Ten Fewer Trees - Seven Loads of Branches

17 August 2012
8:28 PM

Sunrise at	5:46 AM	in direction	55°	Northeast
Sunset at	10:01 PM	in direction	304°	Northwest

Duration of day: 16 hours, 15 minutes (6 minutes, 52 seconds shorter than yesterday)

I would take a photo to show the progress we made in trimming branches from the trees and hauling them away, but I am not sure you would see much difference.  First, I did not take a photo of the spruce trees and the one birch that were on the far side of the driveway where we been most effective.  Secondly, there is still A LOT to do.

I worked on the trees closest to the house Tuesday and Wednesday.  I made piles of clipped branches and stopped when I could not get back any further down the tree trunk.  I also couldn't reach branches that were under those I'd trimmed, so it seemed a good stopping point.  Thursday, both Gary and I worked on the trees at the other side of the driveway.  Our reasoning was that we needed to get the spruce trimmed and cut first since right now, they are lying across the pallets where we will store them.  I don't know how Jamie felled them so they landed there without crushing the aging pallets, but he did. 

We made several piles of branches between both locations and my goal today was to haul away all of the branches that had been trimmed.  Seven loads later I am three loads short of that goal.  One is in the truck waiting to be hauled away tomorrow. 

I am averaging about one load an hour.  That seems really slow, doesn't it?  But, I load up the truck making sure I have it packed tight in the truck bed. I didn't the first load and had to reload it from four lanes of Farmer's Loop Road.  A nice military man helped (I could tell by the way he called me Ma'am and the hair cut).  Then I drive into the transfer station, back up to one of the large containers and unload by tossing selective branches back into corners.  Most who are dropping off construction material or branches like me don't do that and the containers fill up fast right at the container opening.  So I try to toss them into sections that are nearly empty but require my throwing branches over the top of the large containers.  It's good exercise, but time consuming.  Then I drive back home and do it again.

Daunting to think that I will work for three hours tomorrow and still have to come back to trimming more branches before we can begin to saw logs.  We agreed log length will be 4 feet (48"), a multiple of 16" and the size that fits most easily in our wood stove.  Even though I tend to be an optimist, I doubt I will get to that tomorrow.