For anyone who's familiar with the goings on around here, they would know about our intimate love/hate relationship with trees. Many episodes have passed where we had run ins with hostile trees that either came down with resulting destruction or otherwise leaving a horrendous mess. Well this time is no different. Our latest occurrence is in the chicken yard. Another tree that was long dead, finally decided to take its death fall, at least partially. This tree was brought down about halfway up, during one of the last storms, which is always the case. Ironically, the top half came down towards one of the older chicken coop structures, but got caught in one of the other trees next to the structure, causing it to further break in two, getting caught in a weird manner. Main thing is, nothing was damaged. But there was still the case of a broken tree just sitting there in the way. To make matters worse, this tree was covered in a layer of poison ivy vines. This would take a couple steps to dispose of.
The remaining trunk is still about 30 ft tall but is in a position where it will most likely not come down, and even if it does, worst case is it knocks a fence panel down, which can be put back up after the disposal of the trunk. For the time being that trunk will be left alone since its really not causing any problems anywhere. The main thing is the fallen parts. In order to "safely" remove the two broken sections, I would have to trim all the PI vines and the branches from the tree it fell into, so I can more easily access the trunks with the chainsaw and not be swimming in PI vines. Using one of the hedge trimmers, I slowly but surely cut away at the vines, leaving a bed of PI mulch all over the place. One of the halves of the fallen tree were resting on the roof of the older chicken coop that it could've taken out had it not hit the other tree first. As I cut away vines and smaller branches, I was able to get to the point where I was able to pull the top half of the fallen trunk from the roof of the coop and get it all the way on the ground, where I was able to further cut the vines away, exposing more of the trunk. My next plan was to use the chainsaw to cut the trunks into short sections, a couple feet long each, and load them up in the wheelbarrow and move them to the burn pile to stack them up with the other detritus for later disposal. Once I got the trunks exposed enough, I chopped the trunks as stated, and loaded them up. Some of the trunk sections had their bark peeled off so I had to load the bark section, which of course still had PI vines on them, along with the actual trunk sections. All this mess was tossed onto the burn pile. Unfortunately, these types of actions still result in exposure to PI, maybe not as bad as if I was just rolling around in the stuff, but enough that I will have some itching later. The cut up vine pieces will of course be left on the ground, as I can't just pick it up, or burn it en masse as the vapors are toxic. I'll just let the brush on the ground dry up over time and return to the earth. This isn't the end of the landscaping that we have to deal with around here. There's still the matter of cutting up the fallen trees behind the northern fence that shields the chicken yard. I'll have to do the same course of action as I did in the chicken yard with the trimming of the vines and smaller branches before further cutting into the larger material, cutting the stuff into smaller more portable sections for disposal on the burn pile. Normally I'd try to cut the larger stuff into large sections, just small enough to move, but still large nonetheless. With the PI vines covering most of this mess, I can't afford to keep coming in contact with that stuff as I'll never get rid of the rashes and itching that result from coming in contact with the toxic oils from the plants. I just have to take my time in the disposal of this stuff and eventually work on further cutting into the woods to rid the area of any stuff that either looks dead or is growing in a menacing manner where it can get in the way or threaten the integrity of any of our fences and the like.
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