manual labour feels good

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 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: Maple Grove, evening progress

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I wrote up my last post while taking a hydration break from working in the maple grove.  By the time I was done, I found myself nodding off at the keyboard.  I figured lying down wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Three hours later… :-o

But, I’ve got it done as much as I can for now.

Here are the before and after pictures of the two North rows.

I cleared out two of the tree spruces in the foreground of the second picture.  The two I took out had a few green sprigs here and there, but were otherwise dead.  I also cut off the dead branches from the one in the middle.  I am hoping that, now that it’s open and clear, it will survive.

The remaining spruces in that northernmost row are doing pretty good.  I trimmed the lowest branches, as well as the dead ones that I could reach with a hand saw.  The dead ones were mostly on the south side of the trees, where they had no light.  The other living spruce trees, I only took off what was in my way as I moved around.  I will finish cutting away the dead branches when my birthday gift comes in. :-)

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This is the remains of a row of raspberry bushes.  I can see some dead canes from years past, but no fresh canes in this area.

To the right, you can also see a gooseberry bush I found.  I had cleared out a broadleaf tree that was between two spruces, and discovered the gooseberry under it!

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Then there’s this gooseberry bush, in dire need of having the deadwood cut away.  It’s growing next to a chokecherry tree, which was also overgrown and in need of pruning at its base.

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.gooseberry.chokecherry.cleared

It was amazing how cutting just one sucker at the bottom of the chokecherry tree cleared almost everything up!  A few downward hanging branches to clear away, and various saplings, burdock and stinging nettle to clear away at the base, and what a difference!  I even found some raspberry bushes with baby berries on them.

The gooseberry, on the other hand, has almost no sign of berries on it at all, and what little it does have are not looking good.

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.appletree.before

This is the very end of the “raspberry” row, with an apple tree near the compost pile.  There’s even a lonely little asparagus fern growing in here!

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.appletree.after

I found more salvageable raspberry canes.  After cutting away some lower branches and saplings at the base of the apple tree (including maple and elm saplings), it was basically just weeding and removing old raspberry canes.  There are some plants in there I recognize as flowers my mother planted, so I tried to avoid taking those out.  Lots of creeping charlie and burdock in here.

At this point, I called it a night.  Which worked out perfectly, because that’s when I got a call from the second tree care company about coming over.  It was another father and sons team. :-)

When they got here, I showed them the areas I wanted work done on, plus the trees to come down.  He asked questions about how far back I wanted to cut things (basically, enough to not have to do this again for 5 years).  He wanted to know about the overhanging branches, which would normally be left if they are not touching the lines.  One of them is a very healthy maple tree, and cutting it back would mean removing pretty much half the tree.  When I pointed out it was from those overhanging branches that we got the burned branch from, and that it had happened before, causing a power outage, he understood why I didn’t want ANY overhanging branches at all.  They even measured the trunks of the trees that will be taken down, including the dead spruce.  They had to take into account being able to get their equipment in, too, and I told them about the three different gates that were available.  We also talked about cleanup.  He charges extra if they bring in a chipper, but I did say I wanted to keep the chips for mulch, and to keep the bigger wood, too.  He mentioned they don’t usually chip dead branches, because it dulls the cutting edges, but the stuff they’ll be cutting back will mostly be life branches.

He took a whole bunch of notes, and I will get the estimate emailed to me.

I told him about how we don’t own the land, and that I am getting estimates to talk to my mother and brother about before a decision is made, and that I’m hoping to get it done in the fall.  Or spring, if the cost is higher (which I suspect it will be, with these guys, but we shall see).  He was good with fall, mentioning after August is when they’d be available to do the work, so that works out.

And that’s it for the next while.  Tomorrow will be a trip to the city for my daughter, which should give my body time to rest.  Feeling pretty stiff and sore right now! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: Maple Grove, garden path

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We had some much more pleasant temperatures today, so I headed out to do some work in the maple grove this evening.

After the tree care guy came to give us an estimate, I decided to focus first on clearing the old garden path.  Whether we hire these guys, or the company coming to give a quote on Monday, they will need to bring equipment in to access the trees they will be cutting clear from the power lines.  Good enough reason to start at the old garden path.

This is what it looked like before.

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The deadwood on the ground here is partially cut, and it made up of several trees.  Elm and maple, from the looks of it.

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This photo was taken back in May, and you can see where the path is supposed to be in the background.

