Clean Up

Clean up: west yard trees – FINISHED!

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Yes!!!

It is finally done!

The maple grove/west yard trees are now finally cleared, trimmed and cleaned up.  After this, there will just be the basic maintenance to be taken care of in this area for the rest of the year.  Aside from maybe trimming the tall stumps, if we get a full size chainsaw before winter.

What a difference!

When I headed out today, the first priority was to clean up the branches and trees from last time.  In the process, I went digging around for downed branches under the last bit of trees I needed to work on, grabbed what I thought was a branch and found…

… metal.

This is what I dragged out.

I haven’t the foggiest clue what it is.

It went on the junk pile by the old garden shed.

Once I did that, I broke out the weed trimmer and went to town in all the areas I’ve been working on that hadn’t been trimmed yet.

Oh, my, does it ever look awesome!!!  (click on the pictures)

While I was using the weed trimmer, I kept having to stop and pull more branches out of the dead leaves, as I found them with the line on the trimmer.  My daughters cleaned away what they could find.  I had been taking what I cleared out of the last section (photos below) to the pile out of the yard, but by the end of the day, I was getting too tired to do both.  It was quite pleasant to work among the trees, but once I got out of the yard with the wheel barrow, or dragging a tree or two, it was like walking into a wall of heat.  So I started leaving things to the side, then the girls did a fantastic job of cleaning it all away, later.

While I wasn’t going to work on the rest of the fence line, I did go in with the weed trimmer.  I took the before picture when I last worked in the area a few days ago.

There was just the last bit to work on, over by the power pole (see below).  I went into it with the weed trimmer as much as I could, but there was a section by the gooseberry bush I couldn’t reach, because I kept getting stabbed by low hanging and dead branches!

This side will probably need to be thinned down more, but I will wait and see how the remaining trees do over the next year or two.  If the maples do well, I might trim the elms to give them more room to grow, because maples can get so huge.  If the elms do well, I may trim the maples.  The maple I’m standing next to as I take the photo (in the foreground, to the right) is going to need thinning, but it can wait.

Several times, I started to clear a maple, then thought, oh… it’s actually an elm.  No, it’s a maple.  No, it’s… both??

There were groups of trees where maple and elm were growing against each other.  !!

This next section shows some apple trees.

In the before picture, there is a crab apple tree that is part of the row of crab apples in the middle of this area, but this one had so many little apple trees growing around it.  Likely self seeded, as apples fell over the years.  As I went through them, trying to figure out what to keep and what to take out, I discovered the biggest one – the one that would have been originally planted – was almost entirely dead.  It had two younger ones growing next to it, so I left those.  They are too close together, but I will see which of them does better over the next few years, before deciding if they need to be thinned more.

The major challenge was the big ornamental apple tree.  The branches were so twisted and wrapped around each other, with living tangled up with the dead.  It was a struggle to get them free of each other.  Most of it was growing towards the East – the morning sun would be the only real sunlight it would be getting – and that’s there all the little apples is had are hanging from.

There were so many dead branches higher up on all of these trees.  The extended pruning saw got quite a workout.  Not just to pull down or cut dead branches, but to untangle them to get them down.

Sadly, I was not able to use my little electric chain saw/extended pole pruner.  I checked it over thoroughly (it’s really designed to be idiot proof) and everything looked good.  Yet when I tried to use it, it started screaming and immediately began to jam.  It was also dripping chain oil. :-(

Time to see how long the warranty is for. :-(  Or if it’s still covered.  All I can think of that’s different that might be an issue is the chain oil.  The oil it came with was perfectly clear, like water.  The chain oil I have now is generic, and red.  The paperwork did recommend using their brand of chain oil, but it seems not to be available in Canada.

This rather sucks, because it did make work go much faster, when it was working!

Still, I have the tools I need to do the job, and the next time I am able to work on the trees, it will be at the spruce grove!  Woo Hoo!!!

