Cold Weather, Cutting Trees

The summer before last, DH and I noticed that we had a few dead trees in the north fence line (property line).  Being summer, and we didn't want to crush either the hay or the crop in the field rented by the local grain farmer, we decided to wait until winter time to cut those trees down.

Well, last winter was kind of a bust, weather-wise.  Not too many weekends where the ground was frozen and we could drive the tractor across either the hay field or the crop field without making ruts, let alone drag tree trunks through the fields and up to the wood boiler in order to cut them for firewood.  Seemed like every time the ground was frozen, either we had other things going on or DH just plain wasn't home (he's been increasingly busy at work for over two years now). So, they didn't get cut.

All summer, those dead trees stuck out--to us--like sore thumbs.  We vowed that we would cut them this winter, once the ground froze.

Yeah.  Here we are, almost halfway through February, and those trees were still standing.  Again, the ground has not been consistently frozen.  Again, weekends have been busy.  I didn't think it was possible a year ago, but DH has been working even more hours (I'll spare you the details of the Saturday we were on our way to a wedding 3 hours north and DH's boss called wanting him to jump and run and go into work RIGHT NOW!)

This Sunday, however, we were free, DH was home (he has been traveling for work the past two weeks plus had to go into work for a while on Saturday) and the ground was frozen.  Now was the time to take action on those dead trees! 

So I did.  First, I told DH I needed some help pruning the orchard with the chainsaw (he really doesn't want me to run the chainsaw if I'm home alone).   Then, we moved on to taking a few limbs off of a couple of the trees that are on two sides of the garden.  Then, I mentioned those trees we'd planned to cut last winter and we moved out to the north line.

Our first target, we decided was just too big to tackle that day.  The trunk of the tree was quite a bit bigger than we'd thought (at least 28" in diameter), and DH didn't want to cut into it with his chainsaw acting kind of funky--it ran while we were pruning, but not quite right.  He didn't want to get partially through the trunk and have the chainsaw go on strike.  Instead, we did a smaller tree first, then moved on to one with a trunk that split down low enough it was like cutting two medium trees instead of one huge one. 

Split trunk tree:

cutting the first trunk

cutting the second trunk

Then we tackled a big (but not huge) tree.

He would fell a tree, then wrap a chain around the trunk, and I'd use the tractor to drag the tree up by the house.  At least, we did the smaller trunks that way.  The bigger ones we had to limb first, and I'd take the trunk and then the limbs separately.  And the biggest one I think came out in seven or eight large pieces between all the limbs and the chunks we had to cut the trunk into.  It was heavy wood.

the first two pieces

I actually ran out of room up by the wood boiler to leave the trees, so about half of what we cut ended up pulled out into the field and dropped there, until we can get the ones at the wood boiler cut up and out of the way.

During the three hours or so we were out at the north line, a snow squall blew in, and we had to quit working because the wind was driving the snow so bad it was hard to see.  Hopefully we'll have time yet this winter to go back out and cut that humongous dead tree, plus the four or so smaller dead ones we noticed while we were working.