Wednesday 14 May 2014

The Tree Felling


What’s that old saying or question, something about if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear, does it make a sound? Let me tell you that when a tree falls in town, it makes a lot of noise…trucks, cranes, chainsaws and mulchers. It was an interesting thing to watch, so organized, every man doing his job…that of cutting down the tree beside my place.

It was determined that the tree was dead, the large limbs and branches at the top a constant danger as any strong wind could have them breaking loose and flying down to the ground below. The ice storm had started the tree on a path to its downfall, but a few days of high winds had sealed its fate.





 

There were two large trucks, one with a crane and the other with a bucket lift. The back of the second truck was like a dump truck, as it would be filled with the mulch created by the machine that was pulled behind.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One man operated the crane, moving a steel rope that a second man in the bucket would secure around limbs at the top of the tree. The chain saws roared as the limb was cut off and lowered to the ground. The two man team repeated this action until they lifted the top of the tree off, then a large section of the trunk and finally the remainder of the trunk, leaving a short stump behind.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A two man ground crew used chainsaws to cut the smaller limbs off the large sections, hauling them over to the mulcher and shoving them in. I was amazed at how large the pieces were that could be mulched.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The trucks arrived with a roar at 11:22 and were done in about two hours, leaving behind a stump and a pile of logs to be cut into firewood. The area was raked clean and left as tidy as when they arrived. The huge logs were cut into manageable pieces that day and the next, and hauled away to be split into firewood. There’s not enough of a stump remaining for me to make it into a fairy house, but if they leave it as it is, I’ll cover it with a pretty pot of flowers.

All in all, it was an impressive thing to see.

1 comment:

Blogger's Brother said...

In college there were a few of us that would gather and during moments of our slightly altered conscious states would attempt to answer some of life's unanswered questions...

Here's the best answer I've heard about a tree falling in the forest and does it make a sound if there's no one there to hear it?

No.

The tree falling would not create a sound, but rather would create sound waves. But if there was no one or no recording device to interpret the sound waves in to sound then the sound waves would just dissipate.

Makes sense to me.

Why the chicken crossed the road is still a mystery, we were never able to solve that one.