I love this work. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean up; west fence area trees

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We had another cooler day today; after this it’s supposed to heat up again, so I took advantage of it to continue in the west yard trees.  I am so close to being finished here (I’ve decided not to do the rest of the fence line itself for now), I’m getting excited, because it means I can finally move on to the spruce grove perimeter. :-D  I’d like to get as much as I can done there, before I have to stop for the year.

The first thing I did was finally take down the two dead trees by the smaller willow. (The before and after pictures are taken from opposite directions)

The one that was about midway between the two willows was a bit of a job.  It was tall enough, and leaning enough, that it was well into the branches of the big willow.  Which means that, after I cut the trunk, the base just swung over to the big willow, and there it hung.  It did not want to come down!

The wood from these trees is going to be kept for the fire pit.

The tall stumps are being left until we get a full size chainsaw.

On to the next area…

There’s not a lot of visible difference here, since I worked in this area yesterday.  I took down the dead half of the maple trees.  After that, most of what I did was take down dead branches from above, except from the one mostly dead spruce that will be taken down entirely.

Next areas; the last of those rows of spruces!

Also, I found a third little tamarack hiding in them.

It really looked like a spindly, dead spruce.  I honestly probably should have taken it out, but I really want to keep the tamarack. I also should probably have thinned the spruces out more, too, because of how close together they are, but they look strong and healthy enough to make it.  So for now, they will stay.  Next year, perhaps, we can transplant the tamarack, instead.

After this, I finally got to working among the beeches.

The before picture, I’d taken yesterday.  If you look along the beeches, you can see a single trunk, slightly out of line.

It turned out not to be a trunk at all.  It was a branch that had fallen straight, and was standing there, held up by the other branches!  You can even see the broken bit it had come from.

I’ve been finding quite a lot of dead branches held up by others.  One I pulled down earlier and moved out today, filled the wheelbarrow all on its own!

In the northernmost row, I found another Colorado Blue spruce, with an elm tree growing right next to it.  Well.  Two elms, really, right up against each other.

The spruce was planted deliberately; the elm would not have been.  Because of how big a Colorado Blue can potentially get, I took out the elm and some small maples near it as well.  I probably should have taken out the maple to the right of the foreground in the after photo too, but it seems to be doing okay.  We’ll see how the spruce survives.

Here’s another view of the rows.

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By this point, I didn’t really have the energy to keep breaking down the cut pieces and hauling them out of the yard, or dragging out entire trees.  I opened the gate at this end, so I wouldn’t be weaving through trees to the gate by the fire pit, then around the pile.  Instead, I was pushing my way through really tall grass, and wearing down a path.  As I was taking down bigger and bigger dead branches, and thinning out more trees, I just started piling it all in the space that had been plowed.  I will drag it out another day.

The row of trees closest to the beeches appears to be all crab apple trees.  Most have no apples, and the one that does, has almost none on it.  This is not a good place to plant fruit trees. :-/

Moving along the rows…

This area is not complete, though I might not do much more than this, this year.  The elms in the north row needed to be thinned out; one was right up against another, and it turned out to be dead.  The larger maple to the right in the photo will also be thinned down.  The side branches would have been suckers that never got pruned back when they should have.  The main trunk in the middle is suffering for it.  I wasn’t able to get all the dead branches out of it, and won’t be able to reach a lot of them until the side trunks are cleared out.

Once that is done, it will allow more light to reach the apple trees, too.

Speaking of which…

This is where I was working when I stopped to take a phone call.  Which was well timed.  I was at the point of telling myself it was really time to stop for the day, but I kept doing just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit…  and before I knew it, an hour had passed. :-D

I don’t know that I’ll be able to work in here again over the next few days, but when I do get back to it, I will continue thinning the crab apple trees out.  There is a big one at the end, with large branches reaching towards the power pole.  That part of it is covered with apples (it looks like another of the ornamental apples trees, they are so tiny), but only where the morning sun touches those leaning branches.  The rest of the tree is struggling, with few leaves and many dead branches.  It’s all just too crowded in there, with elm and maple tangled around each other in the canopy, blocking the light for most of the day.

