An 80-foot maple over the neighbor's carport

A big maple in the back yard, about eighty feet tall, with its canopy hanging over the neighbor’s carport. Nothing about that carport could take a falling limb, so the tree could not come down in one piece until it had been taken apart in the air.

It was bigger than it looked. Vines ran up the whole trunk and hid how thick it really was, and it was not until the wood was on the ground that the diameter showed.

The first day was the lift. We worked it piece by piece, starting at the far ends of the limbs and working in toward the trunk, then starting at the top and working down, so nothing over the carport was ever heavier than what we could control. As limbs came down, the tractor’s grapple picked them up and loaded them into the truck. At the very end of that day, with the canopy gone, the main stem was felled into the open yard.

The next half day was the wood. The trunk was cut into chunks, and the chunks were split. Even split, they were big pieces to load. The brush all went through the chipper, the hardwood was hauled off, and the yard was cleaned up with a leaf blower.

The stump stayed on purpose. The customer plans to use it for flower pots and garden projects, so it was left cut low rather than ground. They told us they had saved up a long time for this job and felt it was money well spent.