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The happy Nada Farmer, cuttin' up trees and repairing furnaces, all in a days work, meanwhile trying not to get a cramp that will make me cry. Gotta love it.
Keep coming back, page Thirty Nine follows......soon.
Turns out, even branches of trees are heavy.
I was walking through the woods at the back of the property, when I discovered the recent winds had caused a large Hickory tree to lose a limb. I wouldn't have minded as much if it wasn't hanging over an area I usually walked and smashed even more of the fencing around the rear of the property. Not that I use that fencing but it is becoming obvious that the fences clarify the demarcation of my land to hunt, and the neighbors land to hunt. I have a couple friends who are hunting my property and my neighbor rents out to hunters to hunt his land. I just want people to be aware they are crossing lines so if it ever becomes an issue I can refer to the fences as the lines that mark the borders. I have found a couple places where the fences are being crossed frequently enough they are being damaged. I really don't care much if they are crossed but I don't want them permanently breached, they do funnel the neighbors cows up to where I can see them, and help get them home where they belong. And with imminent the advent of goats, I think they might even be minimally useful to me, though they were built to hold cattle, not goats, who I imagine will move through them rather freely. Anyway back to the fence and the limb.
It is what is known as a dead fall, it will fall on you and make you dead. I don't like to let them persist. I really prefer to get them on the ground, as soon as I am aware of them, so as not to be a hazard to me or anyone else walking around my little forest . So I set out to get it cut down, I didn't really think it would be an issue or I would have taken more before pictures. Let's just say it got interesting as I moved forward. I have removed such hazards for years in the Fire Service, but I had more equipment and lots of help if I called for it. Here it was just me and a ladder and a chain 
saw. I really didn't feel comfortable with the chainsaw, up on the ladder, though I had tied the ladder to the tree, but that was way into the process. First I started at the top of the tree branch, now laying near the field, and across the fence. I cut the smaller branches carefully, because I knew the large branch, still attached to the main tree, was going to "go 7 ways from Sunday" no matter how much I planned to control it. In fact, it did exactly what I had thought it would. I was really doing quite well, I was able to cut it so that it turned and shifted no more than I was willing to allow and only got the saw caught in one kerf, so bad that I had to use a wedge to free it. Really much better than a few of the previous times, when I've had to resort to using another saw, to free my good one from the clamping and twisting of a larger limb. My slight miscalculation on how long to leave the final cut of the largest portion of the limb, allowed it to swing back to the tree, and remain upright and supported by a bit of bark and shredded wood. Not a good situation, now a large piece of wood was standing upright parallel to the main trunk, sitting on a large rock and held in place by "not much" peeling bark. In a word, dangerous, So I quit for the day. I really didn't like leaving it like that, even overnight, but I'm still not a whole person,
so my < 70% body and I loaded some wood into the truck and came in to test the recuperative abilities of heavy drug use and a night of contemplative repose.
The next afternoon, I returned with a different arsenal of tools, mostly hand tools and tried to cut through the bark, and splintered wood, holding the broken limb in place. I first tried a limb saw, you know, a bow type saw, with the large teeth and, yeah, that's sort of a problem when you can't use anything above shoulder level. Which, when I got everything in place, and tied into the ladder, tied into the tree, and not where anything was likely to swing around and wipe me off the tree, when it finally fell, I happened to be, with the work area above shoulder level that is. So I looked at the chainsaw, it really seemed like a quick and do-able solution, just fire it up set it on the area in question, and pull the trigger, let gravity do the work. But what if... I could just come up with so many negative consequences from that plan, mostly involving bleeding and ouchies, that I decided to try something else. I had a large set of trimmers, generally referred to as loppers, that I got from Marc's in Akron for $10.00, so I had little to lose, as I could use them to cut the bark and shattered tree material, and if they broke, or tried to kill me, I could toss them, and be out $10.00 instead of the $600.00 chainsaw and the expected reattachment costs of my limbs, (probably more than $10.00, and wouldn't work as well as I would prefer, because they don't now anyway). So I climbed up the ladder tied to the tree, and tied myself to the ladder, and started nibbling away at the bark holding the tree branch up.