The eastern end of this area of trees is where they are growing under the power line, and where the arborist will be trimming some of them back.  They can do the tall stuff.  I will do the short stuff! :-)

When I came out after my phone call to get the last after pictures, I got a couple of others of interest.

Last month, I decided to take down a small elm tree because it was growing directly under the power lines.  As I have been doing in many other places, I left a tall stump to go back to later.  You can see it here, next to the spruce tree I’d pruned the lower branches from.

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This is what it looks like, now.

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Maples and elms are very resilient trees.  You can cut them back like this, and they will start growing back!

I could leave it to grow, and just keep pruning it short so it will never reach the power lines.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea, though.

A decision I can make another time.  For now, I will leave it and see how it does.

Later, while visiting Beep Beep and her kittens by the old garden shed, I saw something I’ve been finding in a number of places around the yard.

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A whole bunch of holes, dug into the ground.

I’ve found some in the open area between rows of trees behind the storage house.  Now that I’ve cleared up so much of the trees, I’m starting to find them there, too.  I am guessing it’s a small animal digging up insects or grubs?  Some of the holes are quite deep.

Anyone know what might be making these holes?

The Re-Farmer

Clean up; west fence line, moving north

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It’s been a much cooler day today, so I took advantage of it and continued working along our west fence line.

In all, the before and after photos below represent about 2 1/2 hours work.  This includes pausing to take some video, and also pausing to drag away the branches and tree trunks I took down.

What a job!

Let’s start at that group of three maples, where I left off last time. Continue reading →

Clean Up, West fence line

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After dropping my daughter off at work this morning (and a quick visit to the beach), I continued clearing the west fence line, working away from the fire pit area.

When I did my evening walk around the yard last night, there was still enough light to rake up the dead leaves and twigs where I had been working last time. It was not really something I’d intended to do yet, but I had issues last time that I wanted to check out.

This morning, with enough light to see, I checked it out.

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Yikes!  No wonder I kept stubbing my toes, tripping and twisting.

I had cut those lilacs and caragana to as close to ground level as I could at the time.  I didn’t take into account the thickness of years of dead leaves.  Once raked out, I could see that I was no where near ground level on these!

Thankfully, I did not need to go over this area again today, because I didn’t want to use up what little time I had before the heat hit, cutting it down shorter.

This is the next section I worked on.

(Click on the images to see larger)

There’s one before picture, and two after pictures of the space around the two elms.

I did end up taking down some caragana and lilac growing together that I’d originally though I could leave.  You can see it to the right of the two elm trees in the before picture. However, to clear the fence line, they had to go.  Like so much else, there was a lot more dead in there than I expected.  Even after I’d already cut away dead sections, some time ago!

Here is how it looks now.

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I had no energy to cut it down closer to the ground than this.  By the time I’d got to this point, the heat was already getting to be an issue.

I also needed to clear it to get to the next section, which I had not expected to get to this morning.  Here are some before pictures.

The first two are around a bigger maple with three trunks.  The third picture is of some maple next to it.  All dead, it turned out.  When I grabbed the first piece, preparing to cut it, it just broke loose immediately!

Here is how it looks now.

Two of the three trunks in the bigger maple turned out to be dead.  I will take them down, the next time I’m working in the area.

On clearing away the smaller maple, I found the remains of an old, rotting stump under the leaves.  What I cleared away had been the suckers growing out of a maple that had been cut down long ago, that did not survive for very long.

The next section I will be working on will include that big willow in the background.

Of course, while clearing and cleaning, I found questionable things.

The first was…

20180809.cleanup.westfenceline.found.sock

A single sock, buried in the leaves.

When I first saw fabric, I figured it would be a painter’s glove, like the many I packed away from various places as we put my parents’ things in storage.  Nope.  A sock.  Just one.

