Started with this pick up sticks mess of storm felled pines that’s had one of our trails closed for longer than I would prefer. They were also close enough to the beehive stands the tops would hit the stands if/when they fell further. We don’t have the bees since Dad passed but that doesn’t quite translate into being good with smashing the stands quite yet. For whatever reason, this approximate 1/4 acre has by far the most jacked up, wind damaged, fallen, and half fallen trees on the whole place and it just happens to be adjacent to the old bee yard.
Been waiting for the new Farmi W50R to help untangle this mess. Not trying to make it pretty, just trying to clear the trail.
Stared at it for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to pull it apart one tree at a time. Abandoned the piecemeal plan and decided to see if the Farmi had enough grunt to rip the whole wad of trees down from the trees they were hung in and backward through the other fallen trees that aren’t in the trail.
The biggest tree in the bunch was still attached to the stump stuck in the ground. Cut it off at an angle so it would hopefully slide sideways around the stump. Didn’t expect the Farmi to pull that mess single line, but I’m still learning it, so set up a snatch block to reverse pull direction (tractor parked sideways in trail a bit down from the problem) and gave it a whirl single line. As expected, didn’t get far.
Reset with an added snatch block on the choker to double line pull. Also changed the choker to a 1/2” Grade 70, which made me feel a bit better about potentially putting as much as a bit north of 20,000lb on the choker. Tried to get a decent pic of the setup but it was a gray cable in a tangle of gray trees so they all came out looking like I strapped a body cam to a rabbit hanging out in a brush pile.
The rather lame pic below was about the best I could do. Obviously after the pull. The butt of the largest problem pine is buried under an old log and some other busted mess that was in the way. Line back to the winch on the tree on the right. Tree on the left is the anchor for snatch block on the choker. Doesn’t look very big, and I guess it isn’t from standpoint of girth.
But it just goes on and on and on. At least it’s out of the trail now. Had to pull one of the other trees a bit further, but a relatively quick single line pull handled that nicely and put all of them completely on the ground.
Yes, the L and Farmi are in the last photo, albeit in a “Where’s Waldo” sort of way. One of the things I really like about the winch, aside from its obvious ability to yard logs out of difficult terrain and skid them to the wood yard, is the ability to efficiently and safely put stuff like this on the ground. There was a little saw work to this, but when this was actually coming down, I was over there with the winch pulling on the clutch rope. That and it is quite a bit faster and easier than rigging ropes and chains for drawbar pulls.
In case you can’t see it, about 3/4 up from the bottom, over by the left edge, there’s a little red/orange spot. That’s the tractor and winch. Just left of that there’s a little green spot. That’s the Mule, aka the support vehicle. Neither anywhere near the action.