I also worked my way along the north row of trees, bordering the garden, and heading towards the garden shed.  I started off by using the weed trimmer to take town the tall grass and weeds, so that I could at lease see the branches and trunks.

Then I started dragging stuff out.  This photo is of JUST the deadwood I pulled out of the grass.

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Almost all of this is just from that blocked garden path!  Even after this, I kept finding more, as I walked back and forth and I would step on something.  I’d then go to pick up what I expected to be a small branch, often finding myself pulling out something 6-7 feet long, and completely buried in grass and leaves!

After I cleaned out the stuff already on the ground, I started taking out the dead spruces on either side of the path, and cut back the other trees that I had pulled the deadwood out of.  They were mostly dead, already.  I also took out another small dead spruce tree that was near the big dead one that will be coming down when we get the lines cleared.  I almost left a young elm to grow, until I clued in to how close it was to the big dead spruce.  I looked up and, sure enough, the elm was directly below the power lines.

So that had to go.

Along with the dead stuff, I also cleaned up some suckers at the bases of other trees, or growing out of stumps.  Some of those suckers had been growing long enough to almost be trees all on their own.  For the trees I took down, I left fairly tall stumps to make it easier to see them until I can cut them at ground level.  A fair bit is being left until my birthday present arrives. :-D

I finished off with the weed trimmer again.

Here are the after pictures.

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A couple of the stumps near the centre of the picture were already there, hidden by the suckers growing out of them.  The old garden path is now open!

The big dead spruce tree that will come down is the one with the big rock next to it.  There is also a young maple kind of by itself there right now, and I will be cutting that down when my birthday present gets here.  It’s directly under the power lines, too, and already grown tall enough to almost touch them!

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This photo was taken from near the big dead spruce tree.  The main garden area is completely overgrown, but it was so roughly plowed, mowing is not an option.  It’s not a priority right now.

There are three spruces next to each other, just right of centre in the photo.  I am hoping the one in the middle can be salvaged.  The other two are too far gone.

On the garden side, starting from about where those spruces are (I think they are Colorado blues), is the old row a raspberries.  It’s completely choked out with crab grass and weeds, and overshadowed by mostly dead trees, with a very few canes trying to grow.  Another area that is not a priority right now.  When the time comes, we plan to have a raspberry patch with three different varieties, including one with gold coloured berries, that mature at different times.  That way, we will be harvesting berries from July through September. :-)

All in good time.

20180630.cleanup.maplegrove.near.gardenpath.lookingeast

I plan to work my way down these two rows of trees, next.  Where the big rock is, is the garden tap.  It’s got a couple of dead trees by it, as well as a live one.  They will all come down to clear the tap, and the buried pipe that leads to the house.  I’m hoping the roots haven’t caused any problems.  I have yet to hook it up at the house end to test it out, since it’s barely accessible right now.

There are two old tillers that have been sitting there for years, one covered with a piece of tin, the other with an old rug.  They should still be salvageable, so I am hoping to be able to move them into a shed or maybe the barn, to get them out of the weather.

Once this area is done, I will turn my attention to the West side of the maple grove.  Lots of deadfall in there, too.

The really big job is going to be dealing with the trees to the North of the grove, that has been so densely planted with trees.

While doing this outside, I also will be working on packing up the old kitchen, so we can get that cleaned out and looking good again.  I want to get that done within the next week.  I’d like to be able to open the door and not worry about the cats getting int. :-)

Lots to do!  :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: lilacs – after

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It’s been another scorcher today, but I decided to work on the lilac row in the West yard.  It was shady, and I made sure to have a water bottle with me to stay hydrated.  By mid-afternoon, though, the sun had moved far enough that my shade was gone, and it was time to stop.

Most of the work was done around just one old lilac bush!

Here is the before picture, from when I first started working in this section.

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Then after I’d cut away the false spirea (and the branch that fell on it after hitting the power line!).

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Finally, here is how it looks now.

20180620.cleanup.bushes.east.lilacs.after

Lots of skinny little dead branches among the skinny little live branches! :-D  Several dead main trunks were cleaned away.  There was quite a lot of undergrowth behind the lilacs that needed to be cleared away, just to reach the lilacs themselves.  In one lilac bush towards the left in the photo, I didn’t even have to cut the trunks.  They just pulled out of the ground, or came out easily with a twist.

