One Big Pine Tree!

A day off, and I spent the day taking down a tree for a friend of a friend.

The tall pine tree you see had major rotting and insect damage, causing it to be hollowed out from the base to about 40 feet up the tree trunk.

I was asked late last fall, if I would be interested to take it down for him, but it was a winter project. Since it leaned out over his property over a lake, so when it was going to fall, it would land in the water or in Minnesota this time of year on to 2 plus feet of ice.

The base was about 3 feet across but the tree trunk was U-shaped with the hollow part in it. It took two cuts with my chainsaw and it fell loudly on to the ice, busting most of the limbs off of it, and also breaking the trunk in 4 spots. I then began cutting the limbs up, and also the trunk from the top down to the base.

I had some help moving branches away and piling them up, Crystalie's Dad came over with me to lend a hand. After I cut most of the tree up, we went back to my truck and trailer drove to the public water access on the lake and then drove all the way back to the property shoreline, where the pieces were laying on the ice. It was about a half mile drive or more back to the shoreline, plowing through the 5-6 inches of fluffy snow on the ice from last weeks storm. But so sweet to park the trailer right next to the pieces to load them up!

The picture of the trailer full of wood, was the second load and the last of it, I hauled home. It will burn good this time of year and the tree was fairly dry, and not to difficult to split into pieces that I could load into the trailer.

I plan to try and cut some more, this weekend with my long weekend, using up some vacation days or I would lose them.

We also enjoyed a nice supper with our friend Marjorie, who came out to play a game of Scrabble, and visit and of course enjoy a nice supper of baked chicken, roasted root vegetables and garlic bread and dessert was cherry pie! as always we had a great visit and it was good to see our friend Marjorie!