Those who saw my thread in the wood shed know that last weekend I joined a group of volunteers helping to clean up in Springfield, MA. Anyway, the demand for saws (and operators who know what they are doing) really struck me so I let the church up there know if they were putting a crew together and were in need this week I may be available... so I went out again today. Quite a scene (again). The home we were at today has more work to do than I can really describe. Basically the home owner had a nice home in the woods... now he has a torn up home surrounded by wood and debris. Insurance will cover damage to the home but interesting (to me at least) most insurance doesn't help with cleaning up all the trees on the property. With the going rate around there being $500-1K per tree his 70+ would be next to impossible to pay for.
His case is particularly interesting too - as I understand it his wife recently passed away and he was in the process of moving - house was to close very soon but as you can guess, the buyers walked right after the tornado hit. So now finding another buyer isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
So what did we do there? Cut brush and trees. Hauled the debris up his driveway (two trucks) and dumped by the road for pick up. Good crew from the youth group made for many hands. We had two saws running most of the day so kept them busy too. Cut up pine, oak, maple, you name it. This time I cut some choice rounds of hardwood and set them aside to bring home as I just hate to see it all go to the curb so I returned with some hard earned wood.
I even had my first "real" tree felling experience as I took down a broken tree that was probably 20" diameter (oak). No where near picture perfect but it went down safe (used a rope to pull it over) so I'm happy enough. Next time I'll move my felling cut a lot closer/lower to my notch... I also took out a very thin (6" diameter) oak that was bent almost to 90* so I knew (because I had read about it here) that it would almost certainly splinter and/or go into a barber chair - and it did, but since I was expecting it to do so it was no big deal (plus being such a small tree it was easy enough to manage). Don't worry - I have full respect for what I was dealing with there and you should have seen my over-cautious appearance as I cut slow and kept stepping back to look/listen/etc and verifying my escape path was well open.
Now - if anyone in this area is willing/able to volunteer their time and saw, there is still an acute need - PM me and I can put you in touch with the right people. If enough folks are interested I can tell you this particular home owner would LOVE for a bunch of us to descend on his yard and clear out some wood. I asked how he would feel about my suggesting this on the forum and he was quite happy with the idea - there is one particularly large oak laying there on the side of his driveway (2-3' diameter?) that he doesn't think anyone can take - I know better with this group. So if folks want to pull some wood out all I would suggest is plan to spend a bit of extra time taking some brush and junk wood to the curb while there.
His case is particularly interesting too - as I understand it his wife recently passed away and he was in the process of moving - house was to close very soon but as you can guess, the buyers walked right after the tornado hit. So now finding another buyer isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
So what did we do there? Cut brush and trees. Hauled the debris up his driveway (two trucks) and dumped by the road for pick up. Good crew from the youth group made for many hands. We had two saws running most of the day so kept them busy too. Cut up pine, oak, maple, you name it. This time I cut some choice rounds of hardwood and set them aside to bring home as I just hate to see it all go to the curb so I returned with some hard earned wood.
I even had my first "real" tree felling experience as I took down a broken tree that was probably 20" diameter (oak). No where near picture perfect but it went down safe (used a rope to pull it over) so I'm happy enough. Next time I'll move my felling cut a lot closer/lower to my notch... I also took out a very thin (6" diameter) oak that was bent almost to 90* so I knew (because I had read about it here) that it would almost certainly splinter and/or go into a barber chair - and it did, but since I was expecting it to do so it was no big deal (plus being such a small tree it was easy enough to manage). Don't worry - I have full respect for what I was dealing with there and you should have seen my over-cautious appearance as I cut slow and kept stepping back to look/listen/etc and verifying my escape path was well open.
Now - if anyone in this area is willing/able to volunteer their time and saw, there is still an acute need - PM me and I can put you in touch with the right people. If enough folks are interested I can tell you this particular home owner would LOVE for a bunch of us to descend on his yard and clear out some wood. I asked how he would feel about my suggesting this on the forum and he was quite happy with the idea - there is one particularly large oak laying there on the side of his driveway (2-3' diameter?) that he doesn't think anyone can take - I know better with this group. So if folks want to pull some wood out all I would suggest is plan to spend a bit of extra time taking some brush and junk wood to the curb while there.
