maple

Clean up: spruce grove, further down the line

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Another lovely day for yard work!

The girls were awesome and hauled away what I took down yesterday, while I made a run into town to get the prescription refills that got missed yesterday.  By the time I got back, they were just finishing, and I could get started! <3

Before I started on the next section of trees, I got the anvil sheers out and worked on the area that was under the overhanging branches.  Here’s a look back at the area I cleared yesterday.

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The wheel barrow is filled with all the little things I pruned out, and a few things dug out of the leaves, etc.

If you look in the wheelbarrow, there is a lighter coloured stem sticking out, to the right of the handle.

Notice it looks slightly… fuzzy?

That’s a wild rose.  And the “fuzzy” is thorns.

Wild rose stems are basically all thorns.  Little, skinny, vicious thorns.

The gloves we have are decent gloves.  Not the highest end, by any means, but good, mid-range quality gloves.

Wild rose thorns can go right through them.  I had to stop and get a daughter to use tweezers to pull one out of a finger, because I wasn’t able to do it one handed in the spot it pierced me!

When I start working further into the spruce grove next year, I plan to keep as much of the wild roses in the undergrowth as I can.  What I’ve cut away here will likely grow back, since I just pruned them.  The root stocks remain.  I will make decisions about them next year, as they grow back.

Here are the before and after photos of today’s progress.

This is basically where I left off, yesterday.  Once I took out the dead and dying tree next to the last tree I worked on yesterday, I was able to finish that one up, taking out more dead branches with the extended pruning saw.

My goal for today was to work my way down to a maple tree.

No, you can’t see it either of the photos above!

Nor the photos below.

Though I did thin out some smaller poplars, I’ve left the bigger ones.  I am hoping, as they get more sunlight throughout the day, they will not lean quite so much as they grow larger.

The farther I worked down the line, the spruces seemed to get thinner, and more crowded.  Quite a few were dead, but I was surprised by how many still had live growth happening.  I still avoided working the inner row of trees, which is where most of these are.  A few times, I did have to prune away dead branches and twigs, so I could access the trees in the outer row better.  It should be interesting to see how they fare, next year.  It is very typical for the lower branches of black spruce to be dead, and it’s not always a reflection on the health of the tree.

As I cleared away the low hanging branches, I found more and more wild roses and, among them, little dogwood bushes.  I took out those that were large enough to be a tripping hazard, and will clear the rest out another day.  When I work further into the grove, I intend to leave any dogwood I find.  They make great underbrush.  It will be interesting to find that balance between open space and undergrowth that I want to foster in here.

But that will wait.

The maple I was using as my goal post was something I was intending to keep, like I am with some of the poplars.  Then I reached it and found that it was not the original tree, but growing out of the base of a rotten stump.

After removing the rotten bits, I found the rot extended quite low into the moss (all along the outer edge of this area, where the poplars and this maple are growing, the moss is several inches deep).  I wasn’t sure if the tree had much support, so I basically yanked it back and forth.  It seems to be holding its own, so I straightened it as much as I could and tamped the ground down to support it.

We shall see if it survives.

When I work on the next section, I should be able to reach the fence line.  After that spruce you see in the background, there is an open space of moss that I’ve been using to turn around with the mower. :-D  There won’t be a lot to clear, there.

There are a number of larger, downed trees around here, too.  Once I reach the fence, I will start working towards the driveway.  The goal is to make the fence accessible, so I’ll be leaving the downed trees unless they are at the fence line.  I know there is at least one that had fallen on the fence itself, before we moved out here, that my older brother had cut loose.  So I will also be examining the fence itself, as I go along, and see what repairs might need to be done.

I’m quite happy with the progress and how it is looking.  The labour is not without it’s price, however!

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Both arms, my lower legs, and even my abdomen, are covered in scratches!

It’s sweaty, dirty and sometimes bloody work.

And I’m loving every minute of it!

The Re-Farmer

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

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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.

