Unless it's an especially severe winter, which I don't see happening, I've probably got enough wood in the basement and the woodshed to see us through.
Be that as it may, I continue to make forays into the woodlot. Today I had my eye on that Maple that's been taunting me from the back woodlot for at least the last couple of years.
Two or three years ago a big trunk came off one of my Maples in a wind storm. Came apart about twenty feet up, just where the main trunk splits up into three. At the tree end she's still attached, and then she arcs across a bit of a ravine and has her top branches holding her off the ground towards the top.
I took away a good part of that top a couple of years ago, so all that's left is what you might call the weight-bearing branches. I headed back there with a ladder, an ax, and the trusty Stihl.
Leaned the ladder against the top-most branch and up I went. I was cutting four to six foot lengths, stuff I could carry out to where the truck was parked. Eventually that became two foot lengths as the diameter of the trunk got bigger. Then one foot lengths.
Finally I had to take a shot at those support branches that were holding up the works. I knew that was going to be tricky. They're holding up a good thirty or forty feet of trunk that must weigh in at a couple of ton.
Sure enough, even though I made my first cut bottom to top, the bar of the Stihl got pinched. There I was, saw stuck, wondering what to do next.
Luckily I had the ax. Started chopping away just above where the saw was caught. Built up quite a sweat if you don't mind me saying so, till suddenly with a great crack the limb gave way and the entire trunk did a quarter turn and came to earth.
When a big old branch like that is doing a quarter turn, the outer extremities can move rather quickly, so I was lucky to get out of the way.
The Stihl was not so lucky. Instead of being freed up, she had the entire weight of the the trunk drive the bar into the ground. It was stuck good. And twisted too. By God, here's another trip to the shop, I thought.
Well, after a lengthy survey of the situation, I came to the conclusion that the only way to solve this was to drive home, get the other saw, and cut up enough of the trunk into small enough pieces so I could get it off the Stihl.
Unfortunately I hadn't fired up the Poulan since the last time the Stihl was in the shop, and it took a fair bit of effort to convince her to start up. As luck would have it, first cut I made was about a two foot length that took a sudden snap before I was through. The snap let the main trunk roll. Right onto my foot.
So I'm standing there, two ton tree trunk pinning me to the ground, and I'm considering my options. The options are mightily circumscribed by the fact that I can't move.
The hounds are standing there looking at me. I know they're thinking if the old bastard doesn't get himself out of this we've got a really good meal happening.
Luckily, I've still got the Poulan in hand. Managed to make a cut just to the left of where my foot was trapped.
Got my foot out. Then I got the Stihl out. That twist in the bar? Straightened out like you wouldn't believe. I scraped the mud off her, fired her up, and it was like nothing had happened.
So it was a day of mixed results. Wood harvested? Zero.
My ankle feels much better after a hot bath and twenty feet of tensor bandage wrapped around it.
But the Stihl still works and the hounds didn't eat me.
All's well at Falling Downs.
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