Then there was the barbed wire.

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The first being this rolled up wire on a fence post.  You can also see the end of the cable that extends from the gate post.  I can’t quite figure out why it’s there.  It doesn’t seem to be actually supporting anything.

Note the post itself.  It’s basically just a piece of tree someone cut to size and used as a fence post.  Untreated wood like this cannot last long.

Most of this fence seems to be made up of this sort of post. :-(

On the next post over, there was more barbed wire.

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Just a length of barbed wire, with worn out twine at its end, dangling there.

I’ve left the lilacs and caragana growing through the fence at this point, to hold the fence up.  It’s no longer even attacked to some of the fence posts at the top anymore.

It wasn’t until I had cleared around the bigger maple that I realized what I was seeing.

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Someone wrapped a loop of barbed wire around the trunk to hold up the fence post.

A temporary fix like this, I can understand.  But the whole point of temporary fixes is that they are… well… temporary.

That maple trunk is the one that’s still alive of the three trunks growing together.

I don’t think I was out much more than and hour, working on this, before I had to get out of the heat.  We’ve got heat wave warnings for the rest of the week, across the prairies.  As I write this, we’re at 31C (87.8F), with a humidex of 35C (95F).  It’s not expected to start cooling down for the evening until about 7pm.  At least we’re not supposed to go any higher, today.  By Saturday and Sunday, we’re expecting to get temperatures of 35C with a humidex of 41C (105.8F).

Ah, Canada.  Where the summers can get as much above freezing as the winters can get, below freezing! :-D

The Re-Farmer

When it hits the fan…

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… the fan eventually gives out.

After some 40 years or so, our bathroom fan gave out.  Yesterday, our electrician friend came by to take a look.  I had asked him if he could install the fan my husband bought, and how much it would cost.

It turns out the motor for this fan is still manufactured.

So he took it out to take home and see what he could do with it.  It’s likely unfixable, but he would be in the city today and would look for a replacement motor, which would be much cheaper than having him install the new one.  I am expecting to hear from him some time tonight about that.

Meanwhile, this is how it looked.

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To be honest, I really expected it to be worse. :-D

I’ve since cleaned it out as much as I could, and washed the other parts and pieces.

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I figure, if he does find a new motor for it, this is probably going to be the only opportunity to clean all this out for… oh, who knows how many years!

It’ll be nice to have a fan again.  One that doesn’t scream when we turn it on, even. ;-)

Soon, I hope!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: firepit area, gate and fence line start

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This evening, I decided to be methodical about clearing the west yard trees, and get right into the fence line.

It was a lot more work than I expected!

This is what it looked like when I left it last time.

I didn’t get photos from this angle today, but if you look behind the dead trees I cut down, that’s the area I focused on.

I had not really intended to start on the fence line on this side yet, but the mess was starting to get to me.

I am using the row of elm trees as my guide line for clearing the fence.  Anything between where those trees are and the fence line will be taken out.  This will leave a walkable path to access the fence.

I started at the gate post and made a discovery.

20180806.cleanup.firepitarea.gateposts

There’s two of them.

From what I can figure out, as the older gate post started to become unstable, a second post as added, and new and old were tied together with a loop of barbed wire.

It was most likely a temporary fix that ended up a permanent one.

The problem is…

Both posts are rotten and broken at the bottom.

The hedge that had grown into the fence was pretty much the only thing holding it up.

I don’t really want to replace this fence.  I’d rather take it out completely.  I am wanting to install new fencing that will include both driveways, instead.  So for now, this old fence will remain for as long as it holds up.

As I worked down the line, I also discovered that there’s not just two gate posts, but two fences!  Somewhere along the way, the old barbed wire fence got a mesh wire fence added with it.  Then other cable type wire was also added, along the bottom.  You can see part of it at the bottom of one of the gate posts, above.

