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Kings United Cemetery Cleanup Day II
Saturday morning brought cool weather and overcast skies. Ideal weather for working in the brush. Still though, you have to keep an eye on your water intake. For me, I sweat a lot now when working. Comes with age I guess 🙂 During a day like this I can easily put down 2-3 litres of water while working.
This was a big undertaking. Much more labour intensive than last weekend. Maybe that’s why most people stayed away from the request to volunteer some manual labour. Only Bruce Sinclair and his dad Lloyd showed up. We are grateful to them for that.
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What kind of tree is this?
first time seeing buds This tree is at the top of our driveway, a natural tree that I just decided to start trimming years ago because it was beginning to grow up into the branches above it.
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Kings United Cemetery Cleanup Day
Up a tree without a …
A great volunteer effort in the community of Loch Katrine yesterday. We assembled with chainsaws and tractors to take down many large trees that were starting to get in the way of power lines. -
Clearing land behind workshop
excavating behind garage Well I finally gave up on trying to break up the embankment with the skidsteer while waiting for local contractors to show up (over a year waiting). The soil got too compact for me to break into, so I called a company from a nearby town. Blaine MacLane Excavation did a site visit on Saturday and Tuesday morning they showed up. Robert was the operator and he did a excellent job. I easily recommend them again for any work. For them, no job is too small or too big.
I set up my camera for time lapse photography and
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Pine trees and porcupines
Animal tracks in the snow Pretty sure these tracks in the snow belong to a porcupine. We have seen evidence of bark being peeled form trees on the property, as shown in the following picture.
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Black bear on night cam
caught on camera I set up the trail camera to see the deer as they walked by, but what a surprise to see a black bear roaming down the same pathway! Holy Toledo! I did not know that #blackbears roamed the property.
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Chainsaw accident
close call on Thursday Thursday afternoon was a great day to be in the woods. I was continuing my work of thinning the forest between the house and the lake. I had felled a gnarly spruce, the kind full of twisted branches and hardened sap, all from a hard life of growing in the forest.
The tree felled where I wanted it to and I set out to delimb the tree. Careful as I am, the bar kicked bar and the nose caught into the chainsaw safety pants. I never go into the woods without wearing them, and a good thing I was. The chain hooked and tore into the kevlar lining. The lining on its own is designed to hook the teeth of the chain and pretty much bring the rotation to a stop. Which it did, but the force of the kickback had enough momentum to cut through the safety pants, catch the canvas pants I was wearing (pictured above) and cut into it. The result was a short gash on the inside of my left leg, just about 2 inches from the kneecap.
Limped up to the house, called out for some help and proceed to make our way to the hospital. 3 hours later we’re back home and I have 3 stitches to close the wound. Close call.
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Pine tree crotch
Pine tree crotch I had to clean up a pine tree that fell over form the last snow fall of the year, heavy and wet, the pine tree did not stand a chance as it was growing along the edge of the trail. So it really only had branches on one side. The snow collected, and with no counter balance on the other side, down it came.
What I could salvage from it was a length of the trunk and a collection of the crown. This video shows a bit of that process.
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Burning bush
spring cleanup I’ve been thinning the forest around the house since the first of March. Taking advantage of the cool temps and lack of snow. Still doesn’t take long to work up a sweat, that’s for sure. We will be chipping a lot of the felled trees but I thought I’d try a hand at burning some of the smaller boughs. There’s plenty of them. There’s just as much work involved in burning scrub as there is in picking it up and passing it through the wood chipper.
Was outdoors for a couple hours. Its not work when you think of it as exercise 🙂 . Cut down six trees, all produced a 12 footer, and a couple managed to squeak in 8 footers. One was a bit wonky. It appears to have formerly been a sheared Christmas tree that grew out over the course of a dozen years. Cutting it down showed that ants had made a home at the base. Had to cut away 16 inches at the butt until there was solid wood. It produced a 8 footer, although not much of a timber board. The base was probably 8 inches across but the top might have been 3-4 inches. That quite tapering of the tree over the first 8 ft. Its is a good indication that it was a sheared tree during its early stages.
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Pine tree down
Pine tree down Sad to discover this pine tree down across the road today. 🙁 It was at a turn in the road, we kept the tree trimmed over the years leaving just enough branches to walk or drive under. No more.
Always sad to see an otherwise healthy tree go down. Apparently though it did not have much of a root ball, so that played a part in its demise.
small root ball If the tree had fallen anywhere else I’d leave it alone, as it might still continue to grow even like that. But its in the road we use, so I don’t know what we’ll do there, mostly likely cut it down and salvage what we can for woodworking projects and the rest will go for the fireplace.