At some point, we’ll have to rake under there to clean up the many tiny dead twigs and branches in the leaves.  For now, I am focusing on just getting the big stuff cleaned and cleared out, while slowly working my way down the row.

It’s much slower work with the lilacs, since it involves removing so many little things, compared to working on the big trees, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Area Shift

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It was another really hot day today, so outdoor work was limited.

My daughter and I loaded the items from the sun room that we will not be using, into the storage shed, and noticed that stinking nettle was starting to crowd the stairs.  The area is in need of another mow, too.  So before things go too hot, I decided to clear away the nettles, then maybe do some mowing.

I cleared away the nettles, but it was hot enough that I didn’t want to stress the motor on the mower.

Instead, I shifted to a different area.

Some time soon, the electrician will be coming by to install the broken power pole, and also hook electricity back up to the barn.  There are some trees between the main pole, and the one between it and the barn, that will be in the way of the wires and the installation.

So I started cutting them back.

Ideally, I’d be taking them down completely.  They seem to have sprouted out of a stone pile, around a support wire for the power pole, and I could tell that they had been cut back several times in the past.  Just not recently.

20180619.clearing.power.pole.trees

There is only two trees here; a maple and an elm.  This photo is after I’d cut away a substantial amount on one side, stopping when it simply became too hot to continue.

It’s the branches on the other side, however, that are in the way of where the power line is going to do.

Do you see the problem?

Yeah.  The car.

My father’s old car has been parked there for quite a few years.  Long enough that I think the tires are now flat.  As far as I know, however, it can still be repaired and made roadworthy without too much work; it’s not one of the scrap vehicles lying about.

If I start cutting the branches on that side, they are going to fall right on the car.

I’ve been wondering if we’d be able to pop it in neutral and push it out of the way.  If we manage it, though (I have no idea if we’ll even try, yet), it would need to be pushed back again.  We’ll have to decide soon, since I would like to have those trees cut back before the electrician needs to work in the area.

It’s unfortunate the car wasn’t parked in one of the sides of the garage, or even one of the sheds that used to shelter a tractor.  Mind you, that shed has a roof like a sieve, now, and I’d really like to have it torn down, eventually.

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This is the pile of what I’ve cleared away so far.  They are not broken down much at all, to it’s really mostly air.  Still, there are some very large sections of tree in there!

I am beginning to foresee a potential problem with having piles of cut and pruned tree pieces all over the place.

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: Firepit area gate

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After cleaning up in the bushes near the fire pit yesterday, today’s goal was to access the gate by the fire pit, before continuing in that area.  We needed someplace to pile the wood we’re cleaning out.

Before I could start on that, though, my younger daughter and I made a trip into town.  She had dropped off some resumes a few days ago.  The next day, one place called back, but she was with me at the shop with the mower, so they asked her to call back the next day.

That was yesterday.  They booked an interview with her for this morning.

And by “interview”, it turned out they meant, “what hours can you work and here are your free t-shirts.”

Starting next week, my daughter begins training as a cashier at the grocery store we usually shop at. :-D

That was a nice way to start the day!

So I didn’t get started on accessing the gate until this afternoon.

Here is what it looked like before.

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The far end of the gate is completely hidden by overgrown lilacs, caraganas and a maple tree.

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The picket fence thing that was there appeared to be attached to the barb wire gate only by this length of wire, twisted around, and one section of the top barb wire looped around a board.   So it wasn’t going to take much to separate them.

But first, I needed to clear the gate post.

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Most of what I had to clear away was from a lilac bush, including a lot of dead branches and stems.  My mother likely planted it there, so I didn’t want to cut it all away.  The maple would have seeded itself, and likely the caragana as well.

I’ve left most of the caragana for now, but when it comes time to take down the two dead spruce trees, we might have to cut those back more.  We shall see when the time comes.

That done, I could open the barb wire gate.

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The closure of which promptly broke in my hands.

All the wood there is really quite rotten.

Some of the barb wire has come loose from the posts.  The fence part also had boards coming loose.  It’s all really quite rotten.

Have I mentioned that much of the wood around here is really old and rotten?  I think I might have… ;-)

It took some doing to get the fence part loose.  Hidden in the tall grass were fallen branches that had to be moved, and the grass itself – including years of thatch – had a good grip on the bottom of it!

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I decided to leave the fence part like this for now, so that it’s visible.  There are so many nails in that thing, I don’t want to take any chances of someone stepping on it.

