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<p>Dean and Spencer,</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Ron Cook, Salix, IA<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/15/2019 11:30 PM, Spencer Yost
wrote:<br>
</div>
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<div>Great story Dean!</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So I am going to tell a very personal story here because your
stuck bar reminded me...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Spencer</div>
<div><br>
<div dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone</div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<blockquote type="cite">On Nov 15, 2019, at 8:12 PM, Dean
Vinson <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:dean@vinsonfarm.net"><dean@vinsonfarm.net></a> wrote:<br>
<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dean Vinson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Saint Paris, Ohio<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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