The thin veil of clouds could not decide between light gray or pale blue, sheer curtains distorting bright colors. How does so much rain come from such a thin cover? Droplets making hollow pats as they hit the brim of my hat and tiny slaps on the ground.
If I focus hard enough, I'm certain I can hear it over the steady rythm of my boots, the petite dunk when a ball of water hits the surface of a deep puddle. Standing over a pond in a year long rainstorm wouldn't satisfy the fascination with the reverberation of the ripples or the tiny upward spout which shoots out of the ground just after another drop hits.
I have smelled nothing in the world like Washington rain, not the kind of smell you experience when heavy rain hits after a week of hot weather, but the kind that comes after hours of cold drizzle. Moss, leaves, wood and earth mixing with moisture and rising into your nostrils.
The sound a mossy road makes under your boots, or the productive crunch of packed gravel is more pleasing than the empty slap and dull thud of clean concrete or pavement. It feels like I'm walking better, faster and further with every step.
The poplar must be the tallest tree to grow within a six foot radius. They always seem to be moving, even when there is no wind to make them move, or the wind shapes them so that they at least look that way. I love their gnarled bases, something alien from a science fiction movie, roots and knots around plain bark. It is as though the tree cannot keep itself contained within the bark and has to break free, overflowing with life. Watching them lean and sway reminds me of road trips. Rows of fingers covered in green confetti marking out the edges of countless fields, they shift and wave in ways that make me feel like I'm standing still.
I wave as I pass by, his yard dotted with old machine parts, canons, road signs and even an outhouse for decoration. His beard was long and gray, concealing and showing his age at the same time. The felt hat on his head, like the one on mine, showing that he was old enough to understand that hats like this weren't made just for playing dress-up at the fair and rodeo. I raised a hand in a single wave, not sure if he noticed or not, I wonder if I should try again when his friendly voice says "How are you today?"
I reply "Very good, thank you." to which a simple "Good." is sent back, enough having been said.
Showing posts with label trees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trees. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Monday, December 20, 2010
Step 2: Getting Rid of Dangerous Trees and The Ongoing Quest for Firewood
If you read a post of mine from earlier this year called "The Big Move" you would have read a story of toil and despair about how I moved a shed from one side of my yard to the other so that I could make way for a new shed to use for firewood storage. This is a short continuation of the overall project which "The Big Move"was pivotal in completing. This weekend, while all you normal people were resting at home, out at church or making the last dash for holiday shopping before the big day, I was happily ending the lives of 20 maple trees in my backyard.
As I mentioned before, this all started with my desire to build a wood shed in a specific, out of the way spot in my yard. After removing the existing shed, I decided to wait for winter so that I could cut down the corkscrewed and slanted maple trees which were growing over that area. Not only did their slant and the soft soil pose an immediate threat to the shed I wish to build, but they are also choking out many young evergreen trees and within two more years, would have been tall enough to damage my house if they fell in a windstorm.
The recent weeks of unrelenting rain we went through made this a little less than an ideal day, but being eager to make headway, I thought I should take advantage of the sunshine while I still could. The trees would be wet, but not sticky with sap or heavy with leaves (though they are formidably heavy, even without).
My main chainsaw is Husqvarna 51 that my dad recently gave to me, I only asked to borrow it, but he hasn't cut down any trees in years, so he just gave it to me instead. I went out to buy a new chain for it and got a carry case while I was out (if you ever transport a chainsaw, you'll know that keeping the mess off your truck's upholstery is a serious chore). The case was for a Stihl, but cost half what the Husqvarna case would cost, so I guess plastic is just expensive in Sweden. The saw has a 51cc engine which is powerful for it's size and a 20" bar and chain. My secondary chainsaw is a Poulan Pro 260 which has a 40cc engine and an 18" bar and chain.
I used the Husqvarna 51 to cut all the trees down, and the Poulan to do most of the limbing and bucking once the trees were on the ground. There are a lot more opportunities to get your chain stuck while taking off limbs and the Poulan is just not strong enough to go through a tree of considerable size, where the Husqvarna slices through trees feel like I'm carving turkey, with a lot more sawdust.
