Giving the Live Oaks a Haircut

As our high temperatures aren't in the 90's anymore, it's opened up some items on my to-do list that I didn't want to attempt in the sweltering heat.  One of those chores is trimming the live oaks.  I like to clean up the suckers that grow off of the horizontal limbs.  Doing so gives the tree a cleaner look.  The goats really like when I do this as I throw the branches into the pasture where they make quick work of the leaves.  

The main tool I use for this is a 10 foot extendable electric chainsaw with an 8 inch blade.  The hard part is getting up to the branches to trim, but that's accessible with a tall ladder.  Being that the chainsaw is electric, you don't have to worry about it not starting or the carburetor being gummed up.  The main thing is to keep the chain sharpened and I do that with a 'rat-tail' file.  It gets the job done on smaller branches.  This electric chainsaw cost me $69, and it has paid for itself time and again.  I can't say enough about how faithfully this saw has performed.

Once I got the smaller suckers removed, I began to look for the next low hanging fruit.  There was a big dead branch.  We have a concrete bench directly underneath it that seemed like a bad place to be sitting for when that big branch gave way.  Time to cut that down.  This branch is too big in diameter to do with a chainsaw with an 8 inch bar.  I precariously set a ladder so that I climb up and lean over and get in position to cut it off.  I try to do this type thing when Tricia is inside as she gets nervous when I'm up in the tree.

You can see the fresh, clean cut way up there.  I moved the bench and flowers so that I wouldn't crush them when the limb was felled.

Since this limb was bigger, it requires a bigger saw.  This is a Greenworks 80 volt battery powered saw with an 18 inch bar.  This thing cuts beautifully.  It's quiet and efficient.  The battery might last 20 minutes, but I have another battery inside charging as I drain the first one.  It keeps me cutting.  I've been pleased with this saw as well.  I had been sharpening each chain for years, but it was finally time to put new chains on both of the saws.  Wow!  What a difference it makes to have a new chain on it!

With a loud thud, the big dead branch landed on the ground.  It did crush Tricia's plant hanger and a decorative flag, but I did my best to straighten them up.

I recharged the 80 volt battery and quickly cut up the live oak logs into fireplace sized pieces.  I'll also give the logs time to season and then I'll split them.  These logs went into a wagon and were pulled back by the fire pit.

Coupling this with a ton of firewood leftover from last year and we're pretty much set for the fireplace this winter.

Sharpening Up on Skills

"If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.  - Abraham Lincoln

I listen to a podcast called "The Art of Manliness."  I'm subscribed to their weekly newsletter and they send me emails.  Of of the things I like is they send a weekly "Skill that Every Man Needs to Know."  Some that come to mind are: How to start a campfire in the rain, How to escape a riptide, How to Whistle with your fingers...  You get the idea.  HERE IS A LINK to 100 skills every man should know.  I was thinking about incorporating this into my life.  

One of the things I don't think is in that list is, but should be if it isn't is:  How to properly sharpen a chainsaw.  One of the things that makes cutting logs difficult is if you've allowed your chainsaw to become dull.  You'll know this because you are working too hard!  You'll also know it's dull if your chainsaw is making sawdust instead of wood chips.

My little $69 electric pole saw was doing just that.  I ordered another chain just to be on the safe side (1 is none and two is one!)  I have more than gotten my money out of this little saw, but it has a lot of limbs yet to cut.

Even though I have a new chain, I wanted to do a good job in sharpening the chain on it and get some more use out of it.  I've sharpened chainsaws before with a little rat tail file, but really didn't know what I was doing.  This time, I figured I would learn and do it correctly.  I purchased a 5/32 circular file with a guide.  It cost me a whopping $9.99.  You'll note it has angles on the guide.

The reason why is that you are supposed to sharpen the teeth at a 30 degree angle.

Pick out the tooth you are starting with and mark it with a Sharpie so you know when you are finished.  You simply line the file up on the teeth, positioning your file and guide with the 30 degree angle and push forward until you are even with the last 30 degree line.  Only go one way.  I did it three times.  Then I moved on to the next one.

Before long I was finished.  I want to show you something crazy.  Look at the directions on the back of the file!:

SHUT OFF SAW MOTOR BEFORE SHARPENING

What type of a meat head would try to sharpen his chainsaw while it was running?  I guess a meat head with missing fingers.  What in the world happened to us as a people?  It reminds me of reading this the other day: 

Car manuals in the 1960s told you how to adjust valve clearances, now they tell you not to drink the battery fluid

Ha!

So with the chainsaw sharpened, it was time to test it out.  There were some live oak branches that had grown to where they are touching the roof.  Time to do some trimming.  I leaned the ladder on the roof and set off to test the sharpness of the chainsaw blade.  

Tricia hates when I do this.  I assured her that my affairs are in order as I headed up the ladder.  I pushed the button and the blade chewed through the limbs like a hot knife through butter.  What a difference it made!  It was so easy to cut, I've gone all around the house trimming branches.  The goats and cows are enjoying eating the green leaves off of the limbs.  

The Top of the World

I'm on the top of the world lookin' down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I've found, ever since you've been around
Your love's put me at the top of the world

Way back in 1972, the Carpenters sang a song with the above lyrics as the chorus.  It was about being on "top of the world" because of being in love.  Although I am indeed in love with my wife, something else put me on top of the world on Saturday - a desire to cut some limbs from one of our live oak trees.  The limbs in question had grown and were being pulled by gravity so that they were rubbing on the roof on top of the dormer windows.  This is no good.  I don't want them to damage our roof, especially with hurricane season coming up in a month and a half.