20180809.cleanup.westfenceline.2.after.lilac.caragana

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…

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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

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

Oh, Dear

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As we dealt with the cows this morning, I phoned up the renter to let him know about his broken electric gate.  Later in the morning, before heading to town to meet my brother and his wife for lunch, I took a quick walk around.  Fresh tire tracks in the tall grass showed me that the renter had already come and gone, checking both of his electric gates in the process of fixing the one, and got the cows back on their side of the fence.  We never even saw him!

One thing I saw while checking the electric gate by the barn was barbed wire sticking up out of the tall grass that wasn’t visible before.  Turns out, there’s an old barbed wire gate that was hidden in the grass.  The cows’ hooves must have got caught and pulled some of the wire up.  Yikes!  I’m going to have to put a priority on cleaning that out, even though it’s outside of where we are focusing on this year, just so no one gets hurt.  The posts in the gate are rotten to the point of broken, so it’s completely unusable.

When we got back from town, my daughters and I moved the power pole completely into the yard, along the back of the garage, so that it’s out of the way.  With the cows gone, we left the vehicle and people gates open again, but at least now we know what sort of work they need to have done.  The reason the people gate no longer latches is because the fence post on one side is now leaning away from the gate.  We’ll have to decide if it’s even worth straightening, at this point.

After moving the power pole to its new location, I was glad that I had managed to do all the weed trimming last night, in preparation for mowing, including where we just left the pole.  I even cleared around most of the apple trees.  With 200 ft of cord, I was able to just reach the second furthest tree, but only trim on one side of it. :-D  An extra 10 ft of cord would have allowed me to finish the row, but I was just too tired to get one at that point.  It took me about 3 – 3 1/2 hours to trim around the entire yard, including going into some areas that I’ve newly cleared.

It was while trimming in front of the garden shed that I noticed something I hadn’t before.

Of the two trees leaning towards the house that have to come down, one is over the roof and its branches sometimes hit when it bounces in high winds.

The other reaches far enough that we can see it from inside the living room, but isn’t actually touching the roof.

Which is good.  Because I discovered this last night.

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A terrible picture, I know, but it was starting to get dark.

Somehow, in all the times I’ve been around this tree, I had never paused to look into this bole.  While weed trimming, however, it was right in my face and I couldn’t miss it.

That’s rotten wood and the remains of a carpenter ant nest.

Which means this tree is more unstable than I originally thought.  More unstable than the one I was more concerned about.

*sigh*

When I call to get quotes to have trees cleared from the power lines, I’m going to have to include these two trees as well.

If we can get this done before winter, I will be feeling much better!

Meanwhile, temperatures were cool enough today that I was finally able to mow the areas outside the yard (dodging fresh cow pies in the process! *L*).  It should have been done days ago, but was just too hot.

It’s looking so much better now! :-)

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.

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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

This is concerning, plus progress

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Not a lot was done in the yard today.  We made a much needed dump run with garbage and recycling – including a lot of garbage from cleaning the sun room out, then my younger daughter and I went into town to run some errands (plus play some Pokemon Go for community day, while we were there ;-) ).  It was almost evening when we got back, but I still wanted to get at least a bit more clean up done today.

As I headed over to the Eastern end of of the bushes and trees I’ve been clearing out, I found something very disorienting.

In the false spirea I was planning to clean out was a large branch.

Funny, I think to myself.  I thought I’d cleared away the crab apple branches I’d cut.  Did I miss one?

Except this branch wasn’t a dead branch.  It was mostly green.  I didn’t remember cutting a green branch in that area and leaving it there.  Also, it wasn’t apple.

Then I started to pull it out and saw the end of it.

At which point, I stopped to take pictures.

Here is the branch I found.

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It’s a maple.  Aside from a couple of small dead side branches, it is in full leaf.

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That’s burnt wood right there.

What the heck?

