Chapter 5

Late yesterday the local logging company had dropped a load of logs off by my property entrance; I had decided that they could wait until this morning to be moved. And now, it was this morning. I dressed in a bra, knickers, dungarees and steel-toecap boots and grabbed the buggy and headed over to the mill to get the skid steer. As I drove along my tracks, I idly mused, wondering why the Americans called the buggy a ‘side-by-side’. That description would apply to most vehicles, certainly those that drove on public roads. I had no clue and just put it down to one of those inexplicable differences between us.

I left the buggy in front of the sawmill shed and let the skid steer warm up as I oiled and greased the various nipples and checked the fluids; it always seemed to use so much more grease than anything else I owned, and I decided that I would go into town in the week and pick up another case of grease cartridges. I trundled to the entrance and looked at what had been left. Eight beech trunks just inside my entrance, each about nine feet long and a good twenty inches or more round. I could carry two at a time with the skid steer.

I picked up the first two and headed back to the mill. I had some dunnage set up to keep the logs off the ground, and I would paint each end with Anchorseal to stop the wood splitting and deter insects getting in at the ends. There was a furniture maker a few miles away who had told me he would always buy top-quality sawn beech from me. It would be a couple of months before I sawed the trunks, and I needed to keep them in as good a condition as I could.

Four trips done, and the beech was stored and the ends sealed. I sat and had a drink of coffee from my flask and looked at my wood store. A good amount of pine. I decided that I would mill some pine today, mostly into four by twos, and the thin ones I could use for stickers to keep the cut timbers apart to ease drying. I also ought to cut some four by ones to make myself some storage pallets, so it could be quite a busy day at the mill.

The first pine log loaded and the mill ready, I raised the headstock and ran the first run, not cutting, just to get my eye in and make sure that everything I thought would miss did actually miss. Happy that my setup was good, I brought the headstock back and set up for my first cut. I usually took four cuts, ninety degrees apart, to remove the outer layer and start squaring up the log. These first four offcuts I was storing for later use as rough-cut boardings for any buildings I would assemble, an idea I had gotten from a wonderful guy called Andris in Estonia, my take on Yorkshire boarding.

The second cut on each side would then go through the edger to remove the wane and give me square-edge timber; the second and subsequent cuts were a nominal two-inch thickness, the most commonly used size and popular with my customers. Sometimes I was asked for four-inch boards, usually by people wanting to make heavy furniture or replace decking in trailers. But they were special orders; I rarely kept any of that in stock, and I had no plans to do any today.

The first four cuts taken, I pushed the offcuts onto the forks on my skid steer and took them to the storage pile to add to the others, building up a stock for later use. Back to the mill, and I started taking two-inch cuts and soon had twelve cuts ready for further treatment. As I began stacking the square-edged timber on to the skid steer, drops of rain started falling, making a percussive ping sound on the tin roof of the mill.

I had looked at the forecast earlier, and it had said there was a possibility of thunderstorms, and that was fine, but there were plenty of tall trees around to attract lightning, and I really did not want to be in the vicinity of a strike should it happen, and happen it did; there was plenty of evidence in my forest of trees having been struck. They always taught you, ‘Do not shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm.’ Well, here I was under several thousand of them.

The rain became heavier and heavier, and the ground outside the milling shed began to puddle, the rainfall too heavy for the ground to absorb. The rain was now beating loudly on the roof, and where the drops hit something solid, they were bouncing up around six or seven feet; this was the heaviest rain that I had ever seen, and it showed no signs of abating.

I almost jumped out of my skin as a huge flash of lightning followed almost instantly by a peal of deafening thunder filled the sky above me; I did not want to be in this place. If I were wearing dungarees, they would be soaked and slow me down and take absolutely ages to dry. I sat on the mill and took my toe-protector boots off and then my dungarees. I was standing in bra and knickers. I put my clothes, such as they were, on the saw deck to collect tomorrow.

I slipped my boots back on, although I wasn’t too sure about wearing steel-toecapped boots in a thunderstorm, but I had no other footwear here. I determined I would bring a spare pair of wellies to keep here, and as the thunder crashed above me, I made a run for the buggy, diving in under its shelter and quickly starting the motor. I had no time for the niceties of letting the machine warm up. I was soaking wet and half blinded by the brightness of the lightning, not to mention half deafened by the thunder that was directly above me.

Soaked to the skin, I headed off back, large and deep puddles covering the track from the mill to the house, the volume of water far exceeding the ability of my tracks to absorb or disperse the water. Pulling up right next to the house, I ran from the buggy and unlocked my door, falling inside utterly soaked, my knickers and bra feeling heavy with the water. I stripped them off and dropped them on the floor by the front door.

I hurried to my bedroom and turned the ensuite shower on and got under the warm water, getting the chill of the autumn rain out of my body. I stood as the warm water cascaded over me, added some shampoo to my hair and gave it a quick wash, standing until the water ran bubble-free before exiting the shower. I put my thick dressing gown on and went back to the kitchen to make a hot drink. I picked my sodden bra and knickers up from by the front door, ignoring my boots; they could just wait.