We are way behind in preparing for the winter. And, it seems winter has already come--several times.

By this time last year we had about 5 cords of wood cut, split and stacked. This year, we are well behind that goal.

See the green tarp in the photo above? Last year, that stack of wood was as wide as those poles sticking up and extended outward to where that stack of logs is. The good news is that we do have lots of raw wood close to the cabin. (You can see a pile of aspen logs in the right-bottom of the photo, and another large pile of beetle-kill pine logs to the far left-center.)

Another piece of good news is that after several early-season snow storms, we now have great weather predicted for the next couple of weeks. That will allow us to gather even more raw wood from around the land and get it hauled to the cabin site, where we can cut and split even in winter if needed.

A stack of logs from cutting up a tree that had fallen in the meadow.

We don't have tracks on the Ranger yet as it is needed to continue to haul logs that we cut in the meadow to the cabin site. We don't have our winter provisioning done either. And, we don't have our final fill-up of propane yet. (No worries, as none of this was done at this time last year, either.)

What the heck did we do this year? It has passed so fast!

Well, we did get the exterior of the cabin refurbished. We built a deck on the south side of the cabin. The dogs got a fenced in yard (which has been a huge hit). The barn got stained and painted. We did several dogs shows as well as a few weeks of "vacation". We've been busy. But, now we've got to buckle down and finish getting ready for winter. Who knows what lies ahead?