The Rural Voice, 2000-12, Page 30Jn
the early 1940s
I was working
with my father on
our 200 -acre farm
near Epping in
Euphrasia Township.
We were milking 15
to 20 cows by hand
since there was no
hydro, had about 50
sheep, 100 pigs,
cattle and a dozen
work horses.
During the
winters we would cut
logs for other
farmers in the area
and in January 1941
we were cutting on
the Kerr farm along
the Beaver River
south of Heathcote.
We would start
cutting once the river
and swamp were
frozen so we could
draw the logs out
with the horses. Our
days started early
with the chores at
home then we would
head down the hill and walk along
the river to start work in the bush at
daybreak. Usually we would cut
(felling and cutting trees to length)
for two or three days then spend a
couple of days drawing the logs out
to the field with the teams. Our job in
that bush was to take out the elm
trees and most of them were two to
three feet across, but there were two
very large ones.
The larger of the two we measured
was 27 feet around the trunk at the
ground, which meant it was about
nine feet across. It was a straight,
solid looking tree and sizing it up we
figured it was 40 feet up to the first
branch. We laid out eight logs to fell
the tree on so it could be cut into 10 -
foot lengths which would be loaded
on the sleigh. We were using six-foot
crosscut saws, a "four cut and a
drag", which means there were four
cutting teeth and then a drag tooth to
pull the sawdust out.
Since this tree was so big we had
to "kerf' (notch) the tree in about six
places where the roots came out from
the trunk, to reduce the size of the
trunk to about five feet. After every
third cut w.e would take the handle
• /
THE BIGGEST Ns,
TREE
IN THE VALLEY
Logging arancient tree in
1941 was a task of huge
proportions
as told to Greg Brown by
Gerald Cornfield
26 THE RURAL VOICE
off the saw, pull it out to clean the
sawdust away from the teeth, push it
back in, put the handle on and make a
few more cuts. It took two men, two
good men, on each end of the saw to
pull it through that much wood. My
father, Thomas Cornfield, had hired
Harvey Ward and Wilbert Sewell to
work for us that winter and it took the
four of us a full day to cut down that
one elm tree.
The tree fell exactly where we
wanted it on the logs we had laid out,
and the next day we started sawing it
intc lengths Since we couldn't reach
the top of the log we built a scaffold
on each side to stand on. Our saws
were not long enough to reach
through the tree and we heard of
someone who had a longer saw, and
were able to borrow a nine -foot saw
from Wesley James at Rock Union.
Two men stood on the scaffold and
the other two stood on the ground
pulling on straps attached to the saw.
It took us two days to saw the tree
into four 10 -foot logs.
We worked six days a week from
daylight to dark. At noon we would
usually light. a fire and sit around it
on our gunnysack full of straw, which
was called a "dry -ass". Our
/
that log when
the ground.
We drew one log at a time out to
the field with a team, and had another
team following in case the sleigh slid
off the packed trail. The logs were
taken by truck to a sawmill over by
Goderich, which was the only mill
that could handle logs that size. Even
the double saws couldn't reach
through the butt log and we heard
they used dynamite so split that log in
half.
e were paid by the
thousand board feet for
falling, cutting the logs in
lengths and drawing out to the field.
That elm tree, which we believed was
the biggest in the valley, yielded a
total of 4,400 board feet. The butt log
alone had 1,400 board feet, and we
also cut a log out of the first branch
which had 250 board feet.
For almost 60. years I have walked
through the swamp during the fall
deer hunt and would sit on the stump
of that big elm tree. Just in the last
few years the stump was rotted away
but I can still find the place where
that tree stood. The stump may be
gone but I still have many memories
of that big elm tree.0
sandwiches, which
we carried in a 10 -
pound Beehive
honey pail, were
frozen by the time
we stopped for lunch
so we held them over
the fire on a forked
stick to thaw out. We
warmed a pail of
water for the horses
to take the chill off
the river water, and
they had a feed of
oats and hay. We
always, took very
good care of the
horses.
To load a log on the
sleigh we tipped the
sleigh on the edge
and pushed it up
against the log. We
chained and cinched
the log tight against
the "bunks", hooked
the horses to the log
and pulled the sleigh
upright. It took a
strong sleigh to hold
the runners landed on