Pop and I made the trip up again in the beginning of August of 2009 to get some more work done around the cabin. Since we were pretty much surrounded by trees at the little cabin it was not getting much sunlight and was often wet and muddy. Pop said we should clean out a lot of the trees around it and open it up some. So we took out a bunch of the trees around it and one big white birch that was leaning over the cabin that we worried would eventually fall on it. That one was a bit scary taking down but we got it without hitting our little cabin. Turns out we could have pushed it right over with the tractor but at the time we were a little hesitant about pushing the old thing too much. We spent much of that weekend clearing the area around the cabin and making a space for the old camper to go when we tow it up there in late October.
We did get to test the old tractor out a bit that weekend and see how much it would help us. Turns out it worked pretty well on the roots and pushing the branches around on the ground but we were still not really pushing it too hard. We were also able to get our outdoor shower stall/porta potty built on the side of the cabin so we would have some facilities to use while there. Our trusty little woodstove was working out great and we used it to dry the dampness out of the cabin a few times that weekend.
We went back up in late September of 2009 to do some more work. Cary Brown had dropped some more gravel for us and did a great job making our driveway more useable. We can now drive the vehicles right up to the cabin without worrying about sinking into the mud if it rained. Best thing about this trip was that the recent frosts they had at night had killed off most of the bugs and mosquitos. It was the best bug free weekend yet. We decided to do some more work with the tractor and ended up using it to push some small trees down, scrape the ground in areas and move a lot of brush and branches. We finally decided to push it to see what it would do and it worked great.
Cabin Story Page 4