Posts Tagged ‘chainsaw’
First Pass
We had a blast yesterday morning connecting with people currently living in the area who share a history of growing up in old Eden Prairie. It is reassuring to find there are like-minded folks who are actively working to make life better locally. I liked it when one of them said his contributions to helping people around here were a way to get back at the current President, who is constantly busy making things worse all over.
Amen.
When we got home, I hopped on the mower, hoping to complete a first pass cutting all the spaces that needed mowing by the end of the third day.
Conditions were ideal, but the exceptionally long grass necessitated a change in tactics, resulting in everything taking longer than normal. Some of the finished results were not pretty, but at least it looks better than not being mowed at all.
I decided to work late in order to finish the last of the mowing for this first pass of the long, long grass we faced on our return from a 10-day stay at the lake. Why do I always save the labyrinth for last? Now I can start the whole place over again, cutting reasonably long grass this time.
Working late down at the labyrinth brings an additional challenge, as the mosquitoes were becoming active in the shade, and apparently, I made for an appetizing target.
When I finished mowing, I stepped into the woods to check out the downed oak limb that Cyndie has been “nibbling” away at with the hand chainsaw.
It’s made it much easier to see what I’m going to be up against when I get around to cutting it up with the big chainsaw. You could say that Cyndie has made the first pass on the oak limb.
I think I’m going to let the tree cutting wait until I’ve finished using the hedge trimmer along the sides of pathways and the string trimmer along the fence lines.
There will be no rest for the weary during the growing season.
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Much Sawing
Put gas in the chainsaw three times. Hauled six trailer-loads of branches away. I wouldn’t call the project done, but we made a respectable dent in the big maple tree clean-up, and we have it to a point where everything can just sit for a while, allowing us to direct our attention to more pressing needs for a few days.
A lot of grass deserves to be mowed, but that won’t happen today. Rain will be the dominant theme for a while, so I may get back on my braiding of polypropylene bale twine for use as a wrapping on the new posts in the middle of the paddock.
Here are some more photos from yesterday’s effort:
Thankfully, another large effort with the scariest tool I use has ended safely. Somehow, I didn’t even get the chainsaw blade pinched the whole day. That may be a first. Got startled by unexpected shifting of heavy wood a couple of times, but I came through without bumps or bruises.
I am very happy putting the saw back on its shelf for a while.
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Reclaiming Trails
Counting down the days until my next Tour of Minnesota adventure, I popped out for a 2-hour loop on local roads for a 25-mile bike ride yesterday morning. Picking a route with roads I’ve not ridden before, I found myself climbing a curvy road that rose skyward to such a degree I needed to walk my bike up a good portion of it. This had me wondering if I’d made a mistake in doing my Monday morning exercise routine before asking my legs to work so hard on a ride.
The highlight of this ride was discovering an old man seated on his walker on the side of the road a long way from any buildings. What caught my eye at first was a couple of fine-looking cats that seemed out of place in the middle of nowhere. As the road I was on ended at this crossroad, my mind was contemplating which direction I wanted to turn when I finally noticed Mr. Meyer facing to my left, looking oblivious to my arrival.
I offered a greeting and rolled up beside him to chat. The cats were his and followed him on his walks. He told me he was 93 and this was the spot where he turns around after resting for a spell. We had a wonderful visit until both of us felt a need to get moving again before stiffening up.
Limiting myself to just two hours of riding got me home in time to join Cyndie in tackling a few chores on the property. First, I pulled out the chainsaw and we removed recently tipped trees that were leaning precariously across two different trails. From there, I switched to the power trimmer to whack a trail from the jungle of overgrowth taking over while Cyndie used our ratcheted lopper to cut back encroaching trees and branches.
It is very rewarding to reclaim space from the relentless growth that overtakes our trails this time of year. It seems to get easier each time since what needs cutting is all new growth, not well-established thick-stemmed plants that foil the string trimmer.
I made my way through two tanks of gas in the trimmer, moving on to work along the back pasture fence line and around the footbridge over the drainage ditch before going as far as I could up one of the narrow internal trails.
We’ve barely covered a fraction of the trimming that needs to be done so this project will be ongoing for multiple days. We’d like to get all the fence lines cleared because the guy who cuts and bales our hay field is planning to come as soon as he gets all his own fields tended. It makes it easier for him to cut close if the fence is clearly visible.
That was plenty of exercise for one day. I may take advantage of the predicted rain due this morning to do a little shopping before departing for the Tour on Saturday. It’s time to pull out all my camping gear and take inventory. I haven’t used any of it since last year’s Tour. Hope I remember where I put everything.
