[AT] Thanksgiving Day tractor chores+trees

[Gene Dotson]

    Dean;
    Thanks for sharing your experience. Good to know all had a great time.
    About a month ago, after I got my soybeans off, I decided to cut some of 
the bigger trees from my west property line that were too big to take out 
with my little dozer. Mostly hackberry trees and encroaching into the 
cropland. Neighbor's field was still standing corn, so didn't want any trees 
to fall over there.
    All went well until I come to a very large hackberry, about 22" in 
diameter and the entire trunk was hollow. I notched the tree to fall to my 
field then made the main cut from the back side just a little bit higher 
than the notch. Should fall toward the notch, right? Wrong, that tree stood 
there perfectly straight and started pinching the chain, so I pulled the saw 
out and watched as the saw cut closed and the tree didn't fall. Straight as 
a Tennessee hickory. Didn't want to push my luck, so went to the barn and 
got the tractor and 3 long chains and strung them together so I would be at 
a safe distance and just a very light tug and the tree came down where it 
was supposed to be. Those hackberry trees are one tough tree. Had to have 
been perfectly balanced.
    I have found the perfect use for hackberry and mulberry trees!!! Fasten 
a chain to them and pull them over rough ground. Did a beautiful job 
smoothing the ground I cleared in my woods and even rakes over the rocks and 
brush.

            Gene



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dean Vinson" <dean at vinsonfarm.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 2:44 PM
Subject: [AT] Thanksgiving Day tractor chores


> My kids and I drove up to my dad's farm in northeast Ohio for 
> Thanksgiving,
> and had a fine time.  In what seems to be becoming a Thanksgiving 
> tradition
> for us, we cut down a dead tree that had become a nuisance along one of 
> the
> farm lanes, and then had a great bonfire.
>
> Big old poplar I think, maybe three feet in diameter and 60 feet high.  To
> increase the chances that the tree would fall downhill as we wanted, and 
> not
> onto on the nearby fenceline or back uphill across the lane itself, we 
> tied
> a very long rope around it up high, notched the trunk on the side we 
> wanted
> to fall towards, and then my dad used his Allis D-19 to gradually tension
> the rope as my brother cut the trunk on the uphill side and my son drove 
> in
> some wedges.  I watched from several feet away so I could gauge which way
> the tree was leaning and warn my brother and son off if things started to 
> go
> bad, and used some pre-arranged arm signals to tell my dad when to pull 
> more
> on the rope.  All went well, and the tree came down with a mighty crash,
> much to the delight of assorted nephews and nieces watching from a safe
> distance.
>
> Dad used the D-19 to drag over some big limbs that had fallen off other
> nearby trees over the past several months, and we had a bonfire that's
> probably still got a lot of heat left in it now, three days later. 
> Tending
> that fire over the next day or two was a lot of fun, and we wished we had
> some more vacation days to stay up there.
>
> Motivated by all the fun, once home I got the M out and pulled down the
> broken-off upper trunk of a tree that had fallen but gotten hung up in the
> woods behind my house.  It had been out there since the big post-Ike
> windstorm a couple months ago but I just hadn't gotten around to it.  The
> crash coming down wasn't near the big one up at the farm but it felt good 
> to
> do some work with the M, and once again I'm wishing there was more.
>
> I posted this same note with a couple of pictures attached on the ATIS
> Forum.
>
> Hope you've all had a good Thanksgiving.
>
> Dean Vinson
> Dayton, Ohio
> www.vinsonfarm.net
>
>
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