This made clearing away the lilacs more challenging, because it was woven through both the barbed and mesh wire.  For many of them, I had to cut them at least twice, so I could get the pieces out of the fence.

A surprising amount of the lilac was already dead.  Most of the living lilac is on the other side of the fence.  Which I will leave for now.  It’s keeping the fence from falling over.

In the end, it took me almost two hours to clear barely 8 feet of fence line!

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I’m also clearing in between and around the lilac and caragana that is in line with the row of elm trees.  That included taking down a dead lilac that was a thick as a tree!

I’m going to have to change up when I work in the yard.  We’re getting heat wave weather warnings for the next week.  I like to do the work in the afternoon or evening, but the hottest part of the day tends to be around 5pm.  It’s almost 9pm as I write this, and we’re still at 25C, with a “feels like 29C”.  I’m going to have to start working on this stuff in the morning, instead, when it’s cooler, because by afternoon, it’s supposed to reach 29C, and feel like 34C, but be only 18C in the morning.

I am not a morning person. :-D

Well, if I’m driving my daughter to her shifts that start at 8 or 9am anyway, it will work out for me to do yard work when I get back in the morning, instead of after I pick her up at 4 or 5pm.

She has a road test booked in September.  She’ll be able to drive herself to work, if we don’t need the van for something else.

It is becoming increasingly clear we are going to need a second vehicle for the girls.  That and our utter dependency on having a vehicle makes me extra paranoid about having only one.  It’s not like there are any buses we could use instead, or anything is close enough to walk to!  We went about a month not driving our van until we had the money to replace the fuel pump, to avoid causing more damage (which our mechanic really appreciated), and that was enough for us!

At least we’ve finally reached a point where we are caught up.  As of this month, we have no expenses left related to our move.  Yay!  It only took us 9 months. :-/  Starting next month, we can start diverting money to a contingency fund to pay for things like getting the trees cleared from the power lines and roof in the fall, or towards getting a second bathroom installed.  Or unexpected emergencies, like the van breaking down!

The problem is, there are SO many things that need work around the house and yard, it will be hard to prioritize.  We had hoped to get the second bathroom installed this summer.  It’s high on the priority list, but clearing the trees became the higher priority since… well… we’d really like to NOT have our roof damaged or have branches knock out our power lines.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Clean up progress; west yard trees

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Today, I went back to around the west side of the maple grove to continue cleaning up.  This time, however, I focused on the area nearest the fire pit and gate.  This area seemed to have been mostly spruces, though only a few have survived.

Let’s look at the before pictures.

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This spruce tree is right behind one of our piles of wood for the fire pit.  It’s doing rather well, though as with most spruces, the lowest branches on the trunk were dead and hidden by the ones above.

20180730.cleanup.firepitarea.2before

Right at the wood pile is an elm tree that we thought was dead, but after we finally got some decent rain, suddenly shot out some green.  It is still mostly dead, but we’ll be leaving it for now.

Most of the spruces behind it are completely dead.  Only two are still alive, plus one scrawny little thing that I’m hoping will survive now that I’ve cleared away the dead stuff.

I went further under the trees for these next photos.

 

Going through here, looking at all the dead wood, all I could think of was “that’s a fire hazard, that’s a fire hazard, that’s a fire hazard…”

I started by pruning the spruce in the top photo and working my way in a bit, then went to taking down the two bigger dead spruces.  These ones have been making a mess of my nerves, every time we used the fire pit and a breeze blew towards them!

I took the bigger one down first, because it was easier to get at.

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When it finally started to drop, it got hung up on the trees on the other side of the gate.  The cut part also just stayed on the trunk.  I finally grabbed a piece of wood from the log pile and swung it like a baseball bat against the trunk.

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It still just dropped straight down, being held up by the other trees.

I finally got it to fall, though!

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After this, I cut the tree up into small sections so I could move it and work on the next one.

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Which also got stuck and needed whacking.

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It, too, was being held up by the trees on the other side of the gate.

