Ann is baking,Yum Yum!!

Ann is shown kneading bread dough. She baked 3 loaves of bread and a bunch of buns for burgers. It won't take us long to go through those! Even though Ann bakes almost every week we sometimes run out of homemade bread and pick up a loaf at the store. What a poor excuse for bread that stuff is.

Ann adds lots of goodies like oatmeal, cracked wheat, flax seed, etc., to her bread. It really makes a hearty loaf and the whole grains seem to keep it moist. In case you couldn't tell, I'm a really,really, big fan of Ann's homemade bread.

Well, while Ann was baking ,our son Dane and I were cutting fire wood. It was below zero so we had to bundle up which makes it harder. Just moving in those extra clothes adds to the job and of course as soon as you start working you over heat and have to shed some of them.

I found several elms that were standing dead. While I hate finding trees that have been killed by Dutch Elm Disease they do make excellent fire wood. They seem to make it for 30 or 40 years and then it gets them. It really is a shame we have lost such a magnifecent tree.

Most of the firewood I cut is from blow outs or tree that have died for some reason or that have been damaged badly by ice storms or wind. I always try to cut so that I improve my wood lot and don't do too much damage. I leave old half rotten snags for the woodpeckers and build brush piles to help provide cover for song birds. I do every thing I can to protect our sugar maples as we love making and using maple syrup.