The two most dangerous problems you will generally run into when felling a tree are when the tree doesn't finish falling, such as when it's caught on something (usually other trees) or when the tree falls or starts to fall in the wrong direction. In the 20 trees I cut down, I couldn't help but run into these problems at least a couple of times.
In my opinion, the more immediately dangerous of the two problems is usually the tree falling in the wrong direction, specifically when there is something in one direction that you don't want to inadvertently destroy. In my case, however, I positioned the notch so that if the tree did fall the wrong way, it would land in a clear area without hitting the house.
Everyone is probably fairly familiar with the principals of felling a tree. You look at the variables which will make a tree fall in a particular direction (hopefully that is the direction you want, or at least a directly that will work), then you notch the tree on that side going far enough through to encourage the tree to fall to one side, but not far enough to cause the weight of the tree to pinch your bar and trap your chainsaw inside. Once you have made the notch by making two angled cuts, you then cut through the opposite (back) side until the tree begins to fall. This makes the tree fall away from you and your chainsaw.
In the case of this tree, it didn't have any apparent lean at all, but split into three large trunks half way up, so it was especially heavy at the top (a classic characteristic of many maple trees). I did have some difficulty making the notch on this tree since it was on a steep hill, but I guess that the notch I made was just not big enough to convince the tree to fall down the hill towards my creek. When I cut almost half way through the tree, it began to lean very slightly to the rear, not enough to trap my chainsaw, but enough that I could see it wanted to fall in the other direction.
These are the moments which take some critical thinking. If I continued cutting, it would almost definitely trap my chainsaw, adding a thrilling element of added danger to the already complicated situation. If I tried to cut through the back without using a notch, or tried to make a new notch on the back side using my first cut, I would also be likely to pinch my bar, trapping the chainsaw. In both scenarios, there was no way to guarantee that the tree would fall in the right direction anyway, since it was only just barely leaning backwards from my first cut. A tree trunk spinning and falling in any direction would be very dangerous.
I decided that the tree was still strong enough that I could make a new notch on the "back" of the tree, about 18" up the trunk from my first cut. Then I could cut through from behind and get the tree to fall toward the house. This could have been done lower than my first attempt as well, but I felt like there would be less pressure above my first cut and therefore less of a chance at pinching my bar and it would lower the chance that the pressure from the falling tree would be just enough to break apart what was left of my first cut, sending chunks of wood in all directions. The operating principal in that assumption was that it would be falling off of my first cut instead of with it (this assumption was correct). The tree came to the ground with ease and is now resting in a location which actually makes it easier to limb.
The main reason that I feel as though this type of problem is considerably less dangerous (though still dangerous enough) than a tree which is caught on other trees is that, if you catch it soon enough, falling backwards is much easier to control or correct since the variable forces are limited. If I really wanted to, I could have strung up my 2-ton puller and pulled the tree in the direction I wanted it to go, and I could have done so easily and with plenty of time while the tree stood strong.
I ran into the other problem three times, but was able to solve them all with relative certainty. In the case of my first stuck tree, it was about a 13" tree which became caught in the tops of some nearby, younger trees, which kept the cut trunk resting on the stump at an angle. I first tried to winch this off, using the trunk of a larger tree I had cut down a few minutes before. The winch came close to freeing the top of the tree, but I just couldn't get it far enough to pull the tree down. In my next attempt I made a new cut in the stump, leaving a little more space for the trunk to fall. This caused the trunk to fall off the stump, but was not enough momentum to free the tangled tops. Now having the base of the trunk touching the ground, I had a better angle, so I made a new notch in the top side of the trunk and cut upward from the bottom a little, then went back to the notched top and cut the rest of the way through. The base fell away and the tree finally came lose and landed on the ground.
The danger in that type of situation is that so many variables could bring the tree down and the addition of a spin or roll caused by the branches could land the tree just about anywhere. A strong wind or surrounding branches finally giving way could cause the tree to come down at any moment.
