Went out to drop a decent looking cherry tree earlier Tuesday and it got hung up in some hemlock trees. Tried everything and gave up saying I'd come back to it Friday when my neighbor would be able to pull it over with his winch. Well we had some pretty heavy wind yesterday and I began to wonder if maybe the wind had knocked it loose, went out to the woods and poof! it was on the ground and ready to get sawed up. Here's some pictures (didn't take any of it caught up)
Looking at the pictures reminds me that my woods are full of little red maple root suckers, they grow like weeds up here.
Looking good. Must be nice getting out into the woods after the winter we just had. I'm ithing to get the saw in my hands myself.
For the most part it seems winter has broken completely, 36 degrees is the coldest day I see in the forecast and compared to - 15 with the wind chill that's like summer. That cherry isn't very big though so I'll probably cut it into logs and drag it to the house to cut into rounds. It's rough doing that by hand but it beats make 30 plus trips for firewood.
It's nice when ma nature cooperates. I had a good size maple get hung up on me last year. I tried knocking it down by notching/backcutting blocks out of the base, but it wasn't completely free of the stump, so that didn't work. Tried rigging it with ropes and winches configured every which way - wouldn't budge. I finally gave up, and decided to head back to the house for a beer. Get about halfway there, and I hear a loud creeeeak,,, THWAP! Ran back there, and it was down. I love cherry for the smoker too. Branches that are just a little to small to bother with for firewood, are just about perfect for the smoker.
There's plenty of those kinds of branches right at the top of the tree, I'll save those for the old man too then.
Over the years Mother Nature has provided us with much help. We are not afraid to ask for help sometimes like this. Works like a charm. I remember one 30"+ white ash I knew would hang. No problem. Cut it and left it for a week. Then went back and bucked it up. Sweet!
I had a nice sugar maple that hung up a number of weeks ago. I went back and cut more off the base and got it detached from the stump the next time, yet my next visit a couple weeks later it hadn't moved despite some heavy winds. So I cut a notch up about 4 feet, and it still was hung up, but now just barely. I got out of there and avoided going anywhere near that area as I knew that a good gust of wind would finally free it. Sure enough, last weekend it was down, exactly where I wanted it.
About 20" at the base, bigger than anything I wanted to mess around with. It was dead for a few years too, so I was worried about branches falling 40'. It wasn't huge, but it doesn't take much with trees to kill or maim you.
When an 8 foot section weighs about 5 or 6 hundred pounds who knows how much weight's in 20 feet, definitely more than enough to crush a person.
