Thinking of redoing whole yard | Page 76 | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

so my brother and I spent Sunday eyeballing and clearing out the undergrowth around the tree

we decided the safest place to drop it would be to the left

I used a 3/4 inch Auger bit to test how solid the trunk was, It was relatively solid but we did notice some discoloration in the wood, so I decided to go with a large open face cut with a larger hinge point because we were not sure how rotted it was

Once we made the cuts we threw in some wedges and a spike to make sure it was stabalized 

A cheap way to get some 1/4 cable is to just buy winch cable, the local hardware store wanted 1.37 a foot for cable but sells 50 foot lengths of winch cable that already has the hook installed for 28 dollars

make a couple loops and use steel cable clamps and you are good to go

We used an extension ladder and looped the cable around the tree

and wrapped it around the 3 point quick hitch on my tractor using the hook as the connecting point for the loop

https://youtu.be/cMbHz2TjFOg

even though we got hung up it happened in the ideal spot, it was caught on just one little branch on the tree on the left, but was also on the other side of the tree on the right, so when I start cutting the hanger if something goes wrong the tree on the right will offer protection from the tree coming down on top of me

so I did a quick undercut and back cut and used the tractor for a gentle tug and it all came crashing down

we cleaned up all the saplings and trimmings and fed them to the cows, they were pretty happy

there was quite a bit of discoloration in the trunk, it's a good thing we took it down this year, it could have been a lot worse down the road