Luckily, the other two "stuck" trees I ran into were much easier to fix, both were falling down my ravine, and when they got stuck, they were at such an angle that they were already almost to the ground. In both cases the tops simply got caught in the branches of the millions of other maple trees on my property. One of them was just barely pinned to the stump it was cut from, so I used a sledge to smash the end off. Since I never had to enter the path of the falling tree, I'd call that one the safest.
The other one, however, was part of a cluster of tree trunks that grew out of the same root system, Since it was on the outside and I only had one more trunk to cut in that cluster, I decided to let the weight of the last falling tree push it down the rest of the way. I notched the next trunk in the right direction, made the cut and backed away as one tree knocked the other down like a bowling pin. Another case where careful thinking allowed me to make everything safe again, without putting myself in the path of any serious danger.
Aside from those adventures, the rest of the trees went down quickly and smoothly, landing exactly where I wanted them and without any problems. Some of the trees were as small as six inches, and a few were as big as about eighteen, but the average tree was about nine to ten inches in diameter. You would think that taking out so many like this would have a huge impact in my backyard, but when you look at the first picture, you'll see that I would have to clear about 100 small maples before there was a major difference.
This picture shows where nine of the 20 trees fell, directly into my backyard.
This pictures shows how close the very tops were to being tall enough to hit the house. As I mentioned before, in just two more years they would have hit the house when they came down.
This is a picture of the large tree which decided to fall back towards the house.
Here is a limb which broke under it's own weight from the force of the fall down into my ravine.
You can't see the depth in this picture, but the trunk of that tree is about 15' below the stump I took the picture from.
This is the pair of trees in which I used one to knock the other down since it didn't fall all the way.
This is the base of the same tree, if you look closely at the moss you can see water droplets pouring off. The ground was so wet that this stump was pouring out water.
This is another large limb which broke under it's own weight when it crashed down into my ravine. I'll get lots of good firewood out of this one, I just have to figure out an easy way to get it all back up the hill.
I have a few more maple trees that I would like to take out on my property, but since I took care of the ones which posed any type of danger to my house or shed, I don't think I'll be taking down quite as many at one time in the near future.
One of my secondary goals in thinning the trees was to make room and give light to the young evergreen saplings which are struggling to grow under the thick canopy. This should give them some space for now, most of my future felling will revolve around even more space for them, but this will be enough for now.
As I mentioned before, this all started with my desire to build a wood shed in a specific, out of the way spot in my yard. After removing the existing shed, I decided to wait for winter so that I could cut down the corkscrewed and slanted maple trees which were growing over that area. Not only did their slant and the soft soil pose an immediate threat to the shed I wish to build, but they are also choking out many young evergreen trees and within two more years, would have been tall enough to damage my house if they fell in a windstorm.
The recent weeks of unrelenting rain we went through made this a little less than an ideal day, but being eager to make headway, I thought I should take advantage of the sunshine while I still could. The trees would be wet, but not sticky with sap or heavy with leaves (though they are formidably heavy, even without).
My main chainsaw is Husqvarna 51 that my dad recently gave to me, I only asked to borrow it, but he hasn't cut down any trees in years, so he just gave it to me instead. I went out to buy a new chain for it and got a carry case while I was out (if you ever transport a chainsaw, you'll know that keeping the mess off your truck's upholstery is a serious chore). The case was for a Stihl, but cost half what the Husqvarna case would cost, so I guess plastic is just expensive in Sweden. The saw has a 51cc engine which is powerful for it's size and a 20" bar and chain. My secondary chainsaw is a Poulan Pro 260 which has a 40cc engine and an 18" bar and chain.
I used the Husqvarna 51 to cut all the trees down, and the Poulan to do most of the limbing and bucking once the trees were on the ground. There are a lot more opportunities to get your chain stuck while taking off limbs and the Poulan is just not strong enough to go through a tree of considerable size, where the Husqvarna slices through trees feel like I'm carving turkey, with a lot more sawdust.
