What Happened Whilst Felling Trees

To continue my tree felling story: The first one came down, but only after a chain broke. 

To get the first one down Gary sat a ladder against it, climbed up and put a chain on it, then attached lengths of heavy chain out 60 ft or more and attached it to the dozer. Then he sawed notches on the tree; a wedge from the front and a straight cut partway across the back. 

His words: “Getting the cuts in the right place is the trick.”

The first tree above…well, he didn’t get the back cut through far enough, so when he went to pull it the chain broke. So he cut a bit further, found another chain and down it came. 

The second one was a bit trickier; he decided to just push it over with the dozer instead of using chains on it. 

So below you can see the dozer bucket is against it, putting a bit of pressure on it to get it to fall away from the building  


You can see him up there making the cuts. Take note of the positions of the barn, tree and dozer. 

This time he got the cuts a smidge too deep. He was sawing away and I watched in complete disbelief as the tree just broke off and began this slow, stately spin against the dozer bucket. Gary hightailed it towards me and we watched as the tree fell between the barn and the dozer. It seemed to take it a long time to settle; limbs kept breaking and twigs kept cracking and flying around.  



It was a bit of a mess…to say the least. But surprisingly enough it didn’t cause much damage at all. It loosened the little canopy over the barn door, poked a couple of small holes in the tin roof,



…the holes are barely visible, and it crunched the rigged up cover to the vacuum pump that used to run the milkers. 

A few hours and some elbow grease later it’s looking much better and safer. 


No dead trees looming overhead and now we have a pile of wood to boot. You can see that it was really rotten, hollow all the way down. 

In fact it was full of water and sprayed Gary when he sawed into it. 


In conclusion; if I had any of my natural brown hairs left under the dye…well, they all turned white as I watched my husband run from the falling tree.  Ha

Comments

Diane B said…
Oh my goodness! So glad all is well & no one was harmed!
April 11, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Anonymous said…
My son, Noel Boyer, has All About Trees in Spfld. He would get a kick out of this post! Can I share it?
April 11, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Calfkeeper said…
Me too!! It was touch and go.
April 13, 2025 at 9:57 PM
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