Skidding Logs
Get Them Out Of The Way
Logs are super heavy - you know that when they are cut down, and land with a thump. But then you have to do something with them.
After our second round of fire mitigation tree falling, we had three giant trees in the yard, right across a garden for months. Finally, we arranged with a local logger to send his skidder and operator over here for a few hours.
The skidder is huge! If you haven't seen one close up, this is an articulated (bends in the middle) loader with a giant winch and cables on one end, and a blade on the other. A good operator can wield this thing like a Tonka toy.
Finessing those cables which are attached to a two ton log, weaving it around obstacles like stumps, gardens and valuable trees and other garden things is a lesson in what can be done by an experienced person on a machine that would outweigh three or more pick up trucks. He apologized for running over one garden and knocking a few rocks out.
Skidding Logs with a Large Skidder - safety firstAs always, safety first; the guys both wore hi-vis shirts, and logging chaps when doing any chainsaw work. A hardhat and hearing protection tops the list, and gloves when necessary.
The whole operation took about three hours, with Larry dragging the logs out of the side of the garden, and Mike cutting them up into 24' pieces. Mike confesses to be worn out after this. The high level of concentration needed, the loud engine, and the awareness of danger is hard on the energy! Not to mention that these logs are huge.
They will be stacked and left for the new owner of the property to deal with how he wishes; either bucking them up into many years of firewood, or dragging them down to the chainsaw mill for turning into boards and timbers.
This is only a small percentage of all the logs that need to be dealt with - the first iteration of fire mitigation saw forty or fifty logs lying willy nilly on the ground. Some was bucked up for firewood, but without a large machine to move them, anything else is impossible.
Then there are the many birds nesting on the place - hummingbirds, warblers of all kinds, Swainsons thrushes, robins, you name it. So log moving takes secondary consideration to their needs.
It feels better to have my yard back, and it's also sad that within a few months it won't be my playground any more. Looking ahead to the future, I have to let this beautiful paradise go, and hope that others value it as much as I have.
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