Willow tree and the truck, start

Saturday when I was at the annual Creston auction I ran across Wyatt, one of my neighbors.  He has a truck he modified to help him build one of his buildings.  He modified the truck to act as a scaffold.   The top of the truck is 12 feet high.  A good base on which to place a ladder.  Wyatt also has a 10 ft ladder he lent me to use.

Sunday Wyatt brought his truck here for me to use. The truck was so high it barely fit under the entrance pole and sign over my driveway.  I had to crawl up on top of the truck platform and pull the sign up so it wouldn't catch on the platform top.

Then the next challenge was the electric lines that go between my house and my well.   The platform had a few two by fours sticking up above the platform on one side.  I used my chainsaw to cut them down to the platform height.  Then while Wyatt drove slowly I used a long board to push the bottom line up and over the top of the platform.  Thankfully the bottom line is not the live wire.

Even with the ladder I still had to use my pole saw to reach and cut the upper part of the trunk - in the photo the part of the tree that is above and to the right of the ladder.  The wood at the top where I cut was dead.  That, and the angle from which I was cutting, may be why the cutting was so hard as the saw blade would get caught in the cut, especially when the cut was deep.  Near the end I tried to toss a rope over the end of the trunk to pull the cut section down.  However... after many throws, I only got the rope over the tree once, and the rope wouldn't catch.  So I went back to cutting.  Finally the cut section fell.  And fell perfectly as it missed the garage, electric line and the truck.  Another success.