A weekend of work

This is what we will be doing every weekend until the end of June! We are planning our very small wedding outdoors on KB's property which is about an hour outside of Riga in Straupe. It's a beautiful piece of property with fields, woods and swamp, and we love to be there just to be. Nothing has been done on the land for 60 years, so needless to say, even though we want a totally laid back, natural outdoors experience, there is still a fair amount of work to be done. It has taken quite a bit of planning, revising ideas, and then planning some more, but we finally have a good idea of where the road will be put in and where we want to clear out an area for the ceremony, the bonfire, the cars and tents and of course the all-important outhouse.

This weekend we did some serious cleaning. We chose the small corner of woods that we want to clean out (leaving the largest birch trees and evergreen trees, but taking out the rest) as the hang out zone. In my mind, it was like cleaning house. But you have to imagine when your house has been at it's absolute messiest, and you're not even sure where to start so you just get in there and start doing. That's how it was for us.

Here's KB, getting the chainsaw ready. These are the three neighbor dogs - we are pretty sure they don't even have names, so we just call them Mazais (small one), Lielais (big one) and Vecais (old one). KB gave them each a pirags the last time he was there, so now they are our best friends.My main duty was "branch duty". As KB chopped things away, I got to make and move piles of wood. I tried to use the hand saw at first, but apparently I looked too dangerous doing it, so I got demoted to branch duty. It was ok. Possibly, still too dangerous for someone not-so-graceful as I (I'm lucky that I didn't poke out an eye - there were many close calls). It gets boring though, so I started singing all the Latvian folk songs that I know while I worked, after I got tired of singing my homemade "branch duty" song ("Don't poke out your eye, don't poke out the dog's eye...")

Finally, KB let me try my hand at chopping wood. I really wanted to learn to use the ax. The good news is I did not cut off my own foot. The bad news is, I think 29 may be too late to learn this skill. KB disagrees; he says with a smaller ax and 100 practice swings, I could learn. Don't be fooled by the picture below. It is totally posed. For the record, I did split one piece of wood (that means I was able to aim the ax to the center of the wood and then it took five more hits to actually get the ax through the whole piece of wood). The rest of my practice swings were just close calls....

And here is the master at work with the chainsaw. I did even ask KB to teach me to use the chainsaw. I'm pretty sure he just smiled and said, "You're cute". :)
So here is the "before" shot to give you an idea of how dense the woods are. Mazais stayed with us all day, even through the freezing rain and sleet. We must have been good entertainment.

At the end of yesterday, we had one area pretty well cleaned out. KB is back there today to try to finish this job. I'm in the city today doing homework and cleaning house (the city house, that is, not the country house). And for the record, we are on day four of no hot water. We showered at our neighbors' apartment yesterday (not the nice Russians below us, but our across-the-hall neighbors who are on vacation and left us the keys) and have started boiling water to wash the dishes. We're open to bets on how long it will be until we get the hot water back....we're not holding our breath!