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Just Thursday
There wasn’t anything unusual about yesterday compared to any other Thursday. I got Wordle in 4. We did the morning horse chores after I walked Asher. Cyndie heated servings of an egg bake from the freezer for breakfast. Even though I was listening for the arrival of a truck to pick up the tractor, I never heard a thing.
When I stepped outside with Asher after breakfast, the tractor was gone. I think our house is soundproof.
Instead of getting one particular project started and finished, my methods of late tend to lean towards picking away a little bit at many tasks simultaneously. While walking Asher, I grabbed the hedge trimmer to cut down last year’s stalks of our tall Japanese Silver Grass at various locations around the property.
Later, I spent some time turning and reshaping old compost piles in hopes of reactivating the process that fell dormant over winter.
In a spontaneous decision, we suddenly decided to cut down an entire section of the lilac tree in our front yard.
The bark was peeling off the trunk. We tried wrapping it but that didn’t lead to the tree healing the wound. When the wrapping started falling off, we noticed a mushroom growing out of the side. Even though there were signs of new buds on the branches, we decided to cut the whole section off to avoid the tree wasting energy on the doomed portion.
That tree was there when we bought the place over 11 years ago and has continued to get taller and taller every year. I don’t know what to expect from it next. We’ll see what removing one of the five “trunks” does for the remaining portions.
While I had the chainsaw out, we headed into the woods to remove the latest tree that had fallen across one of our trails. I also brought down a medium-sized tree leaning against others at a 45-degree angle. We keep adding to the dead wood lying on the ground in our forest because trees fall more often than we can consume the wood.
One good outcome of the recent winds was that a previously snagged limb finally fell to the ground. It had been up there for years. It was just beyond the reach of my pole saw. I was able to cut down the rest of the tree, but this one section was hung up in the collar of another tree and we couldn’t shake it loose. Given enough time, it eventually came down without our help.
Toward the latter part of the afternoon, we gave the horses the next increment of time on the fresh pasture grass. Before our time limit was reached, Swings and Mix had come in of their own accord. I was doing some equine fecal relocation work in the paddock and Light came in to check on me. Mia stayed out gobbling grass.
When Cyndie presented their buckets of feed, I had to walk out and talk Mia into coming in.
It’s a special treat when a horse follows your lead without requiring a lot of coercion. My charm can be irresistible.
Just another Thursday in our little paradise.
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Branch Removal
The weather was pleasant yesterday and enough snow had melted at the top of the driveway that I was able to cut up the branches of the big limb that came down in the last storm. That meant I needed to fire up the chainsaw that hasn’t seen any action in months. It was a little reluctant to start which involved enough pulling that I required a break to catch my breath but the second effort was the charm.
I cut up the fallen limb to three different levels: logs to split for firewood, branch trunks 4″ or less saved for the chipper, and branch tops to pile along our north property border. I trimmed the broken stump back to the main trunk of the tree and held it up for Cyndie like it was a trophy.
Looking at the tree after I was done, the overall shape seems pretty healthy. It’s as if this limb deserved to be removed for the overall benefit of the tree. That’s the way I’m going to frame it from now on, anyway.
Today, Cyndie departs to Puerto Rico for a week with our daughter to celebrate a milestone birthday this year for Carlos. I will go on a John diet for a week. The meals I prepare for myself are a lot simpler than the feasts Cyndie serves.
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Bad Thermocouple
We all have good days and bad days. Our day yesterday deserves to be called a good one. I try not to complain too much when I sleep soundly right up to a half-hour past when we usually feed the horses. Delilah let us sleep in. By the time I finished breakfast and made my way through the entire daily newspaper, it was almost 11 o’clock.
There are plenty of days when I would feel discouraged that outdoor projects didn’t get started until the middle of the day but given the luxury of freedom to take as much time as I want playing word games on my phone, finishing my poached eggs, and perusing all the articles in the newspaper is something I relish being able to do.
One key aspect of the day that made it so good was how much was achieved after the morning of leisure. Cyndie and I decided to get after the multiple “widow makers” hung up in our woods. Five of them, to be exact. Three of which were relatively small and easy to deal with. That left a couple that I wasn’t looking forward to and led me to don a helmet, just in case.
I was ultimately successful in all cases but the key reason all was good was a matter of luck that my being in an unsafe position right when the chain came off the bar didn’t lead to any negative consequences. The biggest and most challenging tree came down with a scary amount of cracking that had me jumping back three times, only to need to step in and continue the cut each time. When it finally crashed to the ground it was with a ferocious amount of energy that is really unnerving.