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My older daughter happened to come out to ask me something, so she got to do the whacking…

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And also got it down from the other trees.

After this, I took down the two smaller dead spruces.

Then I realized I had completely blocked the gate, so the smaller stuff I would have taken to the pile outside the yard with a wheel barrow had to wait.

Here are the after pictures.

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In the foreground is the spruce from the top photo.  As I cleaned up after taking down the dead spruces, including cutting back some spreading lilac and caragana, I kept finding more and more dead stuff, buried under dead leaves and grass, and especially along the fence line.

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I’m leaving the stumps of the trees I took down for now.  You can see the pruned trunks of the two remaining spruces here; the skinnier one has just a few live branches at the top.  There are still dead branches I want to prune away, but for those, I’ll need the extended pruner, so it will wait for now.

There’s still lots to clear out of here but, at this point, the heat was becoming and issue and I was getting ready to head inside.

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The remains of the 4 dead spruces I took down, plus some of the larger dead pieces I dragged out while cleaning up.  Lots of dead caragana and lilac hidden among the living.  It seemed every time I thought I was done, I kept finding more and more to pull out!

I was just taking these last photos when my daughters came out to haul it all out of the yard for me.

They are so awesome!

Though it’s no where near done, the difference is still pretty amazing.

The Re-Farmer

Clearing the apple trees

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This afternoon, I got out the weed trimmer and started going around the edges of the yard, in preparation for mowing.  I wanted to trim all the way to the end of the row of crab apple trees by the main garden, so I grabbed an extra extension cord.  This made for a total of 250 feet of cord, and it was enough to do almost the entire yard, without having to move from the outlet outside the kitchen to the one in the sun room.

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I also tried to go further into the overgrown main garden a bit.  The plow line is there, and my goodness, it’s rough.  What a mess.  Still, I was able to go into the overgrown area a bit to trim out some burdock, before it got too bid, as well as some thistles.

Mostly, though, I’m glad to get the area around the apple trees finally done all the way to the end.

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This is the very last tree in the row, and as you can see, the main trunk is mostly dead.  It’s just got a few little branches with a handful of leaves on them.

I am planning to take the main trunk down completely.  What greenery is there is mostly from the saplings at its base.  I will select the one that looks the strongest and healthiest, then cut away the rest.

It you look in the background of the photo, you can see the north edge of the spruce grove, though a fair number of poplars have seeded themselves further in.  That north side is a straight line of spruces which, I learned only recently, was planted by my oldest brother.  I’m not sure if I was even born when those were planted!

When I am done in the maple grove, I plan to start working on the spruce grove from here.  I want to clear away the majority of the self-sown trees, but mostly, I want to clean out the bottom branches of the spruces.  They are all dead, though hidden by the living branches higher up.

I think, for the spruce grove, instead of working from one end to the other, as I have been with the maple grove, I will start with clearing the circumference.  Especially the fence lines.  They are getting away too overgrown, and I want to reduce the damage being done to the fence as long as I can (though when we moved here, there was already one tree that had fallen right on the fence).  Hopefully, I’ll at least be able to get that done this year.  The bulk of the clean up in the spruce grove will be done next year.  This is going to eventually involve clearing out many downed trees, and cutting down lots of dead ones, too.

It’s going to be a huge job!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up, west maple grove, continues

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Such a lovely day today!

We had a gentle rainfall this morning, and when it cleared up, it stayed nice and cool.

Perfect weather for some manual labour!

So after a run into town this morning for a medical appointment for my husband, I spend the afternoon working on the next section of the west side of the maple grove.

Photo heavy post, ahead! :-D

Here are some before and after pictures, starting from the south side.  I took this from where I last finished off. (click on the images to see larger versions)

I decided to take out the little caraganas, since there are two large ones in the areas I’d cleaned up before.

