Hello, cleared space

The first photo shows Benny and his crew at work (right-to-left): 1) grinding out the stump from the sugar maple, 2) dragging one of the trunks from the redbud clump to the chipper, and 3) inserting one of the redbud trunks into the chipper. The trunk of the sugar maple was too large to send through the chipper. It was cut into 8' lengths and stacked onto their flatbed trailer (attached to the white pickup, but not in view).

Below is a photo showing the front yard after Benny and his crew had left and after I had pulled up the flags. The guys were here for less than 30 minutes, including their cleanup. The neighbor across the street mentioned how efficient the crew had been - as opposed to the two or three crews of workers who had been working down the street from us, trimming up some of the ornamental pear and other trees that front three or four of the houses. Those crews were good guys, though. They had parked a pickup and trailer (hauling some of their heavy equipment) at our curb, just before lunch; but, happily moved their vehicle a couple of hours later when I told them that our own tree guys would need the space, please. We run a parking lot for the neighborhood since most of the houses have no more than 45' of curb.

ADDITION OF 8/16/2020 - 5:26AM - How the crew down the street accessed upper branches

OTOH, the next photo shows how Benny and his crew do it. It is from April, 2019, posting More activity in our woods.

 

To understand why the tree in Bogie's comment took so long in disposition, the explanation is clear in Bogie's posting Maple Down. A standing tree or a completely downed tree is far more quickly disposed of than is a tree that, as Bogie labels it, is a "widow maker".

Comments

[Joared]

Glad all went so well.

[Liz Hinds]

How lovely to have efficient workmen. Always sad to see trees go but sometimes it has to be done. A few of the ash trees opposite our house have ash die-back - badly affecting many of the country's trees - and will need cutting down soon.

[Cop Car]

Joared--As were we.

Liz--I'm watching our ash trees, closely, in the woods where they have proliferated. I've had Benny & his crew take out dozens of ash trees and I, myself, have taken out a couple of dozen. So far, they've all been healthy. There were/are simply too many of them too closely spaced.

[bogie]

That was a quick clean up and looks good. My house was shaking for a couple of hours the other day from the behemoth grinding machine used (it was a truck, not a pull-behind) as the neighbor had to have a fallen tree taken care of.

[Cop Car]

Bogie--That must have been a goodly-sized tree to have taken that long in disposition. Benny and his crew don't have the biggest, fanciest equipment; but, they make up for it with hustle and elbow grease. For instance, I'll add a photo of the cherry picker that the crews down the street were using to cut branches out of some of the trees. Benny, OTOH (as I've shown in previous postings), rigs ropes and climbs the trees - hauling up his chainsaw with the help of his crew.

[bogie]

The crew behind my house also used a cherry picker to remove some branches that had broken during the fall of the tree, but the crown was already on the ground, so it wasn't needed for the most part. Things were complicated as the tree was in the middle of a bunch of other good sized trees that they were trying not to disturb (since, most of those were on my property, they have no legal right to touch them unless they ask permission - which they didn't). They also had to cut a couple of smaller, 20' trees out of the way just to be able to drag the detritus out of the woods.

[Cop Car]

Bogie--Thanks for the clarification. I noted, the other day, that a couple of guys removed one of Fred's dead trees - one that stood just outside the very back corner of his fence and had been threatening to fall onto my steps down to the woods. I had asked Fred to think about taking it out, someday when he had his chain saw out, about a year or so ago. Glad to see it out and would have been happy to have seen them take a few more of his dead trees that hover in that area.

Here, people are allowed minimal access into a neighbor's property to install/maintain a fence. I suspect the same is true on tree maintenance, but have never checked.

BTW: JoJac's noted on my billing "We waived the minimum charge", which I had not even considered their doing. I don't know what the minimum charge is ($400 comes to mind) but I was charged only $150. Your dad was happy to note that one of the guys came back a couple of days ago to replace the ground-up wood with which the hole in the middle of the front lawn had been filled with top soil, topped by a small circle of sod.