran the splitter with Rick for a while. We finally got all the wood split,and between the two piles,wound up with about two cords of wood. Now it just needs to be stacked.
With the wood out of the way,we extended out driveway. As I mentioned in a previous post,our neighbors down the road gave us 5 truck loads of chips and dirt mixed together. Our other neighbor,Kelly,came down with his tractor and tried to push all the dirt over so we could not only make the driveway wider,but fill in a dip in our yard where the water collects. He had to come back on Sunday. It was taking a while,because technically,the tractor is really a big riding lawn mower with a plow attachment,and because of all the rain,the dirt was very heavy. Fortunately for us, another neighbor,Bob,happened to pop over. He does a lot of logging and selective cutting,and he had a back hoe. He offered to go get it and push the dirt for us. We (and Kelly) gratefully accepted his offer-it would've taken all day otherwise.So Bob brings the back hoe over and moved the rest of the dirt for us. Kelly graded it so the water would not collect,and then Brian borrowed equipment from Kelly to pack the dirt down. They were finally done around 2:30. Whew! And it was the most humid weather we have had all summer,too,what little summer we have had.
Rick and I kept saying how wonderful it was to have such nice neighbors. We didn't even ask for help,they just offered. This is how it should be-neighbors helping neighbors when they can. We figured between the wood,dirt, wood splitter,backhoe,tamping,and and labor,we saved ourselves at least $2,000,probably more.