Busy Day Replenishing The Woodpile

Yesterday was Saturday April 18th, 2015.  It was so busy we forgot to send my brother in law birthday greetings.  The day before would have been my mom's 91st birthday, so I knew the next day was David's birthday.  We even talked about it.  Then I proceeded to forget until today.  I guess it's better late than never.  Happy Birthday David!

One of the reasons we were busy was that our son in laws' parents were coming over to help drag some trees up the hill from the marsh area.  In years past, we have had a few trees topple over in wind storms.  During our St. Patrick's Day dinner the guys talked about a way to bring the trees up before they rotted and were of no use.  Yesterday was the perfect day to do the job.  It was dry and the foliage hasn't completely sprouted.

They attached a chain to the back of our pickup truck.

Then they put the chain around the logs.

Slowly pulling the truck forward brought the tree up the hill.

Then it was just a matter of cutting it to size.

From this point it was a process of loading the chunks of wood onto the truck, taking them to our driveway, unloading them, splitting into pieces, loading them into the wheelbarrow and stacking on the woodpile.  It was a three Ibuprofen kind of day for both the guys.

Some of this wood was stacked earlier but the third section was yesterday.

After the smaller, lighter pieces were split and stacked, the larger, heavier sections had to be dealt with.  These needed to be split by hand into a manageable size.

While my husband was doing this he noticed some grubs in the rotted portion of the log.  I went out to look and laying in the decayed wood were these large white grubs.  If you are grossed out easily and squeamish, then stop reading this blog post right now.

Here you can see one of the grubs in the decayed wood.

I decided to collect them to feed to the birds.  I buy dried mealworms anyway and these could provide some very nice fresh protein.  As I went in to get a container, I noticed that several birds were digging around in that dirt so I knew they would enjoy them.  As my husband split the wood, I gathered the grubs in a plastic bag.

Before night fall I put one out near the bluebird house.  I wasn't able to watch but by dark the grub was gone.  I put out another this morning with the mealworms.  I saw the bluebird eying it up and pretty soon he grabbed it and flew off.

I will be saving the rest to feed one or two everyday.  They are so big, they are more than a meal for a bird.

My husband finished up the logs today.  He found more grubs and a round looking nut type item.  We looked carefully and saw something white inside.

We thought this shell was either a chrysalis or a nut.

It began moving so I took a little video of the process.  It was very interesting, at least to me.  I will have to research this a little more.  It appears to be the larvae stage of the May Beetle or June Bug. They can do extensive damage to the roots of plants and grass.  I won't feel bad about feeding them to the birds.

http://youtu.be/K096Z0R4b-Q