Last Friday, part of a tree fell on our house. One of the neighbors called to tell me there was a tree on the house (I'd noticed), and he had a couple of chainsaws available to help remove it. I thanked him and told him I'd pass along the information.
However, by the time The Farmer gets home from work, it's a little late to start such a big project, so he opted to do it Saturday morning.
Our youngest son, aka the Cave Geek, offered to help. I offered to help. The neighbor had offered to help. But the first I knew he was even working on it, he'd already got a lot of the limbs away from the house.
Yes, Mr. Stubbornly Independent was well on his way to getting the job done, and though we once again offered to give him a hand, he declared it was really a one-person job. After that, I just stood around and took pictures and wisely (I thought) refrained from offering advice.
Fortunately, the only real damage done was to the gutter.
It got rather bent out of shape, and the edges of the roofing got a little crinkled, but otherwise, there didn't seem to be any real harm done.
The Farmer got all the tree away from the side of the house, then started cutting it up into manageable pieces.
Fortunately, the biggest tree part that fell on the house was dead wood, so not as heavy as it might have been. After he cut the tree in pieces, he threw those over the fence for later carting to his burning place in the bottom pasture. (The Farmer is a noted Fire Bug.)
Look at that strong guy tossing those logs around!
After the big stuff was out of the way, there were still a lot of small branches and twigs left on the roof, so Farmer climbed up there to get them off.
Flying Twigs!
The easiest way to get the smaller stuff off the roof was to sweep it off.
Just look at that! Who would have guessed the macho Farmer knows how to use a BROOM!
While he was on the roof, he decided to clean out the gutters. They fill up as fast in the spring from fallen tree "fruit" stuff as they do in the fall from fallen leaves. After crawling around on the roof, the Farmer took a break.
But he wasn't done for the day. Oh no! I may have thought he was, but then I looked out and saw him up in a tree!
He'd decided to cut off some more of the dead wood to prevent it from falling on the house in the next windstorm. However, this tree has power lines running through it.
Of course, those power lines were one of the reasons I wasn't thrilled about him getting up in the tree, so he didn't mention those plans to me.
But he got the more limbs down, so I guess he was pleased with that.
He certainly had a bunch of wood for burning when he was done!
And I think he finally wore himself totally out, so he took a rest by the rose bed with his best buddy, Toby.
The Farmer with Toby, our Farm Collie.
After he'd rested a while, he did manage to cart a few loads off and burn them, but there's still a lot of wood left in that pile.
I'm thinking it will be a while before all that fallen wood is totally gone!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh wow – it must feel good to get this all cleaned up. And thankfully the damage was limited. We had so many downed trees and limbs from the winter storms this year, but fortunately (and surprisingly), we had no structural damage to our home or any of our outbuildings.
Yes, it’s good to have the tree off the house! We have several big trees around the house, so it’s good that we only got part of one broken off in the wind and blown over onto the house. Glad to hear you didn’t have any damage to your buildings either!
Does he ever sweep the kitchen floor? I could see Steve sweeping the roof. I don’t remember ever seeing him sweep a floor though.
Ha, fat chance! Maybe if I was sick for a long time and the dirt was knee deep. Otherwise, housework??? He’s old school – that’s women’s work.