We’ve got quite a few Aspen trees on the property. They are fast growing, but they can get quite punky inside. We’ve got some that are close to the house – too close, in fact.
If one or more ever came down in a windstorm, they would definitely fall on the house. There are a few good leaners out there and of course like most leaners, they are leaning in the Wrong Direction. So Graham started taking them down.
He brought his machine up, and you can see he has his bucket touching the tree.
Once he had that in place, he makes his undercut using his chainsaw.
Then the cut on the other side
then he hopped in his machine, and p u s h e d it down right on the driveway.
A big bonus with using the machine is that you can land it right where you want it. You can do that with a chainsaw too, but it doesn’t always work. And when a tree does not fall where you want it to, odds are it is going to be a big PITA to then limb and buck it.
We want it to land in the driveway to make the rest of the work much easier. We can limb it on level ground and then buck it there too. It’s an easy spot to get the truck or John Deer in there to load up the pieces. Then it gets moved over to the wood shed for splitting and stacking.
This one looked pretty solid throughout and it probably wasn’t coming down on its own any time soon.
You can see just how close to the house the trees are in the picture above.
For one tree, he had to use a chain and come-along. Safety first!
Here, he has the chain around one of the other trees.
The big p u s h
a better pic of the undercut
Four trees later, it’s time for a bonfire to burn up the smaller limbs.
By the end of the day, the limbs are all burned up, the logs bucked up and moved to the woodshed and a few beers have been drunk. All in all, a very good day.
(originally published 2010 – I am still moving the odd post over here from the old site.)
