The neighbors had some potential saw-logs near their house and barn that my dad and husband collected. When I say neighbors, there really is only one neighbor, one couple. They live to the west of my parents, but own(ed) the land on both the east and west, the two directions with road access. With two tractors and two chain saws, my dad and husband are quite efficient. The day before this, they collected saw logs and fire wood at my parents' cabin (to the north). So, there is not any shortage of wood.
The next-door neighbors, ages 86 and 86, recently donated their 800+ acres to the Department of Natural Resources to be used as wildlife refuge. The state land surrounds my parents'. This is the barn that still stands on that land about a mile east of my parents place. When my dad and I used to make square bales, we'd take them over here to store in this barn. We drove over there on the 4-wheelers and the guys collected the old fence-posts so that they can be reused.
One day we prepped the horse barn for stain, by removing nests and pounding nails in that had popped out a bit. Staining it with a sprayer was messy, but it saved a lot of time and worked fine for the barn. My dad built the barn in summer 2007 after he returned from Alaska. I think he said that helping us build our house gave him the itch to use his pile of sawed lumber. The first winter, the barn was used to cook sap for maple syrup and the next fall, 2008, they purchased two horses.
As soon as we arrived in Minnesota, we fell into our usual roles. My husband went behind the garage to split the wood he didn't get around to splitting the last time we were here, last November, and to make room for the new harvest. I jumped on the lawnmower and snapped photos of our boys finishing the vegetable garden planting with my mom and dad.
