The Farmer just can’t resist. Every 3 or 4 months, he has to play lumberjack on the farm. We have lots of trees around here, and as is the way of things, some of them die. One of those dead trees is close to the house. I think it taunts him, “Come on, you want to see if you can cut me down, you know you do!”
Of course, the problem is to cut the tree down without knocking down the electric lines right beside it that are going to the house. Or the many different fence lines near it. Or gee, how about the tree falling onto the house itself??? Yeah, that’d be great. I guess we’d see how good our insurance is. Picture calling up your insurance agent, “Harvey, I need to file a claim. A tree fell on our house.” When he asks HOW that happened, let the hemming and hawing begin!
To give my heart even more palpitations than usual, instead of a regular saw, The Farmer decided to carry a chainsaw up the ladder to work on this tree.
There he goes, up into the tree!
See all those electric lines? Oh, and I neglected to mention there’s also a big transformer on the electric pole nearby!
Once he was way up in that tree, and after I’ve asked him if he’s kept his life insurance paid up, he whipped out his chainsaw.
Now to put the chainsaw to work!
I stood on the ground and watched this big offshoot of the tree trunk quiver. Beside the electric lines. Close to the house.
Meanwhile, The Farmer concentrated hard on the job at hand.
The Farmer is intent on his work!
It is well he concentrated on what he was doing. Have I mentioned all the electric lines near the offshoot of the tree trunk he was sawing?
An electric line here, an electric line there, electric lines everywhere!
Eventually he sawed through far enough he felt he could pull the limb down in the direction he wanted it to go. He was done playing tree surgeon.
So he put one end of a rope around the tree limb, and the other end tied around a big walnut tree in the backyard.
Part of his rope system includes a winch, or “come-along” as he calls it. (I’m not sure if that’s a southern term, Okie term, or redneck term. Also, please note that’s a wInch, not a wEnch – he’s not allowed to have those on the farm.)
The Farmer and his wInch.
Once he’s tightened the rope as far as he can with the winch, he starts pulling on it.
Heave ho, and down the tree will go!
It didn’t take long, and I barely got the camera up and “rolling” before the limb came down!
.
That was fast! And fortunately, or no doubt because of the Farmer’s most excellent planning . . . the tree missed the electric wires, house and even all the fences. Of course, it also didn’t mash down the pallet fence around my trumpet vine and lilac bush because the top fell against the guide wires attached to the pole for the electric lines and transformer.
Guide wires to the rescue!
All that remained was to get the tree off the guide wires and trumpet vine, and cut it into pieces.
As Hannibal of the A-Team used to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
A job well done.
I guess it was another good day for the Lumberjack On The Farm.
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Our Pond Runneth Over... on February 4th, 2008
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I knew how this was going to turn out because your title didn’t elicit alarm in me.
It didn’t, however, keep me from yelling, “Get the heck down off that ladder with a chainsaw.”