The only good cedar tree .....

Last Tuesday was a nice rainy day around here and that made it a perfect day to teach a lesson to some lousy, allergy causing, cedar trees. You can see in the photo that these particular ones will not be causing any sneezing or itchy eyes this winter. This is one of the two brush piles we burned on Tuesday and I already have another, bigger pile, ready to light on the next rainy day.

The tractor is our new Caterpillar loader. If you have never driven one, you can not imagine how much fun it is. We had a Bobcat before this one and, don't get me wrong, it was a good piece of equipment but, the Cat will just work circles around it. It has a normally aspirated Caterpillar diesel that I seldom have to run much above an idle. Today I took out a cedar tree that was close to three feet in diameter and it came up with a root ball at least 10 feet in diameter filled with rock and dirt. The Cat just ripped it right out of the ground with hardly a strain. You control forward, back, turns, lift arms, and bucket tilt with small wrist movements through a little, short joy stick in each hand.