Almost lost a Cord of firewood today!!! Video

[Hiram Maxim]

This dead 70' foot Ash tree was killed by the Emerald Ash bore 5 years ago.

After a wind storm 3 days ago I was walking around the yard pondering spring clean-up and such when holy cow my "part of this years wood supply" is going to go in the drink.

It was cracked at it's 22" base and was leaning 30 degrees towards the lake.
I figure almost lost close to a cord of firewood. It would have been a huge hassle of having to then remove the tree from the side of a very steep 60' foot embankment.
100'feet of rope and my Ford F-150 and now I'm back in business.

On top of that my neighbor had some guys working around her house and they were moving some big logs around so I stop and told them if they loaded it up in my trailer I would haul it off for them. They couldn't have been happier to load up that wood. I scored at least a full cord if not more from them.

Here is a video of the tree being pulled back for harvest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlxUCkmp9lg

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Hiram, I haven't viewed the video yet but sounds like you scored pretty good on the neighbor's logs. Congratulations.

The ash borer was a little later up here but we have them doing lots of damage now. It hurts a little to see all the nice ash going bad, but at least it makes good firewood. We'll be burning it for years to come.

 

[Jags]

Good save. Just for reference: at 22" dbh it takes 64 ft to make one cord. (just full of useless knowledge, I know ;-P )

 

[mayhem]

When the video first started I figured there was no way that tree was in danger of falling in the drink...then it falls over and you see how forced perspective comes into play.

Good save.

 

[cmonSTART]

How high did you tie off the rope?

 

[Hiram Maxim]

How high did you tie off the rope?

maybe 20' feet........hard to say because it was leaning.

 

[savageactor7]

For the last 2 years we worked on a 40'x 600' drainage project through the our woods. We harvested about 70 trees using a rope to direct the trees to the area already cleared. If we did 3 trees a day I was happy.

While it was efficient in avoiding hangups it still made for extra work cause the trees were facing the wrong way to drag to the staging area to limb...after awhile we soon found a work around though.

Anyway watching this video made me think of that experience ...it's amazing that even a large tree that leans the wrong way can be can be safely manipulated by proper notching, kerf cutting and using the proper tension on the rope.

The only caveat in using a rope is to remember that you're NOT pulling down the tree, it's gravity that makes the tree fall.

You tie the rope about 20' ft up, secure to the tractor and put tension on it. (higher is even better btw) Then notch the tree in the fall direction, provide some more tension and observe the top for movement. a perfectly upright tree will now be leaning in the proper direction. Now a tree that's leaning the wrong way may require a few kerf cuts in the knoch or more tension to start it leaning correctly, then make the falling cut.

Anyway we should be digging out a swale hole there in the next couple a 4 weeks that will help drain about 8 acres.