Blow the Man Down

Last weekend a crew went by on the far side of the road pollarding trees that threatened the power lines. I thought I'd better get busy, and spent the Thanksgiving weekend dismembering the hophornbeam. Luckily, Boris was on hand.

The bole had forked into four main stems with minor branches adding to the mess. I wanted a clean, predicable felling path for each, so we started by clearing away anything that threatened to obstruct the line of descent.

We worked from the scaffolding, always dropping the limbs away from the platform--and the power line.

By the end of Thanksgiving, only one stem remained--tall, but relatively small in diameter. This weekend Jo and I tackled it. I brought the scaffolding around to make a felling notch on the driveway side and then dropped it with a cut on the opposite side. We put a rope on it to make sure it didn't back onto the power line, but it actually fell quite close to the intended direction. It diverged a little to the right (following the downslope of the driveway), clipping the maple to the right of it. This knocked off a co-dominant stem, saving me the trouble of climbing up and cutting it!

 It has a strange totemic appearance now. I thought I'd leave it up for a while, at least until Hallowe'en. From some angles it looks like a giant hand scrabbling at the sky with its stumps of fingers.

Now I'm engaged in chopping it up for firewood and hauling it away to the woodpile (I'm taking a break right now--that is HEAVY wood!).

I've been chipping down the smaller branches; the chipper complains a little but chops it up quite well. I'll save some pieces for Colin--he wanted to try using it for engraving blocks. That split up the main trunk looks quite black inside. I wonder if it was hit by lightning after all?