Needed to cut some wood... Was feeling deprived. Haven’t cut any wood in a few days. Spent 30 minutes cutting at lunch time. I feel much better now. Small locust, maybe 30 feet tall at 8-9” diameter, snapped up high and hung up in a nearby small black birch. Right off our dirt driveway across from the farm stand so easy pickins once down and cut. Normally I’d stay away from a situation like this, though. Even small trees that are naturally hung up can roll or pop back at you and hurt you (or worse) when you release them at the bottom. But this one had enough lean, leaning away and to the right that I felt confident it’d slowly roll off to the right. Cleared myself a nice path to quickly move away in if something seemed wrong. Made my felling cuts and that was that. It fell exactly as I thought it would, thankfully, rolling off the tree it was hung up in and coming down to the right. 10 minutes later I had it bucked up and was loading it onto the tailgate of the truck. Half the tree had some center rot happening. 7 or 8 feet of rot in the center of the tree on either side of the break from the wind. The rest of it was good though. Good stuff goes to the firewood pile. Stuff with punky center will get split and thrown to the maple arch eventully. It’s just a tailgate load but hey, wood is wood.
Glad it went the way you planned. Really glad to hear that you planned and cleared an escape path! Every bit of wood adds up!
A little locust is better than none! I havent cut at my score since Friday and im dying to go back. Did you call the town about that other locust Woodsman ?
Sort of. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturdays are my potential cutting days as I work the farm and take on customers for my wildlife control business. So I cut if I have time. I try to keep a structured work day to allow me to mentally plan and prepare to get more done on these days. Lunch is 12-1. Thursday’s and Friday’s I work two 12s at a butcher shop helping out my old boss, now friend. He’s 78 and still grinding away. I’ve worked for him one way or another for 20 years now. I was a grunt working there during high school and then worked full time through college. Since then it’s mostly been helping him out during the holiday seasons when it gets ridiculously busy. This past holiday season he asked me if I’d be willing to take on two days of work per week to help relieve him from it a bit. He’s finally thinking about retirement. I’m helping him out, he’s helping me out. Wildlife business is slow these days.
