So yeah: that would be the branch that fell off the tree in the back yard. Now you know why I'm trying to find some hero with a chainsaw and one of those flatbed trucks with the mini-crane on the back.
That's Blackwood, you see. Acacia melanoxylon -- one of the wattle family. The timber is very high quality, prized by instrument-makers among others, and there's a sizably long, satisfactorily straight chunk of it now sprawled across my back paddock. I'm not too bad with a chainsaw, but I am definitely not game to try and cut the supports out from underneath what looks like a tonne or so of hardwood suspended about two and a half metres above the ground.
What I want to do is get it trimmed down to a couple of five-metre logs or so, then shifted to a dry spot near one of our sheds. I'll put down some old tyres or something, and throw a tarp over the top, and with a bit of luck in a few years we can send the thing to the sawmill. Or is it the other way round? Sawmill first, then season the planks? I dunno. I'm sure someone can tell me. What I do know: I am not qualified to handle this one.
Right. Looks like it's about time to start dinner. Still got a bunch of things to do -- cleaning, tidying... I finished planting strawberries in the new strawberry-thingee today, so with a bit of luck in a couple months we'll be seeing the first of a shiny new crop. Yum. And yes, this time they're protected by fence from wallaby and rabbit, protected by netting from birds, lifted off the ground to keep slugs and field mice at bay... and now lifted even higher, with the potential for added mosquito-netting if the goddam grasshoppers go apeshit like they did last year. Shit, the things I have to do to grow a decent feed of strawberries! Lucky the blackberries aren't so picky.
Thought for the day:
Flinthart's Corollary to Goldman's Thesis: "Dance All You Want, Sweetheart -- But It Ain't A Revolution Until Someone Puts The Fat Bastards Against The Wall And Shoots 'Em."
Dannng... that's a big ass branch. It's like a tree that fell off of a tree. Good luck finding Paul Bunyon.
ReplyDeleteI'd even settle for Babe the Blue Ox right about now... but with my luck, I'd only get some damned talking pig.
ReplyDeletethats a fair bit of firewood left over as well
ReplyDelete1. Let the leaves etc dry up and drop off first - there's a huge ammt of weight in them green.
ReplyDelete2. You can get a guy with a portable saw mill to come to your place to plank it up, and if you have a good spot to keep it out of the weather to cure - lucky you!
My fallen down tree is bigger than your fallen down tree. I look at the chain saw aginst the tree and go "naaah"...I need dynamite.
ReplyDeleteHow did it get there in the first place? Freak lightning bolt?
ReplyDeleteNo -- Blackwoods are prone to dividing main trunks. This one divided about six or seven metres up. I'd been expecting something to go eventually, because I could see from the black line down the bark on the outside that water and fungus had entered the fork, and were damaging the heartwood there. But... we just had a windy night.
ReplyDeleteI think the tree will survive, once the exposed area weathers and toughens. I hope so, anyway. It's a beautiful tree.
Moko -- you don't quite understand: that's a fallen BRANCH.