I didn’t use the weed trimmer first, as I had last time, since it’s corded and there had been rain.  I suppose the electrical cords likely would have been fine, but trimming damp greenery just makes a mess that needs to be scraped off the trimmer guard, frequently.  That, and I didn’t mind leaving the flowers to bloom longer, though dragging trees or pushing a wheel barrow through them sort of negated that particular thought! :-D

In the background, you can see the dry, small-wood pile that we use for the fire pit.  Almost everything I took out today got hauled outside the yard, mostly by wheel barrow, so very little was added to that pile.

Mostly little things to clean out here.  I am finding quite a bit of these…

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… very old stumps of either maple or elm (this one is maple) that have a whole lot of suckers around it.  When I find these, I choose one that looks the strongest, straightest and healthiest, then cut away the rest, plus any dead suckers that are around as well.  After this, I’ll just need to maintain around them, cutting back suckers and doing judicious pruning, and the remaining sucker should survive.  With proper care, ten or twenty years from now, they should be very big, strong trees. :-)

I didn’t need to do a lot in this section.  A bit of clearing away in one area, and finding plenty of dead branches buried in the tall grass.

I was able to do a fair bit of clean up on the nearer willow, which you can see somewhat better in these pictures.  The willow was as far west as I worked, today.  There are two big old willows in here, including one you can see way out at the very end of the row, at the fence line.  The nearer one, unfortunately, it showing a lot of rot.  It sounded quite hollow as I worked around it.  It has had sections at the bottom cut away and, at one point, I climbed up on them to reach a dead branch to trim away, only to have one part of it collapse under my foot, because it was so rotten.  I am actually not sure how it’s still standing, to be honest.  And yet, it looks quite green and healthy at the top!

Another area that needed very little work; I mostly used the pruning saw to take down dead branches higher up.  That and removing dead branches hidden in the grass.

Here, things started needing a lot more clean up.  The wheel barrow in the background is as far West as I worked.

There were some small, dead and dying spruce trees that I took out.

Removing these is a multi-stepped process.  As you can see in the before picture, there are a lot of dead branches on the lower trunks.  I would cut away these branches from the bottom 5 or so feet, then top the tree by cutting the trunk at about 4 1/2 feet.  After dragging the top out to the wood pile, I’d then cut the remaining trunk to between 1 and 2 feet.  I will go back to them later to cut them as level to the ground as I can.

After I had topped one dead spruce tree, I starting cutting the remaining trunk at about 2 feet from the ground.  The trunk, however, would vibrate so much, my saw blade would bounce right out of the cut.   So I grabbed it and gave it a yank, watching the ground as I did.  The tree looked like it could just be torn from the ground, so I set myself up and started pulling.

Things where going well, until there was a sudden crack; the next thing I knew, I was flat on my a$$, my hat flying one way, and my glasses another.

Crud.

I very carefully squirmed to my knees, making sure there was no chance of me accidentally crushing my glasses, and began looking for them.  The problem with this was, I needed my glasses to be able to see!

Thankfully, I eventually saw some metallic reflections next to the wheel barrow.  They were fine!  What a relief.  That last thing we would have needed is the expense of a new pair of glasses!

This is why I fell.

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That little tree had been dead for a good long time!

When looking through this section of spruces before, I had estimated that I would need to take out 2 out of every 3 spruces, just to get them spaced well enough to thrive.

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I hoped that taking out the dead and dying trees would be enough to take care of that spacing I wanted, though they were all looking pretty dead.

I was mostly right.

As I began taking down some spruces and pruning the dead branches of the ones I hoped would survive, I worked my way over to where I figured I should take down another spruce, only to realize…

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…it wasn’t a spruce at all.

It was a sad little tamarack, hidden in between the dead and dying spruces.

Spacing wise, it was right where I should be removing a tree, so I could salvage the spruces.  There was a second tamarack a couple of trees over, and that’s it.

None of them look all that healthy, to be honest.

I decided to keep the tamaracks and took out the spruce, instead.

