For the past year, I've been parking our tractor in the garage that was meant to house @farm-mom's car.
Robin has been a good sport about the situation, but it's time to get her car back undercover.
The new garage will be built in a spot that I started clearing last year. I thought that I had taken all of the trees down that I felt could fall on the new structure I was planning to build, but realized that the tree in this pic also had to go. We have a lot of Ash trees on our property and they are all succumbing to the Ash Boring Beetle.
There aren't too many trees that I can't drop by myself, but this particular tree was a monster.
Whenever I thought about dropping this tree by myself I got a pit in my stomach, knowing that doing it solo would be a dangerous proposition. Getting up there in years our children have repeatedly said, "Dad, if you need a hand with anything on the farm just let us know." I always hesitate to call them, knowing how busy they are, but for this job, I asked our firstborn son Robert if he could manage to lend me a hand. He told me he'd see what he could work out and two days later he showed up and was ready to go.
In the first picture, you can see a rope hanging from the tree.
The rope is an Arborist rope made specifically for the job we were about to do. The 125-foot rope was tied off to my truck which was positioned in the road. I slowly crept the truck forward, tightening the rope up just enough to put some pressure on the tree. After notching the tree on the side in the direction we wanted the tree to fall I waited for him to make the back cut. As the back cut was made the tree started to lean and all I heard was go, go go. As Robin stood in the road watching for any passing cars, the tree hit the ground with a thunder. As we like to say here on the farm when something goes just as planned this job was a TOTAL VICTORY.
The tree hit the ground with such force that the first 20 feet split in half. We estimated the tree to be about 125 feet in length. With this monster safely on the ground, I was all smiles.
We spent the remainder of the day cutting the tree up and discarding the branches.
To my delight, Robert told me that he could give me a hand the following day. We got up early and by the end of the second day, we had the area stoned and had put all of the plates down. The footprint on exactly where the garage was going to stand was established.
After our son left, I got busy milling as many pieces of the puzzle as possible.
Besides the pressure-treated lumber used for the bottom plates, the only other lumber I needed to purchase was for the roof rafters. I decided to use a mellow 4 on 12 pitch for the roof and cut all of the rafters before starting to build the garage.
This will be the first time I will be installing a metal roof system.
I plan on starting to build the garage on July 3rd.
During this phase of the job, our son Ryan has offered to lend a hand. Being that both he and his wife are teachers and have the summer off, he will be visiting us for the week with his entire family. Hobbitizing with Ryan by my side will be a joy as the rest of the family will be enjoying everything our little bit of Paradise has to offer.
As parents, we must have done something right because our children always answer the bell when called upon.
For those who are interested, I'll be happy to let you know how things are going.