Site Clearing – A weary warrior emerges from the bushes.
It’s been a few months since I started the blog;
I haven’t really had the energy to think about posting because of the incredible amount of work involved in clearing a building site by hand. I’ve spent the last 2 months in the bush falling trees and burning the tops in giant fires in preparation for my new project.
It’s a major amount of work!
In this post I’ll go over the tools I used and processes learned while at my lot: In an effort to work smart, safe and stay dry.
Discussing The Process: For the purpose of Passive Solar Gain, I need a large south facing clearing behind my building site and because I need to use the sun’s rays to power and heat my house; it’s important that I have a large amount of it shining on my site all the time. This means Sunrise to sunset, 365 days of the year. When I first stepped foot on my lot, there wasn’t really anywhere to move. The previous owner had logged the property and there was a large amount of fallen treetops laying around. So I set to burning the fallen stuff before moving to taking down trees. I spend two weeks burning already fallen brush and the last month and a half taking down almost 150 standing or leaning trees and piling their logs in groups, while burning the tops (brush) in ten foot wide by ten foot high fires.
Winter is the best time to do this because the risk of the fire running away on you is zero, provided you don’t build it in a giant thick of evergreens or dense bush.
So on the first day I tackled setting up a base camp, with a little help from my friend Luke, who shares a passion for living with the land. We made a small teepee, A place to shelter the dogs and store supplies. It cost me $20 in Tarps from CT. It worked perfect and on snowy days I found the dogs would use it from time to time.
After three or four days of clearing brush, I realized I wasn’t working very smart. I had wet gloves which made my hands damp and cold. I didn’t know the finer details of tree falling and was weary of taking down larger trees. Especially if they were not showing their lean very well. and I was tired. So tired that I lost as many days from exhaustion and pain than I was working. So I decided to seek out some helpful information that would help my work process.
I wondered, how did the loggers of the past handle working the land by hand? I’ll share a bunch of the most helpful tips I found and some I pioneered myself in the next section..
Tools and Technique: The number one thing to keep in mind when dealing with any large or heavy object are forces. Knowing what forces are at play will keep you safe and allow you to work smart and conserve time and energy. Obviously the one force we all know and deal with everyday is gravity and certainly gravity comes into play when logging, but knowing and using forces like leverage and momentum can help you conserve your energy and work smart. knowing how to use forces for you will keep them from working against you.
Learning to see the potential for accidents as you work is critical to being safe, and forces come into play here too. Trees are constantly under stress, while standing, leaning or on the ground, the forces at play from one end of the tree can change even as you cut. I’ll try to touch on the basic principles but to truly touch on all aspect I would have to dedicate a full post to the topic of “Felling” & “Bucking” trees. For now I’ll stick to tips to making your work more efficient and to avoid the pitfalls of working outside in the winter.
Besides using forces to your advantage, having proper tools and knowing how to use them is also important. I don’t have the option of working with large equipment, nor do I really want to for this part of the project. Eventually I will have to remove tree stumps and grade the site with heavy equipment, but I decided to clear the site by hand so simple techniques are what I used.
I would have to say that the number one tool that makes logging quite enjoyable was having a really good chainsaw. I am using a Stihl MS261, it’s their smallest PRO level saw. along with a chainsaw, you will need one or two plastic wedges. (Orange is a company color for Stihl and so my accessories are orange. Which I learned was great for finding them when I’d work till dark or drop them without noticing. ) And you will want a hatchet and an axe. Make sure they are sharp! You will use them to drive the wedges into the tree and in the event you get your saw stuck, you will have to work it loose with the axe and hatchet. Finally if you are going to fall a lot of trees, you will want some rope.
I found some at HD for $29.99 it was 100′ (feet) of nylon wound rope and it has held up very well on over 50 trees so far. and I put quite a bit of stress on it at times. I’ve seem rope sell for $100+ for the purpose of falling trees. I can’t see this being a smart expense, I would put the money into a great chainsaw. Finally you will also need smaller nylon string wound around a plastic spindle with a handle. I’m not sure what the name for the item, but I found it no problem at CT. You unwind a good length of nylon string and toss the handle part up in the tree, the handle goes over a branch and comes back down to you, you tie it off to the larger rope and pull the larger rope up and over the branch or around the tree. Getting the rope up in the tree can be easy sometimes but other times you stand there for ten minutes trying to get the right wrap around the tree for a good hold.
Pulphook (draghook)
The one tool that I found to be invaluable once the tree was on the ground was a “Pulp Hook” it’s a hook with a handle; it has a sharp tip that plunges into the log but doesn’t come out as easy because it has small barbs. You use this to get a handle on logs so you can lift them and drag them around. Before I got my pulp hook my gloves wouldn’t last one tree before they were soaked, my hands would get wet and eventually my skin would become soaked and soft. This is a problem when working with your hands.
When your skin is wet and becomes stressed it can breakdown, I would get small lacerations on my fingers when I would lift something extremely heavy; which logs are. These cuts would start out small like paper cuts, and by that evening would become splits in the tips of the fingers which hurt extremely and made playing guitar very painful.
