Home site clearing

The last several weeks we've been hard at it to clear the home site of the last few trees before the builder starts excavation of the foundation and starts the home building.

We have created about another three cords of wood from the crooked hardwoods we cut and bucked.  The larger straight trees we want to keep for future projects (beams and other decorative features we'd like to have in the home) are to be cut down.  The good ones are oak and hickory.

A decent sized oak being felled:
Then skidded out to the landing with a Farmi 351P winch and MF 240 tractor where we buck it and split it (unless we keep it for later milling)

Logging with the Farmi

With cold, but dry weather over the weekend it made for ideal conditions to do some tree clearing for the homesite.  This will take a number of weekends to complete and we are hoping to have this done before the trees bud.  Fortunately we have some labor saving machinery to help make this adventure more productive and quite a bit safer than when we cleared the driveway.  Any trees that get hung up in a fall we can put the winch on it and pull it down with relative ease from a distance.  When we did the driveway we had to hook up a come-along winch (hand powered) with a rope.  The tractor powered winch will easily pull 3-4 logs at a time from the forest up to the skid plate of the winch where I can then latch them and drag them up to the wood shed area where we limb, buck and split them into firewood.

Chainsaw Accident Near Miss!

We started in on the homesite clearing this weekend.  Temperature was a comfortable 30 degree fahrenheit, sunny with variable wind conditions.  A decent day for sawyering. However since it's been almost a year since I was last felling trees I was a little out of practice but still full of confidence - a recipe for mistakes and potential injury!  Chainsaws are very dangerous machines that require full concentration and attention to proper protocols.  I had just finished notching an 8" diameter ash, completed the back cut to drop the tree and moved a safe distance away for the fall.  At that point I brought the saw across my thigh to rest it there and accidentally snagged the first inch or two of the chain bar on my thigh...thank goodness for my safety chaps!!  The chain cut the outer fabric of the chaps and caught the microfiber mat causing it to bind and slow the chain speed almost to a stop.  This little mishap was a bold reminder of how important it is to ALWAYS wear your PPE!!

Lawn Care and Log Splitting Help

August came and went quickly --as usual.  The grass got greener and longer forcing us to finally haul the lawn mower up to cut it.  Fortunately we had a little help one Saturday when our son and his friend decided to come along so they could earn a little money.  So we put their youthfulness to work splitting wood and mowing.  Our attention was also on the timber frame outhouse construction and there we got the boys to help us with notching of the logs with a mallet and chisel.

Scott cutting notch

Alex chiseling a notch

Alex hopping off the MF 240 after testing the new front tires