Second Corner Done

Phil had a productive day on Wednesday. Working diligently from the moment the weather reached over 40, he finished the second corner and almost finished an entire wall before night, and cold, forced a halt. "There's no reason I shouldn't be able to finished this side tomorrow," he said.

Alas! James 4 says

Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

And so it proved. There was no reason, except that the forecast turned out a little colder than expected. Well, maybe the high had never been supposed to be much above 41. And 41 is so close to the lower limit of 40, at which temperature the mortar doesn't hydrate properly and so turns to sand. And if the weather ever did actually reach 40, it must have been for a few minutes at most.

So Phil took over my task of cutting block. He moved pallets of block into his workspace, so he'll be ready to go again when the weather cooperates. He and the boys went to get more propane, and then he headed down to chip.

The chipper is not behaving well. The new belt is working well, but another piece continues to fall off. Between fixing that twice in two hours, unclogging the stopped chute when a particularly punky tree branch went through (punky wood is soft and without texture, a late stage of decomposition), and fixing another problem, his two hours in the lower pasture were not pleasant.

With that many minor repairs, I'm glad I'm not down helping him as I've done in past years, separating piles so he can simply feed the machine. I would be so visibly frustrated, I would add to his frustration.

So although the one wall is not finished, he ended his day satisfied with the work he had done. And, physically, he got up this morning quite stiff, so perhaps a day's reprieve will help maintain his stamina for the long term.