The two most dangerous problems you will generally run into when felling a tree are when the tree doesn't finish falling, such as when it's caught on something (usually other trees) or when the tree falls or starts to fall in the wrong direction. In the 20 trees I cut down, I couldn't help but run into these problems at least a couple of times.
In my opinion, the more immediately dangerous of the two problems is usually the tree falling in the wrong direction, specifically when there is something in one direction that you don't want to inadvertently destroy. In my case, however, I positioned the notch so that if the tree did fall the wrong way, it would land in a clear area without hitting the house.
Everyone is probably fairly familiar with the principals of felling a tree. You look at the variables which will make a tree fall in a particular direction (hopefully that is the direction you want, or at least a directly that will work), then you notch the tree on that side going far enough through to encourage the tree to fall to one side, but not far enough to cause the weight of the tree to pinch your bar and trap your chainsaw inside. Once you have made the notch by making two angled cuts, you then cut through the opposite (back) side until the tree begins to fall. This makes the tree fall away from you and your chainsaw.
In the case of this tree, it didn't have any apparent lean at all, but split into three large trunks half way up, so it was especially heavy at the top (a classic characteristic of many maple trees). I did have some difficulty making the notch on this tree since it was on a steep hill, but I guess that the notch I made was just not big enough to convince the tree to fall down the hill towards my creek. When I cut almost half way through the tree, it began to lean very slightly to the rear, not enough to trap my chainsaw, but enough that I could see it wanted to fall in the other direction.
These are the moments which take some critical thinking. If I continued cutting, it would almost definitely trap my chainsaw, adding a thrilling element of added danger to the already complicated situation. If I tried to cut through the back without using a notch, or tried to make a new notch on the back side using my first cut, I would also be likely to pinch my bar, trapping the chainsaw. In both scenarios, there was no way to guarantee that the tree would fall in the right direction anyway, since it was only just barely leaning backwards from my first cut. A tree trunk spinning and falling in any direction would be very dangerous.
I decided that the tree was still strong enough that I could make a new notch on the "back" of the tree, about 18" up the trunk from my first cut. Then I could cut through from behind and get the tree to fall toward the house. This could have been done lower than my first attempt as well, but I felt like there would be less pressure above my first cut and therefore less of a chance at pinching my bar and it would lower the chance that the pressure from the falling tree would be just enough to break apart what was left of my first cut, sending chunks of wood in all directions. The operating principal in that assumption was that it would be falling off of my first cut instead of with it (this assumption was correct). The tree came to the ground with ease and is now resting in a location which actually makes it easier to limb.
The main reason that I feel as though this type of problem is considerably less dangerous (though still dangerous enough) than a tree which is caught on other trees is that, if you catch it soon enough, falling backwards is much easier to control or correct since the variable forces are limited. If I really wanted to, I could have strung up my 2-ton puller and pulled the tree in the direction I wanted it to go, and I could have done so easily and with plenty of time while the tree stood strong.
I ran into the other problem three times, but was able to solve them all with relative certainty. In the case of my first stuck tree, it was about a 13" tree which became caught in the tops of some nearby, younger trees, which kept the cut trunk resting on the stump at an angle. I first tried to winch this off, using the trunk of a larger tree I had cut down a few minutes before. The winch came close to freeing the top of the tree, but I just couldn't get it far enough to pull the tree down. In my next attempt I made a new cut in the stump, leaving a little more space for the trunk to fall. This caused the trunk to fall off the stump, but was not enough momentum to free the tangled tops. Now having the base of the trunk touching the ground, I had a better angle, so I made a new notch in the top side of the trunk and cut upward from the bottom a little, then went back to the notched top and cut the rest of the way through. The base fell away and the tree finally came lose and landed on the ground.
The danger in that type of situation is that so many variables could bring the tree down and the addition of a spin or roll caused by the branches could land the tree just about anywhere. A strong wind or surrounding branches finally giving way could cause the tree to come down at any moment.
