The work

The day itself is mostly rigging and setup. The cutting is the short part.

Ground protection goes down before anything else. A lift crossing a lawn in March leaves ruts you are still looking at in July, so mats go where the machine travels. On one job the estimate said plainly that the lower yard was too soft to work in spring and the pine work would wait for summer.

A tree near a structure comes down in pieces, from the top, with each section roped and lowered rather than dropped. That is slower than felling and it is the entire reason a tree over a roof costs what it does.

Hazards get worked around rather than hoped about. If there is a septic field, the truck and the lift stay off it and the drag path goes elsewhere. If there is a line, we establish what is live before anyone goes up.

Where the work crosses a boundary — a limb over a neighbour’s drive, a trunk on a property line — that gets settled before the day, not during it.