How I Spent My Saturday

If only running a horse retirement farm was all about playing with the horses. It would make life absolutely perfect! Unfortunately there is a lot of other stuff that is involved in maintaining a farm that has nothing to do with horses. About a week ago I was feeding the horses one morning and I noticed this huge tree limb was down. It also happened to be over a fence line. Thankfully it was not touching the fence and hadn't damaged the fence at all when it fell. I don't have any idea why it fell either. We hadn't had any wind, rain or other type of weather and the tree is (was?) healthy.

I was NOT happy when I saw this one morning

I knew it would mean a lot of work cleaning it up, and this job would be especially hard since there was fence involved. I didn't say anything to Jason about it and he never said anything to me about it. Apparently we were both operating under the theory that if you don't discuss a problem and pretend it isn't there, then the problem doesn't actually exist.

Last night when we were driving home he mentioned out of the blue that we really needed to take care of the tree tomorrow. Remember, we hadn't discussed this problem yet, however he knew that I would know exactly what he was referring to. Unfortunately I did know exactly what he was referring to. And he was right, we couldn't just leave it there and wait for it to collapse on the fence. This is a huge limb and it would wipe the fence out. So when I got out of bed this morning I knew this task was waiting for us. Ugh.


We wanted to tackle this job with all of the tools at our disposal. We decided to use the old Kubota tractor. That way if we managed to squash the tractor with this tree limb it would be the old tractor. We loaded up our trusty Kubota utility vehicle with our chainsaws, a logging chain, and the other assorted things we thought we might need and drove the two Kubotas over to the tree. Bear checked with his union rep and he was cleared to work on Saturday and was our supervisor for this job.

Bear was the only one who was excited about this

First we put the bucket under the limb on the east side of the fence where it was touching the ground. Jason removed some of the bigger limbs with his chain saw.

Then we had to relocate both Kubotas and our assorted equipment to the OTHER side of the fence to tackle the hard part of the job. Holding the limb up off the fence while removing it from the tree. Jason climbed the fence and went back to the other side to remove some more of the branch while I was on the tractor manning the hydraulics. I'm sure he is thrilled to know that I was holding the camera with one hand and running the hydraulics with my other hand.

Jason removed as much of the limb as he could and then climbed back over to my side of the fence. The front loader of the Kubota is the only thing keeping our fence from being destroyed at this point.

It was time to bring out the logging chain. There are so many uses for a logging chain on this farm it is amazing.

Jason was able to successfully pull the limb away from the fence. Yes! We thought things would all be an easy downhill slide from here.

He repositioned the logging chain to pull the rest of the limb off of the tree. But the limb had other ideas and really wanted to stay attached to the tree.

Bear was transferred to "jail" in the back of the trusty Kubota utility vehicle to keep him out of harm's way. We wouldn't want him to have to file a workman's comp claim against us.

Jason continued trying to remove the tree limb from the tree. He decided to try and push it off with the front end loader. It did fall away a bit more but it was still hanging on.

It is amazing how little bark it takes to hold this huge branch onto this tree. If the bark is still so darn strong why did the stupid thing fall to begin with??

We decided to cut off part of the branch and then try pulling it off with the logging chain again. We were hoping with a shorter section of branch we could have the chain higher on the log and get more leverage to pull it off. It worked and we finally had the branch all the way off the tree!

Then we had to continue with the chainsaw work, cutting everything up into pieces and making a huge burn pile. As much as Jason makes fun of my chainsaw it does get the job done!

Jason's chainsaw decided to give up the ghost just before we finished. One of the hydraulic lines also snapped on the front end loader as we were using it to dump the large logs onto the burn pile. Thus, as I type this Jason is at Tractor Supply getting replacement parts for the hydraulic line. We will also be purchasing yet another chainsaw to add to our collection. Apparently you can't just use one of the other four chainsaws because they are all for specific uses.

Our huge burn pile

So how did you spend your Saturday? I am hoping you did something far more enjoyable than remove huge tree branches from a fence line, break the hydraulic line on your tractor and kill your $500 chainsaw!!