The first area I focused on when cleaning up the storm damage was the tree closest to our main entry.

I’d already had to cut away a few parts of the branch earlier. While we could push our way through the branches when walking by, I needed to back the van up to the house, so we could load it up for a trip to the dump.

It had been my intention to cut pieces away, little by little, until I could get the cracked main branch down completely. The first few, I was able to reach with the extended pruning saw from the ground, but as weight was removed, the whole thing started to rebound, higher and higher. I had to bring out the step ladder to be able to reach the main part of the branch. I expected to cut it away in at least three sections.

Things didn’t quite work out that way.

Once the piece in the photo above came free, it came twisting down – towards me on the step ladder, of course! – while the rest of the branch, released of the weight, flung itself upward about 5 feet.

After looking it over, I decided to just leave it. Without the weight of this section, there is no longer a danger of it cracking more. It should probably still be taken down eventually, but there is no risk to leaving it alone for now. Especially since we plan to have the entire tree taken down at some point.

This pile is the broken down pieces of just that one section from the above photo!

This is all of what came down from this one tree. The two bigger pieces went to the wood pile for the fire pit, while the rest went into the big pile for eventual chipping.

The cats LOVED playing in all the branches I’ve been cleaning up!

It’s really remarkable, what a difference there is in the yard. Two large branches of this tree came down, and it all feels so much more open and lighter under there!

This job ended up taking less time than I expected. It was time to move on to the big willow tree.

That job ended up taking more time than expected!

More on that in my next post. 🙂

The Re-Farmer