The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It looks like our summer boating and kayaking is pretty much done for the season. The wind is blowing and the leaves are changing, with some even starting to fall. Now it is time to get back to our projects.

First on the list is tree removal. I guess you could call it the quick way for the leaves to come down! Dave, Karl, Chris, Suzanne, and I became lumberjacks on Sunday, with the goal being to cut down several oak trees that were hanging over our large storage shed out back.

Dave and Karl have been cutting down trees together for many years and(usually) have their method down pat. Dave climbs up the tree and puts a rope around it to tie off to the tractor, or in this case to Hercules. Then another cable and come-along are attached to another tree as a safety line so the falling tree goes in the right direction. As Karl chainsaws, Dave drives backwards keeping the pressure on, so the tree falls right where they want it to.

The first gigantic oak was actually leaning towards our neighbors house, and also was loaded with obnoxious acorns, so it was time to cut it down and turn it into firewood.

There is the 'right' way to do it....

...and the 'not so right' way to do it...

Oops! What happened? The first tree landed perfectly, but not this one. It's hard to see in the picture, but the guide wire was angled around a tree and ended up giving too much slack. Plus Hercules was not lined up quite right and should have been pulling more to the left. As the chainsaw cut through and Dave drove back, the tree rolled off the stump and fell onto the roof, instead of dropping forward. Not too much damage was done to this hefty old shed, but there are a few smaller cross beams that will need to be replaced or sistered together, and some of the tin needs replacing.

The main problem was getting the tree off the roof without doing any more damage. This is sort of ironic since the reason we were cutting the trees down was so that storms wouldn't knock them down and cause damage. The guys all got right up there and started chainsawing, while the girls hauled away branches and picked up leftover metal on the ground (this is the area that the scrappers took the metal, cable, and wire from), for our own and the machinery's safety.

To top off the day, one more smaller tree had to be taken down right next to the shed. It looked like it would fall in the right direction, so the guys decided not to tie a guide line to it. Naturally, when it came down it kissed the roof and broke another of the edges. Now it's getting ugly. Not that it was good looking to start with though. All we could do was laugh.

Luckily no one was hurt, we gave the neighbors a good show, and the minimal damage will just be added to our growing list of things to do. Let's just say we were practicing for the tree removal closer to our house, that needs to be done also. Now the guys know what not to do, and got the 'oops' part out of the way!