Three Bradford pears down, two of them off a lift

Three Bradford pears, all three out completely, and the first thing to settle was the chips.

Bradford pear makes a lot of volume for the size of the tree. The chip truck holds nine cubic yards, and three trees of this size were going to produce two to three truckloads of material. So the homeowner was asked up front how much of it they wanted to keep — some, all or none — and disposal was arranged for the rest in advance rather than sprung on anybody at the end of the day.

Trees two and three were the ones that needed the lift. Both stood close enough to structures that letting sections fall was not worth the risk, so the spider lift went in and the wood came down under control instead.

Getting the lift back there was its own piece of the job. The route ran along a marked path to the rear of the property and in through the fenced back yard, with ground protection mats laid down along the way. A back lawn behind a fence is not a work yard, and it does not recover well from being treated as one.

All three stumps were flush cut to within three to five inches of the ground.

The septic area was the one thing on that property that could not be crossed. Nothing crossed it.