Timber!

Work on the chicken run/coop had to be halted temporarily this week when we realized that we had a tree that needed to come down right next to where the run will be. It was supposed to be an easy job. It was supposed to take an hour or two at most. Yeah, right.

The tree in question needed to come down so that we can hang guttering on the side of the garage. It appears that when it rains the water comes pouring down the roof of the garage in such a way that dirt washes down a small hill and builds up in front of the building that will be the coop. We had to dig out the doors in order to get into that building and obviously we don't want to have to do that again. So we'll put guttering up and catch the rainwater in rain barrels, which we can then use to water flowers or the garden. But first, the tree needed to come down....turns out, it was a very stubborn tree.

The Hubs started by chopping off the branches and the kids and I dragged them to a pile to be burned. There were a lot of branches!!

Then he chopped off the top of the tree...things were still going pretty well at this point. The top was heavy and hard to drag to the burn pile, but we managed. No biggie.

Then it was time for the main trunk. Hubs tied a rope around it and instructed me to keep tension on it so that the tree would fall in the right direction- there was a post for the run close by and we didn't want it to fall into that and mess it up. Turns out that wasn't going to be a problem.

The Hubs started sawing.

The Hubs kept sawing.

Then we pulled on the rope to see if we could help it start its descent. The tree did not budge.

After some more sawing we tried again. Still no luck.

This cycle continued for I have no idea how long. The kids had agreed that they would yell, "Timber!" when the tree started to fall. At some point they abandoned this great idea and went off to pick up trash instead. You know they're bored when they CHOOSE to go pick up trash instead!

More sawing, more pulling.....that tree would not budge. By now, it was dark...not getting dark....it was dark. Desperation set in. We briefly entertained the idea of some rather dangerous methods that included the phrase, "If I were younger...." Then he got the tow rope and I got the van. We set out to get that tree down tonight and by golly, it was coming down tonight.

Praise God. It worked. Down came the tree.

Once we got it down, it was easy to see the problem. The tree had partially grown into the garage so the chainsaw couldn't get to that part of it and it was a big enough part to keep the tree from falling over of its own accord.

Needless to say, we didn't get anything else done that night...but we got that tree down! In the end, that was good enough for us.

Tonia