With the whole gate fun taken care of, I turned my attention to the chicken yard. I took a moment to do some cleanup work, moving the leftover pickets and boards from the fence that was dismantled over to the chicken yard for later use. The other gate was also moved into the chicken yard with those pickets along with the old gate/new fence panel, since this panel is still a viable fence panel. It will be used to create the walls for the new chicken yard. One of the things that I noted was with the minivan chicken coop, I would want to move it back some. Reason for this is because the ramp on that coop reaches out farther than the front of the cab coops. The front wall of the new coop setup is going to have to reach out a couple feet from the fronts of the cab coops to allow for movement around the front of those coops. As a result the minivan coop would have to go back a good way to allow the ramp to be able to have some space between it and the front wall so the birds can be able to use the ramp. There's a problem though, there's a big friggin tree right behind the minivan coop. This huge tree is the same tree the birds were using as a roosting post skyscraper for a while. To move the minivan coop back, this tree has to go. I started off by using the reciprocating saw to cut the low hanging branches that I could reach from the ground, taking time to cut the branches into small manageable pieces that can be stacked onto a burn pile where the branches are as compacted and close together as possible so there can be more material in a smaller space so when this pile is fired I can get complete consumption of all material with minimum time and labor invested. I had to climb up on the top of the minivan to cut some of the higher branches to lessen how much material was on the main branch since this branch is huge and is overshadowing a large part of the yard. after analyzing the branch and plotting cut points on the bottom of this large branch, I determined where I would need to cut in order to allow the branch to come down without any risk of hitting any of the car coops, much less the house. My plan ended being to cut into the branch until the integrity of the wood started to sway, then coerce the branch to splinter enough to get a controlled fall to the ground where the branch won't just explode and fall onto the coops. After trying to cut this branch with the chainsaw, changing the chain, and trying again, this tree is one of those trees that seems to be made of iron as the chain would not cut into this wood easily. I found that I had to continue to use the pruning blade with the reciprocating saw, slowing whittling away until I cut halfway through the branch and it started voicing its disdain towards being cut. I went to the ground to pull on a low branch and kept pulling on it until the branch finally splintered an slowly descended to the ground, still attached, but broken. It was almost perfect. With the large top of the branch now at ground level, I can now chop away at these branches bit by bit to dispose of. As I cut material away I can continue to cut into the larger portions until the whole thing has been whittled down enough that I can cut into the broken base more to finish off the branch safely. The rest of the branches should not be much of a problem that I can't just hack these branches and let them come down. The main thing is having to cut the bottom of this iron tree, at ground level, that should be fun. Either way, this tree has to come down so the minivan coop can be pushed all the way back.
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