An extra pair of hands

Today we were pleased to have Keith, a friend from SWOG, visit to help out at the wood. In return he got lunch and a chance to try out some of the tools we're using prior to buying them himself - he's doing his chainsaw training in December. Thankfully he wasn't put off by my woodland dress-sense - I don't pay much attention to the colour of what I'm wearing when working in the wood, and today managed to wear red, green, blue and orange:
Tracy headed off down the hill a bit and worked on some Chestnut and Hazel, producing a good pile of logs:
meanwhile Keith and I cleared some Hazel and Holly at the edge of the wood to clear a path for felling the Sycamore that are along the boundary and leaning over our neighbour's yard. They were pretty awkward to fell, as they're growing out of the side of a steep bank, and have forks in some of the stems:
We used both pulleys to set up a 3:1 system again, as we did earlier in the week. This time though I used the land rover as the final anchor point:
After all, it does weigh about 1700kg, and this anchor point was after the 3:1 ratio, so wouldn't get pulled too hard. The land rover's well out of range of the tree though - I've seen too many YouTube videos of trees landing on cars to make that mistake...

Keith helped a lot with the ropes - it made a big difference having an extra person, as Tracy could focus on her patch while we worked on the Sycamores.
Where the stems fork you have two choices - fell them together, or fell each separately above the fork. We did both during the day, dictated mainly by the (very annoying) ivy that sometimes binds the stems together. This was one where we felled above the fork:
Keith heaved on the rope at my signal:
And Tracy managed to get an action shot of a tree falling:
As the day progressed the view through to Francis' yard became more clear:
Here's a couple of before and after shots. You can see the Sycamore getting thinner to the right of centre, and where Tracy was working to the left of centre:
We've got friends visiting tomorrow, and will work in the wood again on Sunday we think...

Mike