Cleaning up the storm mess....

[certified106]

Well I finally got started on the some of the trees that we had blow down from the storm that rolled through our area a few weeks ago. The cleanup will take me months and the photos below are just from the main trail that leads from the house up to the top of the hill. The humidity today was 96% and the temp was 84° talk about miserable cutting weather!

Pulling the Hickory out of the ravine. This tree was wedged between two buckeye trees laying across a 75 foot deep ravine. When I was pulling it out the top branches on the Hickory bent the two 8-12" Buckeye trees over and had the Hickory tree stretched out up off the ground and then busted busted the Buckeyes off.
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Topping the Hickory before dragging it off to the staging area.
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My weapons of destruction
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Hickory tops. The majority of these will get chunked up for smoking wood eventually.
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Bunch of miscellaneous wood I had to cut to get down my drive after the storm.
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[certified106]

Getting ready to fell the remains of a green ash tree that was half broken off and hung up. There was no way I was going to cut on it until I had some tension on it and new where it was going to go.

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After I got it felled and the top out of it

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There was a rotten spot below where I made the cut. I wanted to make sure where I was cutting wasn't hollow.
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Green Ash coming over the top of the ravine
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Tractor wouldn't budge it so I had to break out the big toy.
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[certified106]

These are a few picture from the 5 acre section of the woods that I moved on to after getting the logs up over the hill

Dead Oak that needs to come down
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Dead Hickory that needs to come down.
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Storm damage
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Dead Elm half down and hung up
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Big Oak half down
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Another Oak down
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Another Oak down
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This is what the majority of my trails look like. Probably have three weeks or more of work to just get my trails open again.
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Spent the rest of the afternoon clearing trails inch by inch.
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[bogydave]

Man what a mess. Not all level ground to work on either.
Slow & easy, some stored energy in some of those blowdowns.
No boring days ahead for you.
You have nice equipment to handle it, just stay hydrated.
Gonna make a big pile of fire wood.

Great pictures

 

[DexterDay]

Wow. We had some bad storms before the 4th. But you got SLAMMED!

Stay cool and drink lots of water. The temps here in Ohio (w/ humidity) have been miserable.

Lookin like you got a good handle on it though. Cant wait to see the HUGE stacks that wood will produce.

 

[certified106]

Man what a mess. Not all level ground to work on either.
Slow & easy, some stored energy in some of those blowdowns.
No boring days ahead for you.
You have nice equipment to handle it, just stay hydrated.
Gonna make a big pile of fire wood.

Great pictures

Yeah the ravine left me wishing for shoes with huge cleats on them! You could barely even stand on the hill and keep your footing then you add into that mess the fact you are already nervous about cutting on a tree that is pinned down and a running chainsaw and you have a great recipe for disaster if Murphy rears his ugly head. It takes forever to get this stuff cut up when you have to consider your cuts carefully. I already had a few branches swing how I wasn't expecting them to because they had small saplings you couldn't see pinned down underneath of all the debris.

 

[certified106]

Wow. We had some bad storms before the 4th. But you got SLAMMED!

Stay cool and drink lots of water. The temps here in Ohio (w/ humidity) have been miserable.

Lookin like you got a good handle on it though. Cant wait to see the HUGE stacks that wood will produce.

I agree the humidity has been horrible! I walked over and looked at the outdoor weather station this morning and at 6 am it was 93% relative humidity. I can't wait until I am actually splitting this stuff I am cutting on but for now I am just trying to clear the debris and get the big logs drug up to where it's flat enough to buck and split them. Probably won't start splitting until this fall. Heck I need to go get my splitter from my dad it's been at his house since last fall.

 

[ScotO]

certified, you got plenty of wood to process there! Nice to see some of that hickory will be used in the smoking process, it is one of the best woods for it! Keep us posted on your progress, like Dexter said make sure you stay hydrated, it's been miserable here too. Last night the air was so thick in our house, every thing you touched seemed like it was wet!

 

[Cowboy Billy]

Looks like ya got some good wood even though its a PIA to get too. It sometimes amazes me a living tree will blow down and not a dead one. Make you realize how much sail area the leaves have.

Billy

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Certified, you have a pastel of work to do there but it is all good firewood. Shoot, I haven't even looked at most of our woods but no doubt plenty is downed. It can wait until winter for most of it.

 

[thewoodlands]

certified106, like bogydave said you have lots of work. Nice job getting those trees up out of the ravine. The storms have missed us since 2008, that summer we had a micro burst hit this area, we still have about four trees that are hung up, three cherry and one maple.

Zap