Dairy Farm Adventures: Chainsaw Mama

by Lee-Rae Jordan Oliver
    I am a chain-sawing Mama. Some women parachute out of planes, fly fighter jets, and rock climb steep mountainsides tethered to a rope for thrills. I’d rather not do these life-defying activities, but I don’t mind sawing wood. I cut over twenty cord of wood every season to keep the fires burning year round in our outdoor wood stove that heats our hot water, the house, the milk room and two garages.
    Matthew taught me how to run a chainsaw in the spring of 2006, when we cleared the land for our house site on Westford Hill. He thought if I was going to be a farmer’s wife, I’d better know how to handle a saw. My mother skillfully drove a John Deere tractor and my mother-in-law operated a skidder in the woods for years. Expectations were high.
    Matthew bought me a Husqvarna that weighed fourteen pounds, one pound smaller than his chainsaw and lighter than a carseat carrying a baby. He purchased two orange safety helmets equipped with a screen to protect the eyes and ear guards to muffle the noise. From the start, I wore my helmet dutifully. Matthew used his helmet a few times and tossed it aside. Apparently, his superior chainsaw skills shielded his eye from flying debris.
    When he fired up the Husqvarna and handed it to me for the first time, I tried hard not to think about all the things that could happen if I made a mistake. “Just squeeze the throttle and put the saw on the log and let it do all the work,” he told me. Have I mentioned Matthew had a way of making everything sound simple? He felled the trees and I trimmed off the limbs and cut the tree into firewood. Sawing wood required my total concentration. There was no room for wandering thoughts or worries. It reminded me of how I felt running road races when I’m mentally and physically focused on moving forward.
    The first winter we spent on Westford Hill, I cut and stacked several tiers of wood next to our outdoor wood stove. By this time, Matthew bought me a full set of safety gear that included protective gloves, chaps and steel-toed boots. If the chainsaw slipped on this gear, it would prevent the saw from injuring me. We didn’t have a wood shed, so I covered the wood with big blue tarps hoping to keep it dry. I completely underestimated Mother Nature’s force on the hill. When the first snowstorm hit, the blue tarps blew to Canada, and snow buried the wood in drifts higher than me. We had to order a trailer truckload of tree-length logs because our firewood was cemented in snow. The following summer, we hired Rick’s construction crew to build a shed to make winter survival on the hill easier.
    The scariest part for me about sawing wood is not the chainsaw, but the fear of the tree-length logs tumbling and squashing body parts. One summer, Matthew ordered two trailer truckloads of wood delivered to our dooryard. We had twenty-five cord stacked into two monstrous mountains as high as our house. For weeks, I circled and studied the gargantuan piles long and hard, planning my attack. I hired a couple of young fellows to stack while I cut. As I dug into the pile, we watched it carefully, stopping to knock down the towering mass of wood when it threatened to roll on top of us. Despite our efforts in preventing disaster, we had some close calls when the logs came to life unexpectedly. There were several times I dodged oncoming logs with chainsaw in hand hollering, “Watch out!” We played a giant game of pick-up sticks where one wrong move could have been seriously painful. By early fall, the monster mounds had been conquered with only a few bruises and banged-up shins as battle scars.
    Matthew has never told me, “You need to go cut some firewood.” It’s a chore that needs to be done, and I do it without being asked. Truthfully, I like the chance to switch off my “mama mode” and be a “Lumber Jill” for a short time. Just don’t ask me to parachute out of an airplane.
    Editor’s Note: Lee-Rae Jordan-Oliver and her husband Matt are former educators who own a dairy farm in Hodgdon. Her column, discussing life on a farm in 2011, will appear on an ongoing basis in the Houlton Pioneer Times.