Knoxville, PA: In The Cut

My wife’s parents retired years ago and live on a hill in extreme northern Pennsylvania in a house they built themselves using wood and stone from their own land.

He also built a hunting cabin (referred to as the Honey Cabin by my daughters), that's pretty posh by hunting cabin standards.

Joy's dad owns between one and two square miles of land that he’s acquired slowly over many years. He cultivates trees on it and has shipped lots of timber since his stands have matured.

When people use the expression ‘in the sticks’ this is the place they’re referring to.

My oldest daughter Kristin decided she wanted to help Grandpa this week. She’ll be doing work such as that pictured here, as well as having lots of fun courtesy of Grandma (I heard talk of tennis, swimming, and scrabble—Kristin loves scrabble).

This stop was just the second kid drop-off (the other child is here), though we did take time to go up the hill and see the current cut. Dad spent some time describing how timber is graded and the debates that result between he and his logger over where exactly to cut each log given grade and end-use considerations. Pretty exacting science. I couldn’t tell the difference between one piece of wood and the next. Remind me not to go into logging.

This post written at the Butler, PA Panera--free wifi. They let me use their phone too. Very nice people here.

Jannotti tag: travel