Rock A Bye, Baby

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall

And down will come baby, cradle and all

Remember that crazy song?  Why would you rock your baby up in a treetop?  That is reckless endangerment, child abuse, and infanticide.  Furthermore, why would you sing this to your baby in a soothing voice when you are singing about a baby likely plummeting to the earth where the baby would either receive a fatal would or serious injuries?  What does it mean?  I haven't a clue.

Anyway, we had some boughs breaking this past week, but fortunately there were no infants up in our trees.  One of the trees that succumbed to the red oak borer beetle was leaning over the garden and was threatening to fall on our fall vegetables. You can see the precarious lean.

Leaning over the Garden

We awoke to find that a number of branches from high up in the tree had fallen into the garden.  It messed up a few sugar snap peas and kale, but really, I can't complain.  It could have been a lot worse.

Is this why they call November, Fall?

I picked up the broken limbs and tossed them over the fence.  They will serve as fuel for our next bonfire.  Fortunately, most of the falling branches missed the veggies as they fell between rows.

The trellis for the sugar snap peas kind of broke the fall and deflected the force of gravity.

Our neighbor happened to be outside when all the limbs fell.  He heard the ruckus and came to check on us to make sure no one was injured.  A little while later he came back over with a long rope, a chainsaw and his four-wheeler.  I leaned a tall ladder against the dead tree (not smart, I know) and climbed up as high as I dared and secured a rope around the highest point I could reach.

Climbing Jacob's Ladder...

To the other end, we attached the rope to his four wheeler and pulled the rope taut. Our goal was to pull the tree to make it fall not where it wanted to (the garden) but where we wanted it to (the barnyard).

The anchor point

Benjamin revved the engine of the four-wheeler, keeping the rope tight while our neighbor cut a big notch in the side that we wanted it to fall.

We had a nice big notch cut in the tree, begging it to fall in this direction.  Would we be successful? Or would our fall tomatoes be chopped and diced by a falling tree instead of in our kitchen?  Stay tuned, we'll show you further down below.

Then my neighbor began cutting through the tree on the back side, motioning to Benjamin to pull and pull harder.  The wheels began to spin.  I jumped on the back to give the four wheeler some weight. Not good.  The four wheeler didn't have the weight or the power to pull the tree.  Oh no!  We went and put the cows and goats in the corral.

A lightbulb flickered in my head and I raced off to get a "come-along" (cable puller) and a chain.  We anchored the cable around a large oak tree, tied the chain to the end of the rope and attached the come-along and began using the lever to pull the tree over.  Slowly the tree began to stand erect and then began to lean in the direction we wanted it to.

Then with a crack, the tree fell right where we wanted it to.  It bounced right after we said, "TIMBER!" It missed hitting us, the hay ring, the animals, and the trunk almost fell on one of our burning piles.

The tree top fell squarely on another burning pile.  Bulls-eye!

Right in the burn pile.

So we cut up the tree for firewood.  Benjamin and I had fun throwing big fat white worms that burrowed in the fallen tree to the chickens and watched them gobble them up.  We threw what remained of the branches on the burning pile.  Then we breathed a sigh of relief that no more branches would fall into the garden and also relieved that we removed the temptation for those that might want to rock their babies in dangerous treetops.