A Rafting He Shall Go

In August 2019 we did a blog called Forest Treasures and Seashore Cedar. It's still on the list if you missed it. 

Seashore Cedar was about finding local raw material for our property's deer fence.  

The finished fence will be a combination of tall cedar slats close to the house and, amongst the trees, a tall wire fence around the lower part of the property.  

     The portion we finished in April to encompass the side of our veggie garden.  No deer allowed!

The cedar fence gives us privacy from the street and major funk appeal while the wire portion around the waterside, when done, will provide us with an unobstructed view of our more wild landscape in the southwest corner of our property.  That's also where the zen pond and bird pond sit near the path worn by wandering deer. So much to look at!

We love hearing the ever present trickles of water and watching lots of birds
 take full advantage of our creation.

Though we had almost 300 pickets made, we knew we needed more to finish the whole project.  Our search is never over.  It usually involves happily wandering the foreshore beaches looking for cedar pieces or cedar logs washed up on the beach.  If we find them, we cut them up, haul loads of 6 - 12' long chunks home and then, using wedges, cut the cedar lengthwise to be used as future fence pickets.  We visit the local beach, which we refer to as the "Kaleva Lumber Store" pretty much every week and seldom come home empty handed.  We've brought home lots of driftwood, firewood for our outdoor fire pit, wood for our raised veggie beds, and we always find interesting rocks and boulders for future house projects.  

Jim with a typical cedar piece.  We might get two pickets out of it!

I find interesting future art pieces and Jim envisions turning a piece of a log into something amazing.   Jim could see two or three amazing tables out of this piece.  I saw a couch.

Our new compost structure is exclusively made of beach cedar and driftwood logs.  Take your tape measure with you to the beach and you'll find just the right poles for your needs. Remember the Kaleva Lumber Store for all your bark n wood bits!

During one of our trips to the Kaleva Lumber Store to find one seven foot piece of cedar we stumbled across a 21 foot long piece of straight cedar.  This was a gold mine!  Enough for 60 or 70 slats maybe, which will cover 20 or 25 feet of fence.  Jim could barely contain himself.  One problem....it wasn't exactly easy access from the road.  It was a short but rocky walk, but too long to pack that amount of wood.  A raft.  That would work!

So we headed home for raft building supplies and our wedges and sledges, returning the next day in time to move and split long slabs off the log.   The day was warm and foggy in the morning and then the sun barely showed itself for the afternoon.  A good thing considering it was hot out none-the-less.

You can see the orange handle of the metal sledge hammer near the 21' piece of tree we found.  The fog advanced and retreated as we worked.

There's a little ferry terminal in there somewhere.

Tools of the trade...we use the metal wedges to begin with then switch to using the wooden wedges for the rest of it.  

   

After we split the log into more manageable pieces, we carried them towards the shoreline for assembly.

We timed high tide perfectly.  Jim used cedar cross pieces screwed in place to make the raft.  He had three sets of cross pieces staggered to support his weight and hopefully float nice and high. Jim put in the last screw as his toes were getting wet with waves lapping. He was pretty sure it would be stable enough but he wasn't sure about steering so we added a long tether to shore.  I ran along, taking photos as I went, of Jim and his raft.  He had a smile from ear to ear!

He launched our new creation, and used a long cedar pole and a little help from the wind gods to travel parallel to the shoreline.  As he rounded the point, I used the tether gently to line him up and stood by just in case the wind or current took him too far from shore.

Success!  Another safe excursion and a gentle landing. 

We unscrewed the slats holding the raft together and hauled the pieces up the beach before high tide took them away.  After a quick break we backed the truck up and hefted each piece onto the mighty lumber rack.  What are we 20 or something?!  I don't know how many times I climbed in and out of the truck bed to help inch each piece forward so it would sit properly without tipping for the quick drive home.  Of course, the road from the beach to our house is a "no tie-down zone" so we didn't have to spend any time putting those pesky straps on our load.

You can just see the front of the truck and cedar above our woodshed roof. That's a full load!

After a night of rest we grabbed a saw horse and heaved each piece down from the lumber rack.  A couple of days later Jim tackled the 20 foot plus long pieces and cut them lengthwise in half or thirds.  

We we're both wiped after our four hour expedition but we beat the tide!  We took most of Labour Day weekend off to relax and recover.  Weather was perfect and we did some exploring.  That's in another blog.   Last Monday Jim packed all of those long straight chunks of cedar to the racks where they'll stay for now.  On to our next thing....

Until then...

Jim and Tricia Bowen