There was a little metal house back there in the woods, I think it might have been some sort of a chicken coop or chickee house or something, anyway it had a side door that opened down, a peaked roof and four complete sides. So I thought that, as I was back in the woods anyway, I would bring it up to the house and maybe paint it some weird color and use it for a decoration, sort of a little red barn. But, where it was setting was a likely place for the giant branch to fall, here you can see the dark spot where it had been 
resting for years unprotected in the woods, so I decided to move it. I even put it behind a little tree, so that it was sure to be safe. And absolutely out of the range of the heavy branch I was about to finally remove, so "it could be a danger no more." So as I nibbled my way gingerly through the trees remaining bark and shattered matter, using the clippers at their longest handle length, to give me the greatest mechanical advantage (which in that position I really needed) I was momentarily so happy when the branch finally let go, but it made a weird noise as it hit the ground, now I say a weird noise, (as with what's left of my hearing any sound that gets my attention is unusual) I mean just didn't sound right. So there are a number of fence lines at the back of my property, one is an electric wire that is sometimes "barbed" and sometimes not that the previous owner used to keep his cows in the pasture. And there is one down in the woods that is the actual property line variety, which at one time was 5 strands of barbed wire. But it is sort of grown into the trees, which were used as fence posts in the past, when the trees were smaller. Anyway the tree this large limb was broken off of, was a fence post tree. And the branch fell straight down the fence line and reverberated up through the tree, the ladder, and me.
And it totally crushed the little metal building! I mean "dead center" of the peaked roof, squashed that sucker flat! I couldn't have destroyed it any better if I'd wanted to. "Jus goes to show ya, it's always sumpin!" I guess, of all the things that could have gone wrong, that was the least to get upset about, and I really didn't, I just laughed and sent for Chris with her camera. Proof! I have no idea what I'm doing in the woods with a chainsaw. Or maybe that I've learned that there is nothing that is going to go the way I desire, but it might not kill me, if I'm careful enough. But there is quite a bit of wood in a branch this size and I am going to be cutting and carrying for a while to get it all with in my limited working window.
Now you might think that was adventure enough, but the fates keep me hoppin' ! When I went to the little house to check on some paper towels for the garage, I smelled electrical smoke, you know that uh-oh! smell of something having had an electrical breakdown? Like the refrigerator, or the freezer, or a computer monitor, or a fan motor in an ionizor, well I checked them all, and it wasn't any of them. So I went on a search to find what else could have had a bad day, because basically that's all that's supposed to be plugged in down there. We basically heat it to 40 degrees in the winter just to protect the pipes and so that we can store things we don't want to freeze, well except in the freezer of course, but you knew that, right? Oh yeah, there is the furnace, and as it had been above freezing for the last couple weeks it had not been running much at all. Well, yep, it was the furnace, more specifically the blower motor, now if I can figure out what makes something work I can usually fix it, if I can get the parts. With the internet, I have found it much easier to get the information I need. Seldom where I expect to find it but I usually find out there are things I need to know that I never would have considered otherwise, like the fact that the little motor in the blower of my furnace could possibly cost more than the motor/generator that powers my entire 3 phase garage operations. 
But it did, in fact, half again as much. Stupid, but try heating the place without it. Everything in the furnace is connected, and most parts to two other things as well. But it was surprisingly easy to disassemble. About 4 screws and the blower was out, and 4 more, and the burned up motor was out. Then the fun started, well actually the fun was well underway but mostly due to having to be in water to get anything done. You see the thaw and freeze cycle and anything else which affects the water levels in the ground causes the water to run across the floor and puddle right in front of the furnace so I was constantly squeegying the area and trying to keep from getting electrocuted with the light I had to use to get some light where I could see what I was doing. That's how the only bulb I had down there got broken, simply because I threw it down when it shocked me. I might have overreacted, but I'm not dead, so maybe not. Anyway, I found that the thing I thought was the part number, wasn't, in fact I couldn't find the number I had anywhere on the internet (except some goofy chinese music stuff that didn't even go to a real site). So I eventually found the correct number and it was superceded a dozen times and related to a part for about 7 other makes and models of furnaces. Almost a universal replacement part that when I asked the guy at the local furnace place he was amazed and said "I just priced one of those, it's still here on the calculator tape" $157.00 give or take. He even threw in the capacitor, which some internet sites wanted $32.00 for, though some of the electronics sites had it for down to $3.40, and it hooked right in, though there were extra wires I didn't use, I just bundled them up and cut the ends off. It was in the paperwork that came with it, really. And all this happened just before the really nasty weather hit, Imagine that!
