Cabin 2: Barking the logs

This spring we rushed back from a traveling and hunting in the Arctic with an important task in mind-to protect our logs.  As summer sets in, numerous insects were hoping to call our pile of cabin logs their new home.  We had a bunch of logs that looked like this...

That we needed to look like this...

"Barking" the logs is the process of roughly removing the bark so that the wood can dry quickly and without becoming damaged by insects or rot. 

Luckily, we are no strangers to getting bark off of logs.  There is a magical time window in the spring when it is easy to peel green logs.  Using mostly shovels, and sometimes drawknives, we were able to shovel, peel, pry and push the bark off our logs.  Check out the video above to see how it works.

Once the logs are barked we rested easy, knowing that they would spend the summer drying safely. 

Note to the wise- It is a bad idea to sit on the logs while you are peeling them.  Jenna knows this, but did it anyways, finally doing in some already very patched-up pants.