I started looking around to see where it came from.  Then I called my daughters out to look, too, just to make sure I wasn’t jumping to conclusions.

This is where we think it came from.

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The arrow at the top is pointing to the end of a branch that we think it came from.

The double ended arrow is between the two power lines.

If my guess is correct, some time during the night, the branch hit the live power line, got burned, then broke and fell down.

Now, I can’t say for sure that this is where it came from, but it must at least be close to the source.  There just aren’t any other maples close enough.

I am not feeling confident about this.

I had asked for the electric company to come out and check the line a second time when, after the first time they came out, the woman who followed up with me could not see anything that said they’d checked more than our own power line to the house.  The second call, I basically was told the same thing as the first time; whenever we hire someone to clear the lines, let them know and they’ll cut the power for us.  I don’t know when anyone came to check the lines a second time; this was after we had to put locks on our gates, and we did not get a call from anyone to let them in.  However, someone could have stopped on the main road and simply ducked through the barbed wire fencing.  The locks just keep vehicles out.  People can get through easily.

I’ll be asking some advice from family who works with the electric company before I call them again.  There’s no point in calling again, if they expect us to clear their lines.

After clearing the burned branch away, I cut back the spirea completely.  Here is the before picture from a few days ago.

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All I did was cut away the spirea, plus break off a few dead lilac branches that were overhanging them, so I wouldn’t stab myself in the face or something.

Here is how it looks now.

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To the right of the lilacs was the beginning of a path to the big garden.  It is now almost clear and open again.  At least at this end.  The other end has dead spruces partially blocking it.

Here is another look at the lilacs.

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You can see where I broke off the branches that were overhanging the spirea.  Most of the lilacs appear dead.  These lilacs used to be so thick with greenery and flowers, you couldn’t see stems and branches.

It should be interesting to see how they recover, once all this is cleared up and they are getting sun and space again.  It might take a few years, but lilacs are so resilient, I am sure they will grow back well.

There is still lots of work to do, but it doesn’t take much for it to look so much better.

The Re-Farmer

Dead Wood Down, and cat models

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With yesterday’s heat, I did not head out until the evening, to clean up the piles of wood I’d cleared out the day before.  We had caught just the edge of the storm that night, with some rain and high winds, but nothing near as bad as the areas to the south of us.  Some places got tennis ball sized hail, and there were power outages in places.

When I got to where I’d left the cut wood, I noticed a branch, just off by itself, but still near the pile of deadwood.  Had I missed it, somehow how?

Then I looked up.

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The big maple tree reaches out over this area, and it has a lot of dead branches.  One of them was broken in the high winds we got, and the bigger part of it got hung up on other dead branches.

Lovely.

After I clearer away the piles of wood, I added another length to the extended pruning saw.  I was able to pull down the dangling branch, then with the extra length, was able to cut down two dead branches.

The first one was the one at the bottom of the dangling branch you can see in the picture above.  The other was a larger one, that you can see part of, above the big, thick main branch.  That one was being partly held up by the main branch.

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You can see all three branches, here.  The big one, as it got hung up on the main branch on the way down, basically exploded, sending side branches and twigs all over the place! (That would be Rolando Moon, in the background. :-D )

After taking out the big branches, I filled two wheelbarrows with small branches and twigs, just from here!

We had a wiener roast shortly after, and when we were done eating, I stayed longer to clear both wheelbarrows. :-)

While we were having our cook out, we got visited by Nasty Crime Boy, who decided that one of the folding chairs we brought out would be a great place to hang out.

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When my daughter came closer with her phone to take pictures, he was very curious about the whole thing, sticking his face up to the phone, then reaching out to grab her with his paws!

Too adorable. :-D

I ended up staying out several hours, tending the fire and watching the sun setting behind the trees while listening to the renter’s cows mooing, with frogs and cranes, croaking in the distance.  By the time the girls came out to check on me, it was fully dark except for the glowing coals in the fire pit.

Life is good.

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