[AT] Knowing when to call it a day

Sun Nov 17 09:02:37 PST 2019

Dean and Spencer,

I am a few days late reading your postings due to harvest here in my 
part of Iowa, but I very much enjoyed them.  Not all that much different 
than some of my experiences.

Ron Cook, Salix, IA

On 11/15/2019 11:30 PM, Spencer Yost wrote:
> Great story Dean!
>
> So I am going to tell a very personal story here because your stuck 
> bar reminded me...
>
> My father-in-law was a kind, but somewhat aloof and standoffish man. 
> It wasn’t because he didn’t trust or like people, it was simply 
> because, as I eventually learned, he preferred his own company. There 
> was never anything harsh or mean about him, he was just quiet.
>
> Rewind nearly 40 years. My wife and I had just gotten married. 
>  Previous to our marriage, my father-in-law and I had really not 
> gotten a chance to know each other. Sure, lots of small talk and 
> occasional basketball game on TV. But nothing substantive.
>
> Denise and I returned from our honeymoon on Wednesday. On Saturday he 
> had me out in the woods sawing firewood with him and his friend to see 
> what I was made of.
>
> He pinched a saw bar. I showed him how to use a shank of rope, a stout 
> branch, and a twitch stick to free it.  To this day I still thank God 
> for my forestry experience as a teenager in the summers; if for no 
> other reason but to pass his test.
>
> I lost my own father shortly after our marriage and my father-in-law 
> became a surrogate father.  I lost my father in law 9 years ago.  I 
> still miss both to this day.
>
> Antique tractor reference:   Tomorrow is the auction of a local 
> tractor collector. He has several Fordsons that will be on the block. 
> Denise’s mother’s family was one of the larger, wealthier farm 
> families in the eastern part of the county. They were one of the first 
> to have a tractor and it was a Fordson. I wonder if I will come home 
> with one?    If I do you can bet I won’t actually use it:  them things 
> were dangerous...
>
> Spencer
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Nov 15, 2019, at 8:12 PM, Dean Vinson <dean at vinsonfarm.net> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> I had some free time this afternoon so I went out to cut down another 
>> big osage orange tree, this one out in an old pasture.   Being an 
>> osage orange it had two big trunks, each maybe 12-16 inches in 
>> diameter and both of them leaning away from vertical, and lots of 
>> tangled branches that sprawled out every which way.   Some of those 
>> sprawling branches had gotten to the point of encroaching on the 
>> pasture fence, so I loaded up the wagon with the chainsaw, chainsaw 
>> gas, bar oil, and log chain, fired up the Farmall Super M, and headed 
>> out to work.
>>
>> Took most of an hour to get the first trunk successfully cut down and 
>> sawed up into manageable sized pieces.   Not really that big of a 
>> tree but man do those things have a lot of sprangly little 
>> interlocking branches that you’re constantly fighting and having to 
>> cut up into smaller pieces just so you can move them even though they 
>> don’t weigh very much.   When I was finished with that first trunk, I 
>> noticed the sun was close to setting and I thought “I should call it 
>> a day and go get cleaned up right now.”
>>
>> But heck, I’m already out there, already all suited up in PPE, so I 
>> decided to go for the second trunk.   Notched it about waist high on 
>> the side toward which it was leaning, cut from the other side, and it 
>> fell most of the way over but came to rest on its branches and didn’t 
>> break cleanly away from the stump. [Would have been smarter to 
>> bore-cut most of it, now that I think about it.]  I moved out away 
>> from the stump and started sawing off the outer branches where I 
>> could reach them, but the chainsaw ran out of gas.   After filling it 
>> back up I went to tighten the chain tension, and while fooling around 
>> with that managed to burn the knuckle of one finger on the chainsaw 
>> muffler.  Might have uttered a minor curse word.
>>
>> I went back to continue working my way around the fallen tree, 
>> cutting where I could, but there were a lot of heavy branches out of 
>> my reach extending high up in the air and I worried the tree would 
>> roll over toward me if I kept cutting away what I could reach while 
>> the trunk was still hanging precariously off the stump.    So I 
>> decided to cut a short section out of the leaned-over trunk right 
>> next to the stump so it could fall free, and I could then work on 
>> getting everything safely down to ground level from that end.   Since 
>> one end of the trunk was resting on the stump and the other end was 
>> resting on its branches I figured the heavy end near the stump would 
>> want to drop down, meaning the underside of the tree would be in 
>> tension, so I cut a notch on the upper side and then began sawing up 
>> from the underside.   Turned out I’d guessed wrong and the underside 
>> was in compression, and the saw kerf closed and bound up the chainsaw 
>> bar tight as could be.   Definitely brought out some curse words.
>>
>> I separated the chainsaw from the bar (learned that lesson once 
>> before), leaving the bar and chain hanging there in the partially cut 
>> tree, and went to get the Super M and the log chain.   I hooked the 
>> chain to the farthest-out end of a decent-sized branch way out far 
>> away from the stump, intending to pull the whole thing around so it’d 
>> drop away from the stump and release my bound-up saw bar, but just 
>> then the Super M sputtered and died, out of gas.  I hate to overdo 
>> the curse words, but temptation was strong.
>>
>> By then it was starting to get dark and my gas cans were a long walk 
>> away, but I had about half a gallon of chainsaw gas left.   I poured 
>> that in the tank, started the tractor back up, and pulled the top of 
>> the tree around.   Sure enough, the trunk dropped cleanly off the 
>> stump, so I shut the tractor off, celebrated my hard-fought victory, 
>> and went back over to reclaim my chainsaw bar and do some final fast 
>> cutting just to show that tree who was boss… only to find the bar 
>> driven straight down into the ground like a tent stake under the 
>> weight of the trunk.   Guess it’s time to call it a day and go get 
>> cleaned up.
>>
>> Dean Vinson
>>
>> Saint Paris, Ohio
>>
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