If a Tree Falls in the Forest...But Not All the Way!

Tornadoes are a fairly common occurrence where I live. Right in the middle of the U.S., the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico sometimes collides with the cold Arctic air and you get some pretty insane storms. That happened in early December as an unseasonably warm day turned into a bone chilling night with 60-70 mile straight winds and a confirmed tornado about 30 miles from where I live in between. A dead tree in the woods by my house was a casualty of the storm, but it didn't fall to the ground, it fell into a fork of another tree and there it stayed.

I was hoping it would fall down on it's own, but when it became obvious that wasn't going to happen, I devised a plan to pull it down from the base with the tractor and a chain. I had to study the situation for a while and evaluate alternative actions, before deciding this would be the safest way to get the tree on the ground.

When first looking at the situation, I had thought about lifting the tree in the middle with the pallet forks and slowly backing up, but I wasn't really sure how much weight there was up there. I don't think it's more than the tractor's lift capacity, but I wouldn't stake my life on it. If it were lifted with the pallet forks and the weight brought them down and picked up the back end of the tractor...well, that's a ride I don't want to go on. So, the next best thing was to hook a chain around the base and pull it away until it fell to the ground.

It took a couple of good tugs to get it dislodged and it came down without incident. But, just to be safe, I had my cell phone in my pocket and my wife was watching from a safe distance in case anything crazy happened. That's my best advice for anyone using a tractor for anything that's even remotely dangerous...let someone know what you're doing, and it's better to have them watching, and keep that cell phone where you can get to it if there's a problem. Keep small children and pets away from a project like this, and always pull any weight from the draw bar, never from the three point arms.

Those of you who have been around tractors a long time may make fun of me for being so careful with a project that represented almost no danger. I don't have a problem with that. I make no apologies for being somewhat over-cautious with stuff like this, because most people who get seriously injured in tractor and equipment accidents think what they're doing offers no danger. Finding out you are wrong can be a disaster. So, I approach any project of this type asking myself, "What's the worse that can happen?"

Anyway, the tree is down, and now it's cut up and in a log pile and the area is clean. Time to get on with life...

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Видео If a Tree Falls in the Forest...But Not All the Way! канала Tractor Mike