When we decided we wanted to put in a vinyl perimeter fence along one side of the property, that led to a survey, which led to us realizing the line wasn't where the old fence was, which lead to us realizing we needed to take down five trees. I talked about it in more detail in this post.
I was getting tired of waiting for the tree company to come, and had a friend who was nice enough to come over and help cut the trees down.
I took the last Friday in May off, and spent the day pulling out the ancient woven wire fence and posts, much of which was wrapped in roots and quite difficult to pull up.
I also transplanted about a dozen forsythia plants that may have been in the way of the new fence line. They were moved to other parts of the property where hopefully they'll thrive.
I then processed five crates of quickly rotting bananas into the compost pile (sometimes keeping up with the food waste is a challenge).
Then, after about 8 hours or work, it was time to start working!
We took down four pine trees (mostly fairly small), and one cherry tree that was a bit bigger. The actual dropping of the threes went fairly well, considering we were working in some tight spots.
The cherry logs were cut into roughly 16" lengths, and will end up in my parent's wood stove. The pine logs were cut to longer lengths and were stacked at the edge of the woods. Once they have some time to dry, they'll end up fire-pit logs.
I had thought about renting a chipper to chip the brush, but decided against it. While it looked like a big pile of brush, chipped it wouldn't have amounted to that much, and with the cost of a chipper rental, they'd have been EXPENSIVE chips.
So, instead I built a big brush row/pile in the woods, which should provide some nice cover for wildlife, slowly decompose and feed the soil, and provide an additional visible "break" to add privacy for us and our neighbors.
I was able to have everything cleaned up by the end of the weekend, which was good.
In the first picture below, you can see the old fence, the trees, and some of the forsythia that got transplanted.
Photo #2 shows the fence down and forsythia moved. I also weed-wacked around the trees to make sure we didn't get tripped up while working.
Photo #3 shows the trees down and area cleaned up. Note that you can now see the far property-line post...which in the earlier pictures were blocked by trees.
