Spending the day taking down 90 foot pines.....oh boy

I have a lull all terrain fork lift with forks and a safety cage on the forks which is chained to the lull forklift and can extend 42 feet. A neighbor had a lightning strike on one of three monster pines and they threatened the house.

I got a "compliance in a bucket" safety straps, and we cut the notch at about 30 feet, and then I came in and pushed the tree over to our landing zone. The trees were between the garage workshop and the house, and we were able to land them perfectly. I am getting weaker, but split a dump truck load of wood yesterday, and now when I type my hands are shaking......but I am still doing things which a 30 year old would have trouble keeping up.....Scarey stuff when you can take out a house, but the trees were still in good shape and we had no backlash. After Ivan, I almost got seriously hurt twice not taking into consideration the winds pushing on pines during Ivan, and when I would cut playing a lean.....it would snap back at me, but fortunately no structures were nearby.

I do not know how people got things done before bobcats and all terrain fork lifts became available.....there had to be some real accidents.

Anybody know if you can rent a trailer saw mill.......I just hate to throw away all this lumber, but it was a safety issue with the neighbors house. I have to check out if one of the rental places have a trailer saw mill....I have seen them on Utube, and what a great way to make your own dimensional lumber. We had about 5 neighbors helping, and you can see how people had to bond together to get anything done even 50 years ago before all this really great technology. Maybe I could really cause a stir by offering portable saw mill to cut heritage trees in Pensacola....the government wants to tell you what type of trees are protected.....I can become a tree terrorist.

2seaoat wrote:Anybody know if you can rent a trailer saw mill.......I just hate to throw away all this lumber, but it was a safety issue with the neighbors house. I have to check out if one of the rental places have a trailer saw mill....I have seen them on Utube, and what a great way to make your own dimensional lumber. We had about 5 neighbors helping, and you can see how people had to bond together to get anything done even 50 years ago before all this really great technology. Maybe I could really cause a stir by offering portable saw mill to cut heritage trees in Pensacola....the government wants to tell you what type of trees are protected.....I can become a tree terrorist.

You cannot rent a mobile-dimension saw mill. My folks have one. Husqvarna used to make a "portable sawmill". If I'm not mistaken, Stihl also makes (or made) one. Or, depending on where you are, you may be able to get online and find someone with a mill who will buy the logs from you. How many foot logs did you buck the trees into?

EDIT: Kudos to you for all the hard work you continue to do, SO. Keep trucking, man.

2seaoat wrote:Anybody know if you can rent a trailer saw mill.......I just hate to throw away all this lumber, but it was a safety issue with the neighbors house. I have to check out if one of the rental places have a trailer saw mill....I have seen them on Utube, and what a great way to make your own dimensional lumber. We had about 5 neighbors helping, and you can see how people had to bond together to get anything done even 50 years ago before all this really great technology. Maybe I could really cause a stir by offering portable saw mill to cut heritage trees in Pensacola....the government wants to tell you what type of trees are protected.....I can become a tree terrorist.

Regarding your comment about buying a mobile dimension sawmill to cut heritage trees in Pensacola: my folks have done a lot of contract work for the USFS in the past, but as Dad's gotten older (78 now) they keep it closer to home and only mill hazard trees and other small projects closer to home on a contract basis. Doing hazard tree work in Pensacola could be quite lucrative, I'd imagine.

We took down four three to four foot diameter at the base pines, and the owner wanted to cut them up. I was sick because we were topping them, and brought down 12 foot section of absolutely the straightest pine I have seen. One of the trees had the rings counted which were over 100, and the other was about 85. These were beautiful trees. I took some trees down in Milton and met a couple of older guys who would take my trees to their mill, and cut them to the size I wanted, and then they would fill a 20 foot steel storage container, and I could ship the container about 80 miles to somewhere in the Panama City area and they would treat my cut lumber, and I would get the storage container back full of dimensional treated lumber. The prices they gave me in 2008 were about 10 cents on the dollar what I would have to pay from Lowes. I still have pretty good stand of pines on some property I own in Milton, and I am looking to build about a 700 foot seawall on a canal I own, but the FEP and Army Corps have made it so difficult to repair an existing seawall. After a hurricane they are great, but now it would simply be a nightmare.....and as bad as my hands are shaking this evening.....I do not know how long I am going to keep having this much fun. I have never had my hands shake before doing hard physical work, and I fear that my liver functions may be slipping, as I have lost 14 lbs.....but hell I am doing things that most people only dream of....so I will keep on pushing the envelope.

