Dropping huge elm tree before it falls on the chicken house

[blythkd]

What to do when Mother Nature interferes with dropping a huge tree:  Plan B - overpower her!

IMG_1401 by B Alan, on Flickr

[jerseyhighlander]

Well, I don't see a chicken house under it so I guess it worked out. Gonna make some good firewood come winter.

If you were close I'd be offering to help you cut it up in exchange for a few rounds for carving... Hardly ever see Elm around here.

Edit;  Just FYI, if that is true Red Elm, also known at Slippery Elm, the inner bark is a sought after medicinal that retails for roughly $22.00/Lb dry weight... If you could find the right herbalist in your area to harvest it... could bring in a good bit of cash. It's known as Slippery Elm due to that inner bark/cambium layer being fairly gelatinous/gooey when green. Fair warning, it's also known to smell like horse piss till it dries out.

[blythkd]

Jersey if you were here you could have all of it you want!

We have what I call red elm here but this one is different. Honestly, this one is the variety we call piss elm here. But I'm no tree variety expert.

The chicken house is to the right of the picture, so yes, everything worked out as planned. The tree was fairly straight up and looked like it would fall the direction I needed it to fall, south, but as luck would have it, when it finally quit raining for a few days and I got time, the wind was pretty gusty out of the south. So I tied a 20ft log chain onto the fork before I started. I cut my notch and started into the back side and it was closing up on my bar. So then I strung out another 40ft of chain and 50ft of cable and tied on with my biggest tractor.

And yeah this thing is going to make a lot of wood. Up above the fork the limbs still nearly take up a 20" bar, and there's a lot of them. I took a 24" 925 out to drop it and that didn't even come close at the base, it reached a little over half way through. The 36" bar on the 750 or 1050 would have been much more in order but I've still yet to source a .404 chain to fit them. That's a pretty fair tree in Kansas.

[edju1958]

I ran into a piss elm stump a few yrs.ago & man does that wood stink! It smells just like cat piss to me.It was a real pup to split too,but it did give some good heat.

      If you still need a .404 chain I know where you can get one for $36 + ship[ping (36 in.).PM me if interested.

                                                        Ed