Once I had my pulp hook I could usually get a couple hours of work before my gloves would get wet, because I spent less time digging the logs and branches out of the snow with my hands. Using the pulp hook as an extension of my hand I could drag things and stay dry. I would rotate between three pairs of gloves, as they would still eventually get wet; keeping two pair by the fire drying while I worked. Having this setup saved my hands lots of pain and stress.
With those simple tools I found working with the logs much improved, armed with the right tools, I was still in need of the knowledge on how to use them. I turned to the digital classroom.. The internet and mostly Youtube. I find youtube a great source for how I like to learn.. visually. I am a visual person with strong connections to music, so audio is a huge part of my process of learning too. We all learn differently, and I find video to be the best way to engage a subject on your own terms, with the ability to repeat and pause as you need to absorb things at a pace that suits you. More and more people are putting very knowledgeable information up for free on the internet. Youtube is one source for this info as well as great sites like ACADEMICEARTH.ORG – If you haven’t been to academic earth’s website and you like to learn. Check it out! It’s amazing what you can learn for free online these days.
Resources: I found great resources about falling trees by professional arborists, there are some funny videos on YT showing what can happen if poor planning or bad luck take the tree in an unwanted direction. But if you can resist watching those guys destroying their garages and rooftops you can learn almost everything you need to know to properly fell a tree. Here are the top three videos I found helpful but look around and learn from the pros. There’s no such thing as knowing too much when it comes to safety.
1. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj1d85CLDOQ – Cut a Tree Down Safely – The Progressive Farmer
2. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNJajLg4Qi4 – Precision Tree Falling with Daniel Murphy
3. www.youtube.com/watch?v=umd0JpdtRnE – How to Work with Chainsaws - Husqvarna USA
Force: The forces that come into play when dealing with fallen or standing trees are too many to name in this post, so I’ll just say, use common sense when cutting with a chainsaw. Study chainsaw safety and understand the forces at work when cutting and planning your path for falling. Hopefully if you get to the point of having to cut down a tree, you’ll be serious enough to understand what your doing. It’s not for the faint of heart. especially with 3 feet of snow and two dogs running around. Control and planning are key to avoiding accidents to you or others. Always be aware of your surroundings and keep a working cell phone on you when working alone.
If you can, you should fall your tree beside or in the direction of your fire, that way you can just toss the brush (top) portion of the tree right on the flames. Once the tree is on the ground and you have it cut into manageable pieces, pile the logs so they dry properly and you don’t trip over them. This is where the hardest work of the whole process comes into play. Moving a 7 foot log can be very hard or relatively easy. if you try to drag the log by hand, you risk straining you back. I suggest making a small sled with raised sides and a rope to drag the log. I used a compound plastic sheeting left over from a skateboard ramp I built for my local town. It is weatherproof and bends fairly easy. I used the same plastic sheeting to build a sled to get my supplies and food to the site each day. I could only get my van 10 feet off the road and my site is 200 feet beyond that, having a sled that carries daily supplies is important to saving energy and saving you back at the end of the day when energy is low or non existent.
Really besides a sled, I would say common sense and using pivot points makes the hard work easier. if you can get a small log at the center point of a larger log, you can spin the large mass around with ease. Before falling a tree you can lay out a few logs (padding logs) to catch the falling tree. this keeps the log off the ground for bucking (cutting). which is safer and easier to predict the stress points of the tree. and if you need to move a giant log because you want to keep it whole, you can make train tracks out of smaller trees and roll the log along the tracks.
In the Bag: Other daily items: Besides the tools to work, you will need other basic things life food and water.
here is a lists of the things that I took to the lot everyday that I found invaluable.
Water – Cold (with extra for the dogs)
Water – Hot (in a good thermos)
Hot chocolate/French vanilla mix for warmth and energy
Pop – not a huge fan of pop, but a can of Canada dry comes in handy for a sugar boost.
Food – Fruit, Chocolate, sandwiches, granola bars, anything that has energy.
Paper – Paper for starting fires, Toilet paper and paper towel.
Lighters – at least two
Gasoline for the chainsaw & Chainsaw bar oil. An extra chainsaw chain.
Pulp Hook, Wedges, Rope
Chainsaw and axes
Extra gloves
Ear protection from chainsaw noise
Eye protection from chainsaw
Music, my Iphone has all of my favorite music and CBC podcasts; It plays all day long to keep spirits high and help the time pass by.
Showing up prepared and well equipped to work the lot made logging a pleasure instead of a chore, it’s a shame when you learn something new and just get a good routine going, then find yourself at the end of the process and onto the next challenge. Although with 35 acres of forest, I’m sure my days of logging are not behind me. In fact with my friend Luke returning to help me next week and with his 30+ acres waiting for us as well, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to continue to hone my logging skills.
Look forward to some videos from the lot in the near future, I hope to have them up this week. And as spring sets in and I can do more, I’ll have more to write about. My head is spinning with information about building requirements/codes and how they apply to my project. I have chosen to build a strawbale house and am in the process of reading and viewing everything I can about them. I hope to talk to some strawbale owners and am looking for a source for my straw. It’s overwhelming taking on a new construction technique as my first home build, but I can’t deny the advantages of straw and it seems to be the #1 sustainable building system for my needs in my location.
More on my strawbale progress in future posts.
Thanks for reading. It’s not easy being green!