Okay mr Oat I am beginning to think this whole cancer thing is something you thought up so you could take a break without feeling guilty. Doctors say we all probably have cancer off and on throughout our lives. Well enough goofing off, time to get back to work man. I am expecting you to tell us you've had a complete recovery any day now so I will pretend to be surprised. ...LOL

The beauty of endocrine cancer is it is really slow. If I had straight up liver cancer with three two inch tumors....I would be toast in six months. I have only one healthy lung...my right lung, as the left lung had two lobes and they removed the upper lobe in 2008......really not as big of a deal as you first think.....you just take things a little slow. However, this metastasis to the liver......well this is tough. Its not like overnight you cannot do things, but each day you tire a little faster. Part of the Problem is Northwestern has cranked my shots to double what the recommended dosage used to be, and I really get worn down in weeks two and three. I am in week three this weekend so I am hoping it is more shots than the other option, but neighbors just shake their heads. They expect people to curl up in a ball and feel sorry for themselves......got none of that in me, so I am going to have fun playing with my toys. It was pretty sad yesterday just sitting on a log and having my wife bring the bigger logs to the splitter, but we did a dump truck load and I swear good physical work may not cure a person, but I am convinced it will give me better quality for whatever my allocation is........so in the morning I am going to have to deal with a government bureaucrat who does not like the way I set up a bathroom trailer where I used 275 gallon totes and daisy chained them and recycle to an ejector pump which allows me to fill two totes on my dumptruck and take the waste to the municipal waste processing center.......I hope I do not go to jail.....I am sick of government telling me what I have to do.....I get a kick out of people thinking I am a Democrat.....they are clueless.

cmon... ya know i'm just diggin at ya. give em hell.

I bet your hands will feel better and stop shaking after a few days. If you don't do it often a long day on a chainsaw would bother a lot of people. I would give it a few days, SO. Glad you're not letting it keep you down, man.

You gonna call the guys with the mill you used in 2008?

Geographically impossible, as I have relocated closer to Northwestern Hospital and am going to spend the rest of my life on some islands in a river in the midwest. I will head south to Arizona in early December, I will spend a couple weeks in SR county taking care of some loose ends in January, and I think I will spend a couple weeks at Marco Island in February......but I get my shots the first week each month, so I need to be a few hours from Chicago......I could not sell my house in SR and I am renting to a fireman at about half the usual rent.....good guy.....who I trust will take care of it as I wind down. We will keep the house listed, but only two people looked at it in a year, and I dropped the price over 200k......the new reality......but the 15 year mortgage rate has dropped below three percent....some young people are going to hit home runs on the backs of some greedy babyboomers.....and I should know.....I am one.

2seaoat wrote:Geographically impossible, as I have relocated closer to Northwestern Hospital and am going to spend the rest of my life on some islands in a river in the midwest. I will head south to Arizona in early December, I will spend a couple weeks in SR county taking care of some loose ends in January, and I think I will spend a couple weeks at Marco Island in February......but I get my shots the first week each month, so I need to be a few hours from Chicago......I could not sell my house in SR and I am renting to a fireman at about half the usual rent.....good guy.....who I trust will take care of it as I wind down. We will keep the house listed, but only two people looked at it in a year, and I dropped the price over 200k......the new reality......but the 15 year mortgage rate has dropped below three percent....some young people are going to hit home runs on the backs of some greedy babyboomers.....and I should know.....I am one.

LOL do you know how many people have died that were not expecting it while you "wind down" ?...You know more than anyone that you should always live like you are dying....

Teo said he would come and talk to the Government man for you.

hallmarkgrad wrote:Teo said he would come and talk to the Government man for you.

hallmarkgrad wrote:Teo said he would come and talk to the Government man for you.

Yeah and I will if you come visit me in prison afterwards....

When you own property in a floodplain......they get to be real sticklers on anything you do.......I have sat at meetings at the SR government center with 10 people in a room telling me about how they want me to use my property........and telling me that I cannot do anything.......but if you hire an engineer they recommend....gee, things will get approved....who needs a fricking engineer to use their property.......but I am glad folks think I am a big government Democrat......what a joke. The Public health people are a pain. I remember getting all kinds of heat in SR on a new septic system, and I complained to my real estate person, who made a phone call to someone she knew, and a supervisor comes out....is reasonable, and suddenly I really did not have a problem. I believe we need regulations to protect the public, but we have simply abandoned common sense. and some of these career folks love making people miserable....and then when you are about to give up on all of them....you get an honest person who is trying to do things right and use common sense. We will see how it goes, but I have a tendency to tell people who are unreasonable to FO......not always the smartest method.....but I would rather fight than get steamrolled.

The thing that does irritate me is that you seem to forget how we reach the point that we don't even have control over our land...

or even our very bodies. Have you ever looked at how something like marijuana became illegal?

After the civil war there were concerns about the ingredients in those tonics... so labeling laws were made. Then there were concerns about the effects... so regulations for the uses were defined and some labeled poison. Of course that lead to the need for standardized manufacture. So then a percription was needed. Then came the concerns as to the benefit... which lead to controlled substance classification. Then there was contention as to the great benefit hemp was to our country... enter Hearst with his newspapers and yellow journalism that scared the public and influenced legislators that made the marijuana tax act that made it illegal... and Hearst's other business interest as a lumber baron made an immense fortune.

I'm sure I left out countless progressive steps between George Washington growing hemp and the millions arrested and fined.

But I'm sure you could connect the dots... if you wanted to.

Yet Monsanto can create frankenfood and hide it on our store shelves without any label at all. I think we are screwed....