Luckily, the other two "stuck" trees I ran into were much easier to fix, both were falling down my ravine, and when they got stuck, they were at such an angle that they were already almost to the ground. In both cases the tops simply got caught in the branches of the millions of other maple trees on my property. One of them was just barely pinned to the stump it was cut from, so I used a sledge to smash the end off. Since I never had to enter the path of the falling tree, I'd call that one the safest.
The other one, however, was part of a cluster of tree trunks that grew out of the same root system, Since it was on the outside and I only had one more trunk to cut in that cluster, I decided to let the weight of the last falling tree push it down the rest of the way. I notched the next trunk in the right direction, made the cut and backed away as one tree knocked the other down like a bowling pin. Another case where careful thinking allowed me to make everything safe again, without putting myself in the path of any serious danger.
Aside from those adventures, the rest of the trees went down quickly and smoothly, landing exactly where I wanted them and without any problems. Some of the trees were as small as six inches, and a few were as big as about eighteen, but the average tree was about nine to ten inches in diameter. You would think that taking out so many like this would have a huge impact in my backyard, but when you look at the first picture, you'll see that I would have to clear about 100 small maples before there was a major difference.
This picture shows where nine of the 20 trees fell, directly into my backyard.
This pictures shows how close the very tops were to being tall enough to hit the house. As I mentioned before, in just two more years they would have hit the house when they came down.
This is a picture of the large tree which decided to fall back towards the house.
Here is a limb which broke under it's own weight from the force of the fall down into my ravine.
This is the pair of trees in which I used one to knock the other down since it didn't fall all the way.
This is another large limb which broke under it's own weight when it crashed down into my ravine. I'll get lots of good firewood out of this one, I just have to figure out an easy way to get it all back up the hill.
I have a few more maple trees that I would like to take out on my property, but since I took care of the ones which posed any type of danger to my house or shed, I don't think I'll be taking down quite as many at one time in the near future.
One of my secondary goals in thinning the trees was to make room and give light to the young evergreen saplings which are struggling to grow under the thick canopy. This should give them some space for now, most of my future felling will revolve around even more space for them, but this will be enough for now.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
More Talk About Plants
One of my fellow commuters, who lives a couple of miles away, gave me two tangerine trees yesterday. He had grown them from seeds that sprouted in his compost pile, but decided that he didn't have the space for them in his back yard.
Since I have plenty of space in my yard, with lots of sun exposure, I picked them up. It seems like they should be able to bear fruit here at least every few years after maturity, but even if they don't, they are neat looking trees which I'll enjoy having around.
My favorite thing about fruit trees is what little effort they require to maintain and how much fruit they can produce with that little bit of effort; for those reasons, I like vines a lot too. My grape vine is very healthy this year since I cleared out the blackberry bushes which it had been competing with for several years prior. This year it grew up into the branches of a large old maple that had a low hanging bough nearby. Grape vines are impressively tenacious, this one managed to take over a 10x10 section of this bough with only three vines leading up into the branches.
I don't want the vine to waste it's nutrients producing fruit I can't reach, and I don't want it killing the maple tree, so I cut the three vines leading up to the maple. Over the weekend I noticed more buds shooting out of the remaining lower section. Next spring I hope to cut the grape vine all the way back so that I can repair the fencing it has overgrown, take out the remaining blackberry bushes that are competing with it and allow it to grow back with a fresh start.
You can see the healthy, happy grape vine behind me in the picture below showing my happy, healthy corn.
This picture was taken on Friday, but over the warm weekend, the largest corn stalks have actually grown to chest high on me. This year has been unbelievably good for corn in Washington.
For those who don't know already, all of the large trees with pretty blue sky behind them are located on my acre. Those trees in particular are at the bottom of the ravine, where the creek crosses through the corner of my woods. Right behind the grape vine, however, is a shallow slope without any trees on it, I'm thinking about putting in a chicken pen in this location when I finally get chickens. The area in question is full of stinging neddles during the summer, and chickens are particularly good at clearing out small vegetation.
Here is a picture of my beets, just before I pulled the weeds around them. Since this is the first year I've had my garden in this area, weeds come up frequently, hopefully this will slow down next year as I continuously till the area.
Here are my carrots, which are doing particularly well.