Once everything was on the ground, the clean up has become rather routine for us and we were able to process everything with rewarding efficiency. I was even able to cut three other trees that I’ve wanted to deal with for quite a while but never happen to have a chainsaw with me at the time. Yesterday, I had a saw.
As I was finishing up in the last spot, Cyndie caught up with me and said the guy who installed our horse waterer in the paddocks was coming to figure out why the heater wasn’t keeping the water from freezing like it used to.
This was a problem that plagued us throughout much of last winter and it was looking to be even worse this year based on the few overnight freezes we’ve experienced thus far. We’ve been asking for help for weeks but he hasn’t made it out, despite telling us he would.
Just having him show up was going to make for a good day but having him diagnose a specific problem of the thermocouple failure and his having a replacement with him and installing it without trouble seemed like a bonus.
Yesterday was one of those good days.
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Busted Tree
In my post on Sunday, I mentioned it was windy over the weekend. Yesterday morning, I found a small dead tree had tipped across one of our trails. Later in the afternoon, we discovered a larger tree had busted off on a different trail. High winds tend to bring down more than just small branches around our property.
Maybe the portion of the trunk that had been chewed up by some scavenger became the weak spot, as it snapped off right in the middle of that gaping wound. Regardless, the upper portion is caught in other trees and will need to be dealt with using the chainsaw.
There are currently four other trees in our woods, one smaller and two larger, that are similarly hung up. I have multiple opportunities to practice using the knowledge I gained watching professionals bring down much larger “widow-makers.”
Our “vertical firewood storage” is looking to be cut up and split, whether I want to do it right now or not.
Overnight Sunday we were visited by a little thunder and lightning along with what sounded like decent rainfall on the roof and skylight. Yesterday morning it was hard to tell any precipitation had fallen by the looks of things on the ground. Luckily, by evening the precipitation on the radar looked much more widespread with a potential of extended duration.
By dinnertime, the deck was actually wet from falling rain. Cyndie successfully got a rain cover on Mia to give her an edge in fending off a chill overnight. It would be just great if gentle rain like we were getting would last for several days.
That would give me more justification for putting off the chainsaw challenge I’m not fired up to tackle.
We have a plan in mind to do some much easier chainsawing behind Cyndie’s perennial garden where we found an eight-foot oak tree that is being smothered by junk trees. Actually, they are more like overgrown bushes than they are trees. In cutting down those nuisances we’ll open a lane behind the garden to continue the last distance for our perimeter trail along our property border.
The length from the west end of the north loop trail to behind the shop garage is so congested with wild growth that we have just taken to the driveway over the last ten years. Clearing that section will be a lot of work but I’ve wanted to create a path there for a long time, so it will be a very rewarding effort for me.
Not that bringing down busted widow-makers and cutting them up isn’t rewarding. Opening up a trail though, offers endless appreciation ever after with each successive stroll.
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Weed Control
We had two primary goals in mind when we plotted a strategy for what we would focus our efforts on yesterday. The first was something I hoped wouldn’t take a lot of time to accomplish. There were two tipped trees with upper branches hung up in surrounding trees. Using knowledge gained by watching the tree professionals who worked for us last spring bring down similar “widow-makers,” I readied our chainsaw and headed into the woods.
With my mind focused solely on the task at hand, I failed to take any pictures of the leaning trees or the keen aftermath of my success in bringing them down. The big poplar near the road took a lot more time than I anticipated. After five successive cuts ultimately eliminating the lower trunk that had been leaning at a 45° angle, the remaining upper portion of branches stood vertical and was still tangled in the branches of surrounding trees.
I needed to go back to the shop to get our pole chainsaw to finish the job. By the time we finished cutting trees, the day was more than half over.
The second goal was to get the hay field mowed, a job that I knew would take more hours than I really wanted to give to the task.
The growth wasn’t excessively tall but there were plenty of weeds maturing and we didn’t want them going to seed. I finally finished around 7:00 p.m. after almost 5 hours out on the tractor. At one point, feeling like it was taking too long, I tried running in a higher gear to speed up progress. The bouncing and jostling were a bit too much and the high gear made backing up hard to manage. All I could do was plod along at a steady pace in the lower gear and keep making passes until the entire field was finally cut.
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Cyndie took pictures as I headed toward the gate upon finishing. For a relatively small field, it sure is bigger than it seems.
