One of the goals for this year was to get rid of the three old trees in front of the house. Late last summer a storm took half of one the trees and we realized it was in much worse shape than we originally thought – it was hollow from top to bottom. We wanted to take down all three before the wind pushed one of them onto the house. I was able to cut down the smallest on my own earlier this spring, but the larger trees were more than I was comfortable with.

So I was able to line up a man and a saw with a lot of experience and the trees were coming down early Saturday morning. Only one problem: The safest way to cut down the trees were to lay them directly across the road. Most of the time this wouldn’t be a problem. We don’t live on a busy road. (Hence the name of the site.) But, this was a prime day in a narrow window for planting corn in our area – trucks with seed corn, tractors with over-sized planters, and buggies with fertilizer would be buzzing back and forth all day. I had visions of a line of traffic suddenly appearing the moment the first tree hit the ground.

With that in mind, the goal was to drop the tree and clear the road as quickly as possible. The tree trunk was cut into the largest size the skidloader could handle and quickly cleared to the side of the road.

The skidloader made quick work of opening things back up once the tree was cut down to size.

Being well prepared, and a little bit lucky, worked to our advantage. We had both trees cut down and the road cleared in less than 30 minutes without delaying a single vehicle. Unfortunately, that was the quick part.

I would work the rest of the day cutting things down into smaller pieces. The smaller sticks went onto a fire. The larger logs and branches went onto a pile for a neighbor who will take them to heat his house this winter. By the end of the day, this is all that was left:

Oh, and of course, my work was supervised from a distance most of the day.

Now all that remains is clearing out the old stumps before fall so we can plant a few new trees in the old ones’ place. (And just in case you’re wondering… no body yelled “Timber!” at any point during the day.)