Cut down a 90 foot tall locust tree today!

I've had my eye on a tall locust tree just off my driveway for the past couple of years. I could see the top was dead with some rot and the bottom had some damage and looked to be starting to hollow out, so today I decided to bring it down. The tree was leaning a bit down a gradual slope in the direction I wanted it to fall, but it was also leaning a bit toward my driveway and some power lines. I used a couple of wedges and was pleased to have it fall right where I planned. On the way down it hit a small maple tree and the top section clipped another tree's limb causing the locust tree to break in half on the way down. I wish I had a video, but I did get some photos.



The biggest tree in the center of the photo is the locust.



A view from the opposite direction. Again, the locust is the biggest tree in the center of the picture.



The tree with the fluorescent paint marking my cut plan shows how close the tree was to my driveway and the electrical lines that run along the right hand side of the drive.



Got a nice hinge to guide the tree down.





You can see the small maple that became collateral damage. There is actually a larger maple tree growing at the base of this small one. Two shoots came up from the base of the large maple tree and the one that was leaning a bit in the direction of the fall line for the locust got taken out. I cut down a small sour wood tree in the line of the fall before I started cutting, but thought the maple might be okay, so I left it.



I went through two tanks of gas on the chainsaw and managed to get the tree bucked up and about 60% of it cut into rounds. The beauty of this tree is I'll be able to haul it back up to the house using my garden tractor and trailer instead of hand carrying it like I've had to do with the last two cords of wood I recently harvested from a different section of our property. And here is some more good news: I had to go next door to my neighbor's to borrow a battery charger because my garden tractor wouldn't start after sitting for a couple of months. When I got down the hill on my way to her house I was surprised to see that a rather large oak tree had recently fallen in her back yard! The owner of the house lives in Florida and this is her vacation home. My wife and I look after her place when she's away. So, I'll also be able to harvest this tree and again I'll have easy access to load it into my trailer. I'm in the process of extending the roof on my main wood shed adding about three more cord's worth of covered storage space, so these two trees should go a long way to filling it up!

I bucked it up and cut about 60% of the tree into rounds. The chain held up pretty good until I touched the ground a couple of times. I had my cant hook with me, but the main trunk is just too massive to move yet. Here are the pics for you doubting Thomases!

Paulywalnut,
You don't know how happy I am to have this tree located where I can easily process it and haul up to the house with my garden tractor and trailer. The past three weeks I've been working up trees on a section of our property on the other side of a big ravine. I carried two cords worth of wood about 100 yards a round at a time by hand to a wheelbarrow and then another 75 yards to my wood pile!

Since locust doesn't rot once it is cut down you could still retrieve those tossed logs if you can reach them and still get some good firewood out of them! That's the odd thing about locust, insects can get in the wood and do damage while the tree is alive, but once the tree is cut down there must be a chemical change because you see 30 year old fence posts made out of locust still standing after all those years in the ground. This morning I counted the growth rings on the stump and the tree looked to be around 100 years old!

My wife and I have two dogs that I take for a hike in the 1000 acres of forest land behind our house every morning. We only own a bit over 11 of those acres, but the other owner just lets the land stay natural and with the old logging roads threading through the land we can hike for hours without encountering another person. Since I generally follow one main trail up to the first ridge line I pass by the same spots every day. I've worked up a few trees brought down by storms up to a quarter mile away and then just take my time carrying home one round a day until I've moved the entire tree back home. It can take a couple of months, but since I do the walk anyway it seems a waste to let the wood sit and rot away when it could be burning in my stove! When I get to process wood like the two trees in this post I feel like a kid waking up on Christmas morning and seeing that Santa has arrived!