The horses were relegated to the unmowed back pasture for the day. They are doing a fair job of grazing the good grass in that pasture but there are enough unwanted weeds in that field that it will need to be mowed soon as well.
In a day or two, they will be allowed back on the grass in the hay field. Then I will spend the better part of a day mowing the back pasture.
As much as I dread doing the mowing, the fields sure look great with all the weeds knocked down. For now, in our minds, mowing is our preferred method over chemical applications for reducing weeds that are toxic to horses. It may not be as effective, but mowing doesn’t leave a weed killer residue in our soil.
I can live with giving two afternoons of my precious time to bouncing along on the diesel tractor a couple of times a summer.
It’s easier than chainsawing widow-makers!
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Full Day
I didn’t set out to put in such a long day yesterday toiling away on big accomplishments, but circumstance allowed and I achieved much more than I thought possible. Cyndie was occupied in the kitchen canning jam with the help of her mother in the morning so I was on my own working outside. Since I got home from my bike trip I’ve intended to take the chainsaw to the large limb that broke off a big maple tree beside the back pasture.
I was eyeing that task while walking Delilah in that back pasture and pulling weeds that were getting tall. The dew point temperature was high and it was going to be a sweaty day in the great outdoors. Delilah likes being out with me so I picked the weed-pulling for her benefit before it got too hot. While walking the field, I sensed it would be mowable if no additional rain fell during the day.
That left me with two significant projects competing for my attention. I decided to start with the chainsaw on the downed limb. It was one of those cases where the more branches I cut and pulled out, the more branches it looked like remained. By the time I found myself soaked in sweat and exhausted, I had a mess of tree shrapnel, cut logs, and limbs for chipping to clean up. I began to think I may have bitten off more than I could chew.
Time for a lunch break in the air conditioning!
That renewed my energies and I immediately set out to finish and clean up my lumberjack work. Without a moment’s hesitation, I brought out the diesel tractor to take on the pasture mowing project.
Starting very slowly along the fence, I completed the full circumference before kicking up the speed to see if I might be able to cut the entire pasture before rain or darkness stopped me.
I made good progress navigating the Ford New Holland around the corners and recesses. Cutting at a different angle than the last time to improve results, I triumphed within minutes of the dinner hour.
Two large tasks knocked off the to-do list in one day, with credit given to Cyndie for being able to take on the afternoon horse feeding and dog walking that allowed me to mow uninterrupted to the end.
Color me extremely satisfied this morning with such progress achieved in just one day.
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Looking Good
I’m in the final countdown of days before leaving tomorrow for my annual vacation week of biking and camping with the Tour of Minnesota. I feel reasonably prepared, both mentally and physically. Yesterday, we worked on a few projects with immediate visual rewards on the landscape around our house and on our north loop trail to get everything looking good before I go.
We received notification from our county that it was time to have our septic system inspected and yesterday the tank was pumped and deemed to be in good working order. That’s always a relief to know. Cyndie and I mustered the initiative to use the occasion to clean up the overgrowth in our drain field.
I was reminded of our visit to Ian’s place in Portugal in 2010 when he and I cleared the bramble that had covered a spring he hadn’t seen in years. I uncovered an old tree stump that I had forgotten was there when we cleaned up the crazy tangle of things growing among the wild raspberry bushes since the last time we cut back the growth there.
After that was done I got out the diesel tractor and mowed down the thistle and poison ivy as well as the edges of our north loop trail. If I somehow avoid getting a rash after the wild thrashing of so much of the troublesome ivy it will be a big surprise to me.
Next, we spent time trimming branches near our backyard fire pit. I started with a pole saw that proved entirely inadequate and ultimately brought out the pole chainsaw and the big chainsaw to clear all that looked deserving. It is always interesting to discover there are more things to cut than we originally expected. Once you get in there and take out the first layer, the next obvious candidates suddenly pop into view.
While I had the main chainsaw out, I finally dispatched the last dying pine tree that was in the middle of the back yard.
Cyndie captured the shot just as the tree was falling. There is only one dying pine tree left back there now. It is on the side of the yard and doesn’t stand out as obviously so it can linger a while longer. We have already got enough branches to clean up after all the cutting that was accomplished yesterday.
Today, I will mow the grass with the lawn tractor to get this place looking its best before I leave Cyndie to deal with everything for a week.
That should be completed with plenty of time to spare for packing my things before Saturday’s departure. Despite having done this June week of biking and camping more than twenty times before, I still struggle with the decision making about what I really need to bring.
At this point, it sounds like the week is going to start out hot. That should make it easier to pack light.
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Relative Something 