Seven trees at two properties, against the clock

Seven trees at two properties, in one day. Five small trees and a medium paulownia at a local business in Norris, then a large dead oak at a second property, and the first half had to be finished and cleaned up while the business was still closed.

None of the trees was the hard part. The clock was. Everything at the business had to come down, get chipped and get stacked before it opened, and then the crew and the lift had to move to the second property and take the oak down the same day.

We got to the business around 8:30 or 9. The five small trees and the paulownia came down, the smaller wood went through the chipper, and anything worth burning was cut into 16-inch firewood lengths. The customer wanted all of it kept, so the chips went into a pile and the firewood was stacked at the back of the parking area. By about 11 the site was cleaned up, well ahead of opening.

Then everything went back on the trailers. The lift was loaded up and trucked over to the second property, because the oak needed it too.

The oak was the one worth worrying about. It was completely dead, without a leaf on it in September, and it stood close to the house. Had it fallen the other way, it would have come down on the house.

The lift went in on ground protection mats to keep its tracks off the lawn. From the basket we limbed out the top first, taking the dead weight out of the crown. Then we tied our ropes into the tree, ran them to a rope puller, and felled it away from the house and into the woods.

That is where it stayed. The owners wanted the brush and the wood left in the tree line, so it was pushed back into the woods instead of hauled off. The stumps at both properties were flush cut close to the ground. The oak was down and the job finished around 3 in the afternoon.