How'd it go today?

I cut a lot of die back out of an oak by the ocean.
You know, one of those trees that are completely bent out of shape by the prevailing west wind.
Involved some climbing that was on the fancy side for an old guy.
Then another easy job, just knock two pines on their assses.
Tight lays, but front lean.
Ended the day on a 3rd job, dropping and chipping 12 larch trees.

All by myself, though I'll admit that I missed a helper on the last one.

Ever noticed how you make way more money in a day by doing a bunch of small jobs, instead of one big one?

About like growing weed. Everything being equal, many smaller plants will produce a better yield than one big plant.

Small jobs can be lucrative, collating them into a single day is the challenge, doing that 5 days a week is nigh on impossible.

For sure.
Nice when it works out, though.

lxskllr said:

I've been amazingly lucky with bees. Spent most of my life outside, and I'd guess my lifetime average is a sting every 5 years. I don't think it's ever been more than one at a time.

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Luck ran out today. Got stung twice cutting some weeds with my machete. Not the most painful stings, but I still feel them. The pain's lingering longer than usual. Not even sure what they were. Looked kinda like yellowjackets, but not what I usually call a yellowjacket. They were small like a honeybee, but had the smooth yellowjacket shell, though the stripes were closer together, and maybe a bit more black.

edit:
They were loving the jewel weed. It'll be a little while yet before the pods are popalicious. Love jewel weed season! Makes bubblewrap look lame in comparison :^D

Been kind of a rough week so far. Just coming off of fair which is a week-long anyway and trying to get back in the saddle again I'm still pretty exhausted. So we have a job where I rented a lift. I put some jobs together for the whole week and they rented me a different Lift than what I'm used to and holy cow was it horrible. Set up twice as long, safeties kept going off rendering it useless. We ended up driving way over four hours today to return it to another shop where we can get the proper lift. Yesterday was a huge learning curve ended up taking two hours extra on the job. Then Rob got hit by a wasp on his lip fighting for a sandwich. Then my little 25 11 threw the handle somewhere on the last Tree in a field. Not to mention the braking system on the trailer made me have to readjust my truck brakes so it would stop sooner, damn surge brake. The dang thing was only computerized to auto level you could not manipulate each articulation or feet separately, therefore setup took longer and it was not slope friendly. Every time you'd boom out it was so wobbly it would set the computer off and I would have to have Rob bring me back to Center to start over to make the next cut. So today we're limping along with it and of course being tired frustrated and at my wit's end with the damn thing lost a chunk of wood into a garage wall and now have to replace Hardie board and paint tomorrow. Guess we'll see what tomorrow brings with the proper lift I normally rent and get these dead tops done over a garage to move on to the next thing.
Kids did well at Fair though. Lilly sold her rabbit for good money, lots of blue ribbons, one best of show for one of Lilly's sewing projects and they had a lot of fun. Good stuff!

Well, at least the kids are having a good week. IMO, that's better anyway :^)

Yeah, just not seeing much of me with all the late,activity in the evenings.

Dang!!!

That sucks.

A bad sting, no bueno, just got one myself on the lip, requiring prednisone, however facing what we face, no significant injuries, take what you can out of it.
Nobody got a sharp stick in the eye, or a Silky in the hand, like a friend did recently.








I'll take rain over big snakes coming out of stumps, and life among poisonous snakes.

His lip and cheek swelled something awful. Thought we should break off and take him to urgent care jic. Request denied. He toughed it out. Had it got his tongue, we would have been in the er. Fighting over a sandwich.
He was watching me up in the bucket as he was eating.. Yellow jacket wanted a piece too.

Benedryl cream, oral benedryl, and a cold pack, stat.

I was starting to worry about my lip splitting.

Yup, benadryl to the rescue.

Tree09 said:

Honestly, it was the reason i stopped doing trees as much. Really ruined the fun

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Geez I didn't know you scaled back your tree work, bummer!

Lotta good info on stings n pens here. Knock on wood, I haven't needed an epi yet

It was a few years ago when I scaled back, being on the road doesnt help either!!! I prefer to call it a building year, slowly squirreling away equipment

So you are still planning to get heavier into it when timing is right?

Let’s just say I am really enjoying a beer right now. I had to take a walk to not knock out the bosses son today. Mouthy fat entitled shithead set me off. Up until lunch he was his normal whiny self. After lunch he let us know that we were doing our job the dumbest way possible. Came back and told him to call mommy and daddy to pick him up before he had an accident. 20 years ago I’d of broke his jaw. Can’t do that these days and especially on this contract. I might have to actually punch this kid to make him understand shit. I guess we will see what tomorrow brings. And daddy gave me permission to adjust his attitude. Just not on site.

Sorry for the rant.

I'd be heading out. It's you or him, and he's the boss's son...

Well shit happens on the job site Rich. Often times unexplainable and tragic A C I D E N T S. (cough ahem clears throat).

Oh the high lift wobblies...hate that!
I'm off on the afternoon puddle jumper to Flinders Island for the weekend to teach Fire and Emergency people their chainsaw refresher...just trim and crosscut fallen trees, nothing spectacular but I've asked them to prep by flopping a few trees to make it realistic...no ready stacked log heaps to cut into firewood!
Only thing is there is a deep low pressure crossing the Bass Straight just about when I'm supposed to go...might be bumpy, and tomorrow will probably be raining.

Superior pilots use their superior judgement to keep themselves out of situations that require their superior abilities.

And just like that, Robs tags the wall with the dingo on that same building. Now I need two sheets of hardy board special ordered. Love working for free .....
Guess I can feel better that it wasn't just me

So I picked up a load of X-ray equipment today and got it loaded up on the trailer ready to take to our shop and get it ready to install for our customer. On the way I had one tire blowout but I was limping by on the other three. I called my son who owns the trailer to ask a question or two and he had some ideas and then I continued on. Got the crates and boxes all loaded, strapped down, did the final check on tie-downs and saw that one tire was Slack. The second Tire had decided to go slack .....ends up it had a nail in it.

I called Alex again to ask a question about how the axles are going to react without a tire on them and blah blah blah but didn't get an answer from him. Got my brother involved with bringing my trailer to me and remove the bad tires he's taking them to the shop and getting them replaced and bringing them back. In the meantime Alex, who is a firefighter, called me back to explain why he didn't answer earlier.

They were busy at the local recycle center evacuating the neighborhood. Someone had dumped 105 Howitzer shells at the recycle center and they had to call the bomb squad to declare them safe or unsafe. Ends up they were inert and not dangerous but I guess that's a good excuse for not calling back immediately....Dealing with howitzer artillery shells.

I thought about you in all that today Peter.

I cleaned a mess beside a castle where a nice 3' beech foll over, taking down with him 6 smaller oaks and 2 hornbeams. 2 days of solo work. Many chords on the ground. Nice looking, but rotten stump, both the beech and the oaks. What a pita.
And many many other trees will come down the next following years. In many cases, we can see a hole between the buttress roots, dye back in the crowns....
The soil is on a thick chalk layer, very poor with barely any water available. The growth rate of the trees is already very slow, you can think they are used to it. But obviously not. It becomes worse and worse. Even the pines begin to dye! The wild cherrys are almost all doomed, many dying tops for the hornbeams, sparse and yellowish foliage for a lot of oaks, either small or big...
The castle's manager is sure that the very hot and drought summer of this year will show its plain results next year. It sounds somewhat catastrophic.

Why the x-ray equipment???