April 21, 2017 Today was the first day we were going to clear the trees along the street so the electric company could run the wires for us. We rented a high reach and a skid-steer. We made stop signs and slow signs. We had safety vests, hard hats, chain saws and plenty of gatorade, water and snacks.
Scary group, huh?
We had roughly 40 trees to drop over the course of a 3-day weekend. Day 1 went very well.
Day 2 Didn’t go very well. Someone stopped by and asked if we had permits to do this work. They called the police and by 8am we were shut down. We were told we needed proper signs, a traffic plan submitted to the police, and our flaggers had to be over 18 years old. So, since we had the equipment rented for the weekend, we decided to put it to good use. We went back onto our property and cut down 13 trees on the right side that needed to come down.
We had to rework our plan. We submitted a traffic plan to the police, rented proper signs, re-rented the machines and set our new date for May 5th, 6th and 7th.
Traffic Plan
May 5, 2017 We started by 7:00 am. Dan was in the high reach and he would trim up the top of the trees. When he was finished, he would give the signal and all of the younger kids would run into the street and drag the branches out of the road. They drug them onto the property and threw them into a big pile. This became a bird sanctuary. By the end of the weekend, we built 3 enormous sanctuaries.
When the top of the tree was gone, Dan would come down and cut the trunk down. Then he and Daniel would cut the trunk into pieces that Katie could pick up with the skid steer. Everyone agreed that Katie had the best job driving that little machine.
She would drive the logs to the back of the property. (Future firewood)
We didn’t really have any problems all weekend. Although it rained a little. And every once in awhile, someone would stop and ask if we had permits. Or they wanted to know if Joanna was over 18, because she was one of the flaggers. I was the other flagger and no one stopped to ask me if I was over 18. By Sunday night we had taken down 41 trees. We even cleaned up the road when we were done.
