Timber !!!

By Uncle Hans

Here is the problem. Our place is full of beautiful mature oak trees, all infested by some sort of carpenter ants and all weakened. All are at risk of falling and crushing something, and, in this bad boy's case, the garage............

.............this picture shows the problem, he is hollow at the base. A good windstorm and down he comes......

........here are the complicating factors. These three little maple trees that I transplanted last fall, not thinking about where the big oak would fall. It looks like the big tree, if not dropped just so, will wipe out these three little trees.....and the garage as well.........

......enter Handy Dan, my neighbor and the guy on this blog to "go to" when there are problems like this (for example, he and I BUILT the garage in the first place). His little friend is called a skidder, no idea why, but it is used in the woods to harvest trees.......

........so a cable is attached to the tree and the skidder is moved a safe distance away. The winch on the skidder puts tension on the tree. Then Dan "notches" the tree on the side that we want the tree to fall toward. (he is doing this in the picture). Then he goes to the opposite side and makes the main cut, just above the level of the notch......

.......Result?................................... A perfect shot! Not even the branches touched the garage......

......this is how close the branches came to one little tree, but they caused no damage.......

.....But then Dan and the skidder left and the minimum wage people were left to clean up the mess (we don't have illegal's in Spooner and actually have to do our OWN cleanup!) That tree will supply about one half of our annual firewood supply, but we burn "recreationally", not for heat.

By Uncle Hans