Which turned out to be a good thing.

After topping off the spruce I had originally intended to keep, I discovered it was so weak, I was able to tear it out of the ground.

I didn’t work beyond the second tamarack.  I think there’s a different type of spruce in there.  There are some Colorado blues in there, but one of them has almost silvery needles.  There are so few living branches on it, though, it’s hard to tell if it’s a different type, or if it’s just dying.  When I get to that section, I’ll take a closer look and figure it out.

The birch trees are as far North as I’m working in this section.  Aside from picking up fallen branches from them, I didn’t do anything with the birch, yet.  From what I can see so far, they aren’t going to need much.

Here, I had some interesting finds.  While pruning the lower branches of some spruces, there were a few times where I would decide that some particular branches were high enough and strong enough to leave, but on top of them were dead branches, fallen from nearby trees!

My pruning saw has a really well designed hook at its very end that is perfect for grabbing these and pulling them down.  Some, however, had been dangling there for so long, when I tried to pull them down, they would just shatter into pieces!

Now, I think I’m going to have a hot soak in the tub.  My shoulders are a bit achy for some reason.  ;-)

The Re-Farmer

After and after-after shots

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This afternoon, I went back to the area in the maple grove I worked on last.  Rather than working my way farther down the rows of trees, I focused on taking down dead and dying trees, pruning away lower branches, and so on.

So here are the after pictures from before, and the after-after pictures from today. :-D (click on them for larger images)

When I took pictures last time, I had worked closer to ground level, so you can’t really see as much of what I cleared away higher up.  There’s a nice, straight spruce tree in the middle that had a lot of dead branches that I pruned away.  In this section, that tree saw the most work.

I pruned as many branches as I could reach.  One tree has a large dead and rotting branch that will have to wait until I’ve got a full size chain saw.

Aside from pruning, this area had a small, dead spruce tree taken out, too.

I did nothing with the big dead spruce tree in front (with the rock at its base), though some of the lower branches were a bit in the way.

This area is where I started to need to do a lot more picking and choosing.

The maple that’s under the power lines came down.  I left the stump tall for when I have a full size chain saw.  If I were to just leave it, it would probably start growing new branches.  Maples are resilient that way.

More small trees had to come down.  I’m trying to salvage some of those spruces, but the more I look at the one on the right of the photo – the healthiest looking one out there – the more I realize I will probably need to take it down completely.  It’s just too close to the power line.  It’s not a problem now, but it can potentially grow another 20 ft or more, and it’s already just a few feet shorter than the height of the line.

I think I will leave it for now and ask the arborists when they come out.

Lots to clean up in this area.  I got to one tree that was clearly planted deliberately; the sticks that had been put in the ground to mark and protect it when it was planted were still there.  When I got to it, however, I discovered that the only green leaves on it were from those vines!  Once I pulled those free, I could see the tree was quite dead.  In other areas, I took down a dying spruce that had been planted in the row, but growing out of its base were two self-sown maples.  I ended up taking out one of them.  We shall see how the other one survives.  In other areas, I was pruning branches from a couple of elms so close together, I couldn’t fit between the trunks, but they seem to be doing fine, so I’m not going to thin them down.  Unlike the dead spruce that was also right next to them.  The spruce was planted.  I think the elms sowed themselves.

As I was working, I noticed I was getting pretty close to the birch trees I’d noticed when I was surveying the area a while back.  I had shown the pictures I took to my mother and she was happy to see them.  She had transplanted them from saplings she dug up while visiting her grandparents’ homestead up north, years ago.

I also found some apple trees further in.  A strange place to plant them.  The one closes to the power pole gets enough light that it is now producing apples, but these ones are practically in the dark.  It will be good when I finally go through that area to thin and prune.  Hopefully, they will be able to do better, next year, because of it. :-)

Not back for a couple of hours.

My branches piles are getting huge. :-/

Next time, I will finally start working further West down the rows.

The Re-Farmer