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Speaking of nails, it turned out that part of the fence was indeed attached, by wire, to the gate post.  This length of board, however, was no longer attached to the fence part.  Even with all those nails!

I count 20.

While getting all this open, I could see something blue peaking through the grass.  Once done, I yanked it out to see what it was.

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It seems to be a bell for a child’s bike.

Why was it there, and how many years as has it been there?

That done, I moved the barb wire gate to the outside of the yard, then cleaned up all the cut wood from clearing the gate, plus the pile from yesterday.

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Since I had all that handy wood, I fixed the broken closure on the gate.

Here is the after picture.

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There’s going to be a lot more to be added to the pile over the next while, so I am leaving the gate open for now.

All of this was about two hours of work.  Not too shabby!  I’ve stopped for the afternoon, though.  I plan to continue where I left off yesterday, but we were getting into the hotted part of the day, so I will wait until the early evening, when it starts to get cooler.  Now that this is done, I’ll be able to clean things up right away, too.

I placed the pile far enough away to completely clear the open gate, plus leave room to access the fence, if necessary.  Seeing the fence from this side, I was reminded that, at some point, it would be good to re-fence the entire house yard.  All of it, including the fence lines that are bordered by roads, if possible.  I say “if possible” because they are so full of trees, and my mother’s lilac border along the garden section.  It would be good to have something other than barbed wire fencing and gates!  I would still want to have a gate here, by the fire pit, and the one by the garden.  I’d even like to add another gate to the south fence line, so that we could drive into the yard at one end, then out again at the other.

Hmmm.  Thinking of it that way, it might just be easier to build a new fence on the other side of the driveway.   And if we do that, may as well extend to the fence that’s keeping the renter’s cows out.  Get rid of the current house yard fencing, completely.  Wow.  That would really extend the size of our yard!

That, however, is likely many years into the future.  Still, it’s something we can talk about and plan for.

Later.

I have to keep reminding myself.  This year is our “figure it out” year, and the focus for now is on the house and yard.

That is plenty of work all on its own! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: at the linden tree

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Since we are starting to use the fire pit area fairly regularly, and plan to use it more, I decided to start cleaning up the next area of trees and bushes nearby.  There is a linden tree at the end of a row that I wanted to clear the base of, but before I could get to it, I started clearing at a plum tree next to it.

I forgot to take a before picture, but here is how it looked before I started on the linden tree.

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The poor plum tree is really struggling.  It was being choked out by a caragana that I cut away, and has a lot of dead and dying branches.  I am hoping, as things are cleared out, it will become stronger.

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It does have baby plums, though!

This variety of plums have very small, hard red fruit.  Not much good for eating, but I remember my dad had made wine with them.  I was pretty young and probably never got a taste of it, but I seem to remember it being quite enjoyed by the adults.

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This is the pile I started, with the dead wood from around the plum tree, the caragana that was crowding it, and the first sucker from the linden tree that I’d cut away.

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Here is a before picture of the linden tree.  You can’t even tell I’ve already cut some away.

My mother told me that, before she moved away from the farm, she kept the base of the linden tree clear of suckers, so I will continue that.  It has clearly been many years since they’ve been cleared away!  Some were huge and lying on the ground long enough to be partly buried in decayed leaves.

Linden wood, I discovered, is incredibly soft.  I was able to saw through the suckers like they were barely there!  In one group, because of how close they were, I ended up cutting three of them at the same time, and it was still easy to saw through them all!

I also found a lot of dead branches stuck among the suckers, and others handing above.  The bottom branches of the main truck were also either dead or mostly dead, hidden away by the foliage from the suckers growing below.

Once I started cutting I could see, at the base of the trunk, where my mother had been cutting away over the years.

Here is how it looks now.

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I probably shouldn’t have, but I did leave one sucker be, just trimming away some of the lower branches.  Unlike the other ones, this one was growing upwards and straight.

Aside from cutting away self-sown mystery saplings among the debris, this is just the difference of cutting away the suckers and taking out the deadwood.  Later, I plan to take a rake to it and get the bits of branches and twigs left behind, then take the weed trimmer to it.

There is a bush directly behind it that is looking like it has a lot of deadwood on it, but I won’t start working back there, quite yet.

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I had started out trying to keep the deadwood and the green wood in separate piles, but after a while, just gave up!  We will sort through it as we break it down and move it elsewhere.

Our piles for the fire pit are getting a bit big!

