Originally Posted by
maple flats
After 3 weeks of hurrying to get the site ready for a new shed, it is finally in place. I had to move logs, canoes,farm equipment, wood stove, and then remove the top soil. Then I got 16 yds of fill sand and finally 32 yds of crushed stone to make a pad suitable for placing the 14x28 shed. I also had 2 large, real dangerous trees that could have fallen on the shed and my planned additions to it at any time. In order to take those trees down, I had to open a place for them to fall, that involved removing 7-8 trees, hemlocks and beech, plus drop and roll back a mainline to drop the first tree. At first I thought about dropping the second tree in the same place, but as I studied it, I thought that a bad idea. The tree, a large cherry with about 30% of one side of the trunk hollow and/or rotted, and with a lean in a direction facing about 90 degrees off, I decided to go with gravity in my favor. To drop the tree that way, I had to remove 6 or 7 more smaller healthy trees, again, hemlocks and beech. That cherry was 29" across the stump (after cutting) and with the hollow part, the but log was in a shape of the letter C. There was only 5-7" of good wood left all around the remaining part of the tree. On bigger trees, I use my excavator to reach up about 10-12' and push, rather that using wedges like I did before I had the excavator. The hinge ended up being on the very top edge of the letter C, then With some pressure by the excavator, I plunge cut thru the trunk and cut towards the hinge to define it. Then I cut the rest, out from the hinge to the back of the trunk away from the hinge. When I came out the back, it still stood, but just a slight additional push using the boom and bucket of the little 8000# excavator, the tree tipped in the right direction. But before it could bend the hinge, the trunk split up to about 10' high and it barber chaired. With the excavator bucket still there, where it had pushed (I operated it from the ground and was not on the excavator,, as the butt end raised, riding on the top of the barber chair back, it lifted the excavator tracks about 12" off the ground on the end facing the tree. I believe, had I not faced the excavator under carriage away from the tree and put the blade firmly down, the whole thing would have been flipped over. As I barely started to lift the bucket, the butt started to move towards the excavator. With just enough track on the ground, I lifted the blade slightly and backed up. After about 2 or 3 feet back the butt stayed in place and I was able to take the excavator to one side, and use the bucket to push this mess over. Finally 2 dangerous trees were on the ground (plus several others) and nobody nor any equipment got hurt. What could have been a huge disaster ended up to be a good day.
My shed was delivered the next morning.
My plans now, are to next year, add a blacksmith shop off the back of the shed (north side), a lean-to roof off the west side for open farm equipment storage and build a walk in cooler on the east side with a wide door that allows me to set drums in it using my tractor forks.
As it is, the south side is a set of double doors 7.5' high and 8' wide so I can drive my tractor inside. I'll be placing benches and shelves along each long side and across the back end, except where the man doors are on the north and west sides.
Now, tomorrow, I uncap my last barrel of bourbon barrel aged syrup and bottle it, after that I clean the equipment and then pack my last barrel of Dark into retail containers, since I do not have enough left in retail containers to last the Christmas season.
Then it's time to split my firewood. The logs have been stacked for 1.5-3 years, but have not yet been processed. This is the first time I've not had all my firewood all split and stacked more than a year ahead in about 6-7 years. Then to the woods to fix lines and remove trees or limbs that fell in all the high winds we've had since last season. Sometime in there I've got to buck all the trees I took down and stack the logs, the hemlocks that are big enough will be sawed into lumber (3 or 4) the rest will all become firewood (unless some of the big cherry higher up is good for lumber).