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Outdoor Wisconsin host Dan Small welcomes you to his special on-line sanctuary. Join Dan as he gets ready for the dreaded Y2K.  Awards Highlights
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Theme3/3/99 Making Wood for the Millenniumby Dan Small
Expo organizer Chuck Ball promises another Y2K expo in April. If you’re clueless about Y2K, start with these websites: www.yourdon.com; www.year2000.com; www.2000andyou.com. If you’re not online, try it for free at your public library. You’ll find plenty to think about. Who knows, you may soon find yourself making firewood.
Here are a few other Y2K sites: (note, this is not intended to be a recommendation or an endorsement of any of the following sites by Dan Small or Milwaukee Public Television) http://y2kwomen.com (good introduction to the problem, and more. Good place to start.) www.yourdon.com (Click on his articles, the bulletin board. Read his book TIME BOMB 2000, revised edit.) www.Yardeni.com (one of country’s top economists. Click on his bio. and also on “Year 2000 Recession.”) http://cassandraproject.org (excellent walkthrough for family preparations, etc.) www.garynorth.com (a comprehensive site with links to many others -- very outspoken.) www.senate.gov/~y2k (U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Year 200 Technology Problem) www.senate.gov/~bennett (Senator Bennet’s own website. His talks to Senate,etc.) www.y2kreview.com (current newspaper articles) www.209.60.152.131/ (current news articles) www.y2klinks.com www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder www.familyinteractive.net/y2klinks.html And here's one to check out just for kicks. It's a total spoof of one of the better known sites. It's a hoot! www.garysouth.com ©2000 Milwaukee Public Television
February 3, '99:
Bound for Africa, Camera
in Hand |
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It all began with a nasty
wind late last fall that toppled two big residents of our
little woodlot, an ash and a maple. Many of our beeches lost
their tops in an ice storm years ago, and a couple of these
punky fellows go down nearly every time the wind gets a bit
huffy. I hadn’t paid much attention to their demise, but
when those two big hardwoods snapped, I had to do something.
Broken halfway up and dragging their crowns, they were
ugly.
I just wanted to get those two
trees down and cut up, and figured I could clear a couple
downed beeches off the trail while I was at it, so I went
out and bought a chain saw. Something I had carefully
avoided since moving south 15 years ago. I lived with the
joys of firewood heat in an old Bayfield County farmhouse
for 10 years. Don’t let anyone tell you burning wood isn’t
labor intensive. You cut it, split it, haul it (first to the
barn, then to the house) and stack it (first in the barn,
then in the racks in the house), then load it in the stove,
tend the fire, shovel out the ashes, sweep the chimney,
monitor chimney fires, take down the stovepipe and scrape
out the crud, put the stovepipe back up, and start all over.
Every fall, you put up enough wood to last the winter and
then some, and every April you hope the weather will break
before you run out of seasoned wood and have to join the
“Popple-a-Day-Club.” I saved lots of money and stayed in
shape burning wood, but haven’t missed it.
All winter, my new saw sat in the garage.
Then my wife stumbled onto a couple articles about the Y2K
computer problem, and we began researching the issue. It
didn’t take long to conclude that a woodstove would be a
good hedge against a prolonged winter power outage, so we
picked out an efficient steel flattop model you can cook on
(Why not? What if we run out of LP gas?). It even has a
glass door so you can watch the fire. Next, we asked a
retired friend who enjoys felling trees for folks to check
out our woodlot. Bob chuckled when my wife told him why we
were suddenly in the market for firewood. He found a dozen
or so damaged trees and splashed a big red “M” on each one
with spray paint. “That’s for Millennium!” he said. On
Valentine’s Day, Bob and I fired up my new McCulloch and put
it to work alongside his three Stihls. I haven’t worked so
hard in 15 years, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it,
as the smell of fresh-cut wood and the growl of a well-tuned
saw took me back to a simpler life Up North. And how quickly
the hard-learned lessons came back: let the saw do the work;
prop a log up off the ground and underscore each round
before you cut it off; use your saw’s bar to measure a
16-inch stick.
At day’s end, I dragged my body to the house
and soaked it in hot water. We left a couple rotten beech
snags for the woodpeckers, but the rest were down and cut to
firewood length. We have yet to enjoy splitting, hauling and
stacking them. I dove into the project with more enthusiasm
because the day before, we had attended the first Midwest
Y2K Preparedness Expo in Waukesha. Vendors offered
woodstoves; gas, wind and solar generators; and freeze-dried
food that will keep for years. Seminars on self-sufficiency
offered tips on how to get by if we lose power for an
extended period. We’re still gathering information, but
we’ve got our wood and the stove is on the way.