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This is our “small stuff” pile.  Twigs and small branches, mostly.  Just today, I added more deadwood that I’d pulled down from the area behind the other house.  I wasn’t up to breaking them down, first.

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Then there are the bigger logs, including some that have been cut to fire pit length.  On the far left of the photo are a bunch of logs I’d cut from the big dead branch I’d cut free from one of the nearby maples.  It was one of the things I had to clean up before I could mow.  I didn’t even break it all down; just enough to more easily move the top length to the “small stuff” pile.

The branch I’d found at the fence line earlier, I just left at the fence line for now.  We are adding deadwood faster than we are using it for fuel for our wiener roasts, and the “small stuff” pile is getting too big!  As for the greenwood, I don’t even know where we’re going to put those, for now.  I don’t want to add much more to the pile by the log cabin, and the one by the garage is pretty huge.

Maybe if I can get that gate by the fire pit open, we can start another greenwood pile outside the yard, closer to where I’m actually working.

It doesn’t take much to make a big difference!

The Re-Farmer

Look what I found

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Yesterday, I’d done the south lawns, including along the fence line and behind the “spare” house (more as a space to turn around with the mower, than to cut anything, since there’s barely any grass there).

Today, I set aside hoses, picked up branches, and so on, before I finished mowing the rest of the lawn.

Later, I went back behind the other house to see if I could get down some more of the dead branches.  A lot of it involved simply reaching up with the extended pruning saw, which has a hook at the point, grabbing onto an attached dead branch, or dangling broken branch, and yanking until it fell to the ground.

I even remembered to take a picture of how it looks, after my daughters did such a great job raking up under there.

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Which is when I found this.

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The branch is so big, I actually missed it at first, thinking it was just another part of a tree.  Nope.  A big ole branch broke, some time after I’d mowed here yesterday, and was hung up in the other trees.

I couldn’t even tell which tree it came from.

In the picture, you can just see the power line that goes from the other house, to the pump shack (which isn’t hooked up now, thank God!).  It wasn’t on the power line, but the branch that it was stuck on, is just above the power line.

Once again, I used the extended pruning saw to grab and yank it down, though I did have to cut down a branch from the tree outside the yard that was hanging over the fence, and in the way.

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Finding stuff like this is why I’m on such a drive to get the dead and dying branches down, as much as possible.  We’ve got entire trees that are ready to come down, almost on their own.  One is right in this area, in fact; I cut away some of the lower branches that I kept getting hung up on, and the entire tree was shaking and making cracking noises at the base.  I could probably push it right over, if it wouldn’t fall directly on that power line I mentioned earlier.

After this, I did some other clean up in the yard, but I will post about it later.  After I shower.  I keep finding little bits of dead tree stuck in my hair!

The Re-Farmer

Dead Wood Down

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

When today’s fire pit fire was almost burned down, I just couldn’t help myself.  My tools were still out, and there was this big dead branch that I really wanted to take down.

I had started to cut through it with the extended pruning saw, a while ago, so I just had to continue.

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Towards the end of it, the pressure from the branch got my pruning saw stuck, so I had to take it out, then finish the last fraction of an inch with the hand saw.

This is the branch, completely cut through.

It wasn’t moving.  At all.

This is why.

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The branch had long been rubbing on a branch in the tree next to it.  Now that it was cut, it was just leaning and being held up by this other branch.

We use a steel pole we found somewhere in the yard to move the wood around in the fire, so I used that to push the branch off the trunk.

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Alrighty, then.  I’ve got the base down, but it’s still hung up on the other tree.

After moving the barrel, I pulled the base of the branch out until it fell into the V of the other tree.  I then swung it around to the right until I broke a branch that you can see higher up, which freed the main branch up and I could finally pull it away until the old, rotting wood at the top broke under its own weight, and it came down.

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Then I had to go back and pull down the broken pieces that were still stuck in the other tree.

You can see the wound in the branch or the other tree, where it was being rubbed for so many years.

This is probably the last of the big dead branches to come down in this area.  There are others, but they are too high to cut, even with the extended pruning saw.  I can add another extension and might even be able to reach them, but reaching them and cutting them is something else entirely.  There are also others that are partly dead, that I have to decide on cutting down entirely, or leaving for now.

It felt good to finally get this big one down.

All this clean up, however, is making it very difficult for us to use up the pile of dead wood for the fire pit!  We keep adding more than we are burning.

We’re just going to keep having lots of cook outs. :-D

The Re-Farmer