Not really firewood, at least for me, but, there is a member with an OWB who will take pine, so here is my day. I got a call early this morning informing me one of the large pine trees alongside the parsonage on our Church campus had fallen. I'm the longest standing Trustee, so I get all the calls: light bulb out, toilet overflowing, police check at 2:00 am finds a door unlocked, man hole cover missing after snow plow crew cleared 30" of snow this winter, and, as it happens, large pine tree blown over. I was on my way to services anyway, so I figured I'd see what had happened and come back after services with proper gear.
Found Large Pine 1 down, and Large Pine 2 seriously leaning toward the garage we store some of our equipment, and mostly props for outdoor services in.
Noticed that Large Pine 2 had already torn it's roots up on the windward side, and Large Pine 1 was assisting in holding the root ball down. On inspection Large Pine 3 had also torn up roots, and also was being stabilized more or less by the weight of Large Pine 1. I set up several safety cones, and some yellow caution tape, and our Sunday services were uninterrupted.
I recruited a couple of the usual suspects, including one with an OWB who might take the wood, and met back at church after lunch.
I threw a line on each tree, and we hitched Large Pine 2 to the back of an F350 to steer it down between the Parsonage and the Garage. This one had the serious lean out over the garage, but we were able to pull it off lean and into the gap between them.
We cleaned that tree up quickly, and set to rigging Large Pine 3. This one was not nearly as badly leaning, and our safest route was to pull it the opposite direction. I was able to throw a bag line up pretty high, but we couldn't get a nice tight static line on it.
On this tree, we had an entire parking lot to take the slack out of the line, and with some ginger cutting, and some more serious F350 persuasion, we pulled Large Pine 3 away from Parsonage.
We still had some wind gusts, but nothing like over night. The temps were a little chilly, just right for cutting up the downed trees, and dragging the brush to a couple piles.
Helper number two with the old, but singing Stihl cleaning out some more of the intertwined branches:
I managed to find the sweet spot in the bridging trunk of Large Pine 1 that allowed the slow-motion plop of the root base to settle gently back into the hole it had pulled up.
Nice sunny day, and three nice large pine trees that grew here for many decades will never threaten to fall on these buildings again.
And, in case anyone wondered, yes, my assistant comes to Church with me, he's tucked off to the right of that picture, safely out of the way of the chain (saw) gang.
Found Large Pine 1 down, and Large Pine 2 seriously leaning toward the garage we store some of our equipment, and mostly props for outdoor services in.
Noticed that Large Pine 2 had already torn it's roots up on the windward side, and Large Pine 1 was assisting in holding the root ball down. On inspection Large Pine 3 had also torn up roots, and also was being stabilized more or less by the weight of Large Pine 1. I set up several safety cones, and some yellow caution tape, and our Sunday services were uninterrupted.
I recruited a couple of the usual suspects, including one with an OWB who might take the wood, and met back at church after lunch.
I threw a line on each tree, and we hitched Large Pine 2 to the back of an F350 to steer it down between the Parsonage and the Garage. This one had the serious lean out over the garage, but we were able to pull it off lean and into the gap between them.
We cleaned that tree up quickly, and set to rigging Large Pine 3. This one was not nearly as badly leaning, and our safest route was to pull it the opposite direction. I was able to throw a bag line up pretty high, but we couldn't get a nice tight static line on it.
On this tree, we had an entire parking lot to take the slack out of the line, and with some ginger cutting, and some more serious F350 persuasion, we pulled Large Pine 3 away from Parsonage.
We still had some wind gusts, but nothing like over night. The temps were a little chilly, just right for cutting up the downed trees, and dragging the brush to a couple piles.
Helper number two with the old, but singing Stihl cleaning out some more of the intertwined branches:
I managed to find the sweet spot in the bridging trunk of Large Pine 1 that allowed the slow-motion plop of the root base to settle gently back into the hole it had pulled up.
Nice sunny day, and three nice large pine trees that grew here for many decades will never threaten to fall on these buildings again.
And, in case anyone wondered, yes, my assistant comes to Church with me, he's tucked off to the right of that picture, safely out of the way of the chain (saw) gang.
