Spring. Yard work. Raking leaves. Prepping gardens. And some years, taking down trees and limbs. This past weekend we put the finishing touches on clearing out a cedar grove in the dog yard—taking out six medium to large cedars. For those of you who worry about the trees—fear not, there are dozens more scattered around the yard. But these particular set were pretty scruffy, nothing nice grew under them (mainly nightshade), and they blocked the view of the sunset. Noah and I got our stuff together and I climbed the trees on a 16’ ladder, tied a rope to as high as I could reach, tied the other end to the tractor, and put tension on the rope as I cut the back cut that would fell the tree. That worked great for five out of the six. The last one was clearly leaning the wrong way, and there was a decent bit of breeze out. As I was taking the front side notch it started to go (it really was leaning the wrong way). Noah valiantly gave the tractor some juice, but the rope snapped and the tree fell on top of the wire farm fence. The good news is that with the branches and the high cut, it did negligible damage, and we were able to cut around it and get the fence cleared in short order. I might add that I had a nice drop cloth hanging from the roll bar on the tractor just for the case of a rope snap—it would save Noah from getting whipped across the back. But as luck would have it, the rope went the other way.
The clearing.
The brush pile. I can’t wait to burn this!
The wood pile. This is a combination of cedar and oak. We’ll use it for bonfires over the next couple years...
The bonfire, waiting for a match. This (and all the photos) was taken with the DP3 Merrill. I love the way this camera isolates subjects at this distance. The rendering is remarkable.
The loyal pointer. CJ was out helping me round up sticks.
That’s a big pile of sticks to pee on...
