After all of the other exploits around the homestead I decided to do another form of cleanup - removing some nuisance trees. Starting in the chicken yard, I marked three trees for death. Now these trees are what I tend to call "weed trees", mainly because of their quickness to grow big and no real use to them when they are big enough to cut down as trees. Because of their small size compared to the surrounding pine trees, these trees would be easy to drop.
I started with a tree right next to the west fence within the chicken yard. To bring this one down without risking the fence I had to cut the tree higher than the top of the fence so when the tree did come down it would come down and lean over without hitting the fence. After bringing the tree down I would spend some time using the reciprocating saw to cut the branches free from the trunk as well as cut the branches shorter to make stacking on the burn pile that much easier versus trying to stack random long sections of branches. With the tree down I got to work chopping up the tree into multiple small pieces. I cut the branches free from the trunk first to get them separated then started cutting the trunk into short manageable pieces. Even though I'm saving this wood for use outside in the half drum burn can, I still took the time to cut the trunk into pieces approximately a foot long, maybe more on some occasions. It didn't take long with the saws to get this little tree cut up but when done I did have a lot of branches that I had to move to the other end of the yard to the burn pile. I was able to use the wheelbarrow to move the cut up trunk pieces over to a staging area in the driveway where I have the half drum sitting in case I fire up that can again when working outside. Either way this is a good central spot where I can get the wood I need to keep the can going wherever I'm working at around the homestead. I did use the wheelbarrow to pile and stuff the branches within to make moving them over to the burn pile easier as well. Of course some dropped but who cares, the majority of the branches made it to the ever growing burn pile. With this tree taken care of I will be moving on to the other two trees in the chicken yard, essentially doing the same thing, cutting the branches into small sections while cutting the trunk into usable logs for the burn can. I plan on firing the burn pile after getting all three of these trees taken care of so I can get the biggest bang for the buck since I have a good pile of garbage under the branches to assist in burning up the scrap tree stuff. There are some larger pine trees that are dead in the back of the yard near the fuel shed that I have my eye on bringing down. Of course there are challenges with those since they are indeed much larger than the smaller trees I was working with in the chicken yard. Either way, I'm going to get things tidied up to make room for future construction.
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May 2023
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