Tree branch trimming and harrowing

This afternoon I finally finished my harrowing for the year.  I had harrowed everything but the south pasture a month ago.  I waited to harrow the south pasture until I trimmed the lower tree branches in that pasture.  Last year I had trimmed the trees in the middle and north pastures and decided to delay the south pasture until later.  Well.. a year passed and it still wasn't done.  So I did it now.

I trimmed the lower branches for two reasons. One is that the cows eat/taste them and over time some of the branches lose much of their needles, which do not grow back.  Secondly, the tractor is higher than the pickup.  Now that I use the tractor to pull the harrow it is better to try to raise the branch height.  Many of the trees still have branches lower than the top of the tractor cab as that height is pretty high and those trees have a good set of branches.  But the trees with oddball lower branch height were raised to be consistent around the tree.

I have 64 trees in the south pasture so this took time.  Often I had to stand on either a step ladder or an extension ladder to reach the branches.  A few trees had their branches growing down then out.  Think of a clock's hand position at 4 or 5 or 7 or 8 o'clock for a branch that is 10 to 20 feet long.  Sometimes I stood at the top of an extension ladder to cut a branch at the tree trunk whose end was less than 6 feet from the ground.

Because I stood on ladders, and since a few times in the past I had to jump from a ladder while holding a chainsaw and sometimes throwing the chainsaw as I jumped, I decided not to use a chainsaw this time. I hand-sawed the branches and that was slower to do, especially as some branches were thick.  So the going was slow.  And made even slower as I got tired of sawing branches, both physically and mentally.

But using a handsaw turned out to be good.  Last Friday I had a case where a step ladder started to tip, or I lost my balance.  One of the two. And I jumped off the ladder to the ground. I didn't stay on my feet and fell to the ground. I didn't hit anything, but something happened.  I got very confused. Somehow I got back home and fortunately decided I had to talk with someone to figure what was going on as nothing made sense. I forgot Donna's phone number but remembered Jan's number.  Both came over and talked with me as they both realized I was very confused. After a bit, and after we all walked out to where I had been trimming tree branches, I came back to earth and started to remember - somewhat - what had happened. And what was going on currently.

I am back to 'normal' now.  I have jumped off a step ladder before and never short-circuited my brain. What I think happened is that since it has been just eight months since my head injury, the hard jostling of my brain temporarily short circuited it.   I have a doctor visit later this week to go over what happened last Friday.

So I am glad to be done with tree branch trimming and ladder climbing for now.

The following tree has broken and dead branches halfway up the tree.  Branches broken off the tree over the years were still held up by lower branches.  The photo is after I 'cleaned' up the tree.  I had to climb on branches as the height is higher than my extension ladder could reach.  And I did half of this the evening after my step ladder accident.  So the going was even way slower as I was being extra careful.

How high the extension ladder was and how high I trimmed another tree.

Early on as the grass is now all green.

One tree had a thick cluster of small dead branches on one of its large branches.

Some of the branches I trimmed off a nearby tree.  I tossed the branches on top of an old branch pile I hadn't cleaned up or burned from a previous fallen over tree.

I even chopped and removed a nearby dead tree stump.

I broke several saws.

Even though I wore gloves I still cut my finger twice.  Often I would saw using one hand and the other hand held onto a nearby branch so I wouldn't lose balance and fall.  Sometimes the saw would continue on after I cut a branch before I could stop it and it went against my nearby hand.  As you can see the glove didn't really work well.

A couple of days after my Friday accident I had an extension ladder that wanted to tip sideways when I stood near the top.  Usually extension ladders are not a problem and are stable.  But that day everything - no matter what - was going wrong (I also had the dead calf that day).  So after two different times of the ladder wanting to go sideways I quit for the day.  It was a strange day and I wasn't taking any chances.  The next day, and since then, I had no extension ladder problems.