And these are my beans so far. They are in the shadiest spot, so they aren't growing as quickly, but they generally have a long season, so they should still produce something for me before it's over.
My last two rows, which included cucumbers, onions, sunflowers and pumpkins have not produced anything promising. The spot was just too shady to get good results. Next year, I'll move my garden over and start with the row my beans are in, since that seems to be the last viable row for growing.
On a side note, my motorcycle is at Burton's now getting new tires put on. I went with a Kenda 671 for the rear and a Kenda 657 for the front tire. They are similar models, but Kenda didn't make any lines which had both tire sizes I needed. I had Kenda tires on my first motorcycle and they are pretty good. They gave me no problems, in fact, one of them picked up a nail once that was bent at a perfect 90 degree angle. It went through one of the treads perfectly, without rupturing the tire.
Since the old tires are still in decent shape, I'll keep them around in case I have any problems down the road and need a tire that's good for a couple thousand miles.
I'll pick up the V-Star on Saturday, then it will be time to check everything thoroughly to make sure it's ready for the trip, now only three weeks away.
Since I have plenty of space in my yard, with lots of sun exposure, I picked them up. It seems like they should be able to bear fruit here at least every few years after maturity, but even if they don't, they are neat looking trees which I'll enjoy having around.
My favorite thing about fruit trees is what little effort they require to maintain and how much fruit they can produce with that little bit of effort; for those reasons, I like vines a lot too. My grape vine is very healthy this year since I cleared out the blackberry bushes which it had been competing with for several years prior. This year it grew up into the branches of a large old maple that had a low hanging bough nearby. Grape vines are impressively tenacious, this one managed to take over a 10x10 section of this bough with only three vines leading up into the branches.
I don't want the vine to waste it's nutrients producing fruit I can't reach, and I don't want it killing the maple tree, so I cut the three vines leading up to the maple. Over the weekend I noticed more buds shooting out of the remaining lower section. Next spring I hope to cut the grape vine all the way back so that I can repair the fencing it has overgrown, take out the remaining blackberry bushes that are competing with it and allow it to grow back with a fresh start.
You can see the healthy, happy grape vine behind me in the picture below showing my happy, healthy corn.
This picture was taken on Friday, but over the warm weekend, the largest corn stalks have actually grown to chest high on me. This year has been unbelievably good for corn in Washington.
For those who don't know already, all of the large trees with pretty blue sky behind them are located on my acre. Those trees in particular are at the bottom of the ravine, where the creek crosses through the corner of my woods. Right behind the grape vine, however, is a shallow slope without any trees on it, I'm thinking about putting in a chicken pen in this location when I finally get chickens. The area in question is full of stinging neddles during the summer, and chickens are particularly good at clearing out small vegetation.
Here is a picture of my beets, just before I pulled the weeds around them. Since this is the first year I've had my garden in this area, weeds come up frequently, hopefully this will slow down next year as I continuously till the area.
Here are my carrots, which are doing particularly well.
And these are my beans so far. They are in the shadiest spot, so they aren't growing as quickly, but they generally have a long season, so they should still produce something for me before it's over.
My last two rows, which included cucumbers, onions, sunflowers and pumpkins have not produced anything promising. The spot was just too shady to get good results. Next year, I'll move my garden over and start with the row my beans are in, since that seems to be the last viable row for growing.
On a side note, my motorcycle is at Burton's now getting new tires put on. I went with a Kenda 671 for the rear and a Kenda 657 for the front tire. They are similar models, but Kenda didn't make any lines which had both tire sizes I needed. I had Kenda tires on my first motorcycle and they are pretty good. They gave me no problems, in fact, one of them picked up a nail once that was bent at a perfect 90 degree angle. It went through one of the treads perfectly, without rupturing the tire.
Since the old tires are still in decent shape, I'll keep them around in case I have any problems down the road and need a tire that's good for a couple thousand miles.
I'll pick up the V-Star on Saturday, then it will be time to check everything thoroughly to make sure it's ready for the trip, now only three weeks away.
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