Starting to Clear for the Cabin

Since I was being nice to the neighbors, and didn't want them to have to listen to me all day today, I went up the hill from the sawmill shed to start working on the cabin site. It needs some clearing out both to see the site better and to be able to work on laying things out when we get a plan. There are a lot of dead trees lying around and we need to be able to get a path open for one large pine that the top broke off of. We are hoping to get the pine down as soon as we get the mill set up. The proposed site is set back above a rock in the corner of the field. It has a sheltered feel being up above the field and in the trees. It allows you to see most of the field as well as Laraway mountain. There are a number of large trees around the house site which should give it a nice feel. You are basically looking east towards Laraway. The property line is about 50 feet from the site but there is a lot of woods between the cabin and the neighbor's field so we don't expect it to be a problem.

The first thing that needs doing is a path up to the site. We need to be able to get equipment up there and trees etc. down. There are a number of decent sized hemlock on the site which will probably go into the sawmill shed construction. I tried to dig out stumps as I went so I wasn't running over them constantly. Fortunately there weren't any big trees that needed to be taken down. The picture to the left shows the start of the path from the field up the hill to the site. It won't be bad getting the tractor up there but I wouldn't want to be taking a car up in the winter time. After establishing some sort of path I worked on clearing up the down trees. There is still a couple of days work to get them out. After they are on the burn pile we'll start taking out the trees that we can make use of. The hemlocks as previously mentioned and there are also some small maples which we'll cut up to get started on next year's wood supply. I actually started a new burn pile in the corner of the field since it is too wet to be constantly crossing the field to the other one.
This picture is taken from the cabin site. That's Laraway you are looking at. I spent some time trimming branches to enhance the view. We'd like to keep as many of the trees as possible but want to be able to see out.