This #SublimeSunday afternoon got a little busy; but it was the good kind of busy.
After taking care of the sheep and goats, i decided to get my chainsaw out and work on clearing out a few more downed trees. I'm trying to clear a path in the little wooded area of our pasture that I can get my tractor through, so I decided to start with a couple of trees that have fallen over that path.
A Big Mess
This use to be my deer hunting spot. If you look closely, you can make out what use to be my pop-up hunting blind and the metal chair that I would sit in. However, a rather tall cedar tree lost its footing and kind of... destroyed it.
Double Whammy
Oh, but it wasn't done there! It took out another tree on its way down. I guess the weight of the cedar tree was too much for this nearby oak tree's roots to handle in the squishy-soft soil. The result was a big tangled mess of trees and branches and cedar boughs. In fact, the cedar boughs are still green; because, amazingly, the tree is still alive.
Its Alive!
Like the last one, I don't want this cedar tree to go to waste, so I am going to attempt to cut it into some boards that I can use for future projects. However, since this one is still alive, I guess I will have to let the lumber dry. I am going to go ahead and rough-cut them out and then try to figure out how the drying process works.
So Many Branches
As my first order of business, I got to work cutting off all of the many branches. Red cedar trees always tend to have tons of spindly branches branches that leave little knots in the lumber that I think give it character.
Talk About Character
What Could I Use This For?
On this particular tree, there was a fork that branched off about 2/3 of the way up. The branch was not really big enough to cut any kind of board off, but it looks like it should be useful for something. So, I cut it off and moved it to the side. Maybe I could use it to make some legs for a small end table or something like that.
Branches Are Gone
After getting rid of all the branches, I was ready to start cutting. Now, I freely admit that I have no idea what I'm doing! There are probably far better ways to do this kind of thing, but I'm having fun playing and learning!
If you'll look back at the earlier photos, you'll notice that this fallen cedar just missed another oak tree and is actually touching it about five feet from where the roots pulled up from the ground. I figured that would give me some trouble maneuvering with my chainsaw while I was cutting, so I decided to make the bottom portion my practice chunk. I've watched a few videos on how to free-cut lumber with a chainsaw. I found this one especially helpful, so I decided to try this technique. While I'm definitely not a pro, I did find that this worked a lot better than what I was trying to do last time. I was able to cut this tree into several 3 or 4 foot rough boards. I could have made them longer, but that other tree was in the way. I'll get to the rest of the tree some time later in the week.
Rough-Cut Red Cedar
Two of the pieces still have a live edge, while the other two are the end pieces with a rounded back that is covered with bark. Again, I'm not sure what I'll do with them, but there has to be something cool that I can make out of them!
Very Rough Cut
By the time I finished cutting those pieces, it was beginning to get dark, so I headed back toward the house. On the way their, I heard Little Debbie, one of our goats, screaming like something was attacking her! I took off running over, and found this:
Little Debbie Is In Some Trouble
I have not idea how this happened! This is the electric netting that keeps our sheep in and predators out. Luckily for Debbie, I had the battery turned off today so that it could recharge a bit; otherwise, she may have been in trouble. There's no telling how long she had been there.
Then again, if the power had been on, it may have zapped her and ran her off before she had a chance to get all caught up in it.
Either way, it took me a good 10 minutes to get the whole thing sorted out, and I just knew that there were going to be gaping holes left when all was said and done. Luckily, though, both Debbie and the netting came out unscathed.
After this, I headed back to the house for dinner and began the process of mentally preparing for another Monday.