Winching windblown trees

This week I carried on removing last winter's windblow. I'd already removed the easy trees, leaving these ones to be pulled out. I attached a sling to each one in turn, then hooked the winch cable into it:

At the other end was my Tirfor T516, attached to a tree with another sling:

Without too much effort, each tree was winched into a position where it could easily be cut up with the chainsaw:

A couple of them had an upturned root plate in the way, so I used this little trick I learned some years ago, propping a forked branch under the winch cable to lift the tree as well as pulling it backwards:

By the end of the day they were all out of the way:

There's still a few logs for me to clear up though...

Plenty to get on with next week, and it looks like the weather will hold!

Mike

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Yet another Saturday in the woods... (and a split level cut felling video)

It's a good job we like it here!

Yesterday's fire looked like this when we arrived:

But once the ash was cleared away, a ball of paper and a few breaths from Tracy yielded some results:

It's always nice when we can do this, as the bed of hot embers mean that you can get a good fire going in minutes, without having to start from scratch with little twigs, etc.

The rest of the day was pretty much as normal. I felled one heavily leaning tree using a "boring cut", but forgot to ask Tracy to film it... but to make up for that I felled another one using a split level cut, and we did remember to get that on film. A split level cut allows you to make a partial felling cut, insert the felling lever, and then complete the cut. The advantage of this is that it lets you fell a tree against the direction it is leaning in (within reason!), and have more control on a windy day. Here you go:



Mike

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