Trimming the offending limbs was the last thing on my to do list for the weekend and it was last for a reason.  Tricia is not in favor of 'risky' tasks like this.  I surreptitiously got the pickup truck backed up to the house, extended the ladder almost all the way and braced it against the front of the pickup truck bed.  The plan was to get this done like Seal Team 6.  Move in.  Move out.  Mission accomplished.

There was a kink in the plans.  Before I could execute it, Tricia saw my non-OSHA-approved aerial apparatus.  I was able to talk her into allowing me to get the job done by helping me to hold the ladder steady and to hand me the extendable pole chain saw.  

I gingerly climbed the ladder, got the chainsaw lifted up, and cut through four or five limbs and watched them (not me) tumble down the roof and to the ground.  I was pretty high up.  Like being on top of the world.  I am not afraid of heights, but I wasn't keen on falling and hitting the ground either.  A quick joke about the life insurance being paid up was not appreciated by Tricia.  In the end, we had Success!  We filled the back of the pickup truck with live oak branches and drove around to the back and fed them to the goats.  Goats love browse.  In no time flat, they had eaten every single leaf off of the limbs.

I love it when a plan comes together that is a win-win for all involved.  A task was taken off the to-do list without loss of life or (my) limb and the goats got fed.

Cajun Engineering - A Titillating Tale of Redneck Fabrication

This weekend was a gorgeous day.  We went outdoors with a ladder and began harvesting tangerines and navel oranges off of our trees.  The old folks say that after you get a frost or freeze, the sugars intensify in the fruit and yield a sweeter product.  I haven't been able to get a firm answer on if this is true or not.  Temperatures dipped below freezing for two days last week, so if this was true, our fruit would be super sweet.  

We went outside an picked several baskets of fruit.  We encountered one small problem - our trees are growing each year and this year was the first year that we could not reach the fruit on the top of the tree.  Even utilizing a ladder proved ineffective.  The trees were just to doggone tall.  What to do?  You can see one of the tangerines WAAAAAYYYYY up there in the photo below, bordering the upper atmosphere.

I went inside and looked up Lehman's "For a Simpler Life" Hardware on the Internet.  I enjoy looking at their goods.  They are hand-crafted Amish products that help enhance your life.  I located a Fruit Harvester tool under the Apple Harvest tab.  It was $29.95.  Not a bad price at all, but due to Covid and other factors, shipping & processing is delayed.  I don't have time to wait.

A running joke in rural areas is that if you give a man a roll of duct tape and baling twine, he can fix most anything.  I began to think that I could build my own fruit harvester tool with a little Cajun ingenuity and it would cost me exactly $0.  So I built my own Fruit Harvester tool that is capable of reaching fruit that grows up in heights on top of the trees where the air is thin.  I rooted around in the garage and in the back of the house, found some odds and ends, grabbed some duct tape and fabricated what I call, "Kyle's Deluxe Citrus Snatcher."  (Patent Pending)  You can view the prototype lying beneath the ladder below in a photo captured by a corporate spy.

Let's take a closer look below.  I had an old garden hand tool whose handle had broken.  I cut off the broken end of the handle and jammed it into a piece of 3/4 inch PVC pipe.  I used duct tape to firmly fasten the garden tool on the PVC pipe.  The tool does not telescope, per se, but it does somewhat telescope by fitting a second joint of PVC into the other for those really high, hard to get tangerines.

You can see an example of what it looks like in action below in a simulated example (but on the ground - not an aerial shot).  You reach up and get the prongs behind the fruit and firmly pull downward.  The fruit promptly snaps off the branch and tumbles to the ground below.

Beautiful fruit that was once unobtainable is now within your grasp!

But wait!  There's more.  If you act now, you can own your own Deluxe Citrus Snatcher...

Sorry, my factory is not built yet.  You'll have to build your own.  

The Neighbor's Vineyard

And sow the fields, and plant vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase.  He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease.  Psalm 107:37-38

Sunday afternoon our neighbors were in the yard, and we walked over to talk to them.  They had brought over some fresh fig cookies and several bags of apples, and we wanted to thank them.  It is so good to have good neighbors.  We were standing in the shade visiting underneath their vineyard.  They are taking care of their parents who aren't in great health.  This keeps them very busy.

As a result they mentioned that they wouldn't have time to pick their grapes and offered to us to feel free to pick as many as we'd like.  Well, that's an offer we can't pass up.  Our muscadine grape vines are juveniles.  Our neighbor's grapes are old and established and produce lots more than ours.  We took them up on their offer.  Tricia grabbed our ladder and a few buckets and started picking grapes in the neighbor's arbor.

Tricia finally gets a "raise"

I found a shady, comfortable spot to pick!  Mr. Bill, our neighbor's Dad who planted the grapes also built the trellis the grapes grow on.  He was a Drilling Superintendent for an oil company, so the trellis is made with drill stem.  This grape trellis will be standing for the next 200 years!

While our muscadines are dark red when ripe, these are a shiny golden-green when ripe.  Some have a pinkish tinge.  The ripe ones are also soft to the touch.

They are quite large - bigger than a shooting marble.  More like the size of the "plunker" marbles we used to play with.

In no time flat, we picked this Tupperware cake cover and two and a half bucketfuls!  We weighed them when we brought them inside and they weighed 32 pounds in total.

The grape vines are healthy.  Just look at all the foliage!

When picking, we clip the bucket on the hook on the top of the ladder meant for holding paint cans when you are painting.  That little hook works fine for this application as well.

We brought all the grapes inside.  What in the world are we gonna do with 32 pounds of grapes?  Well, on Thursday night, I'll post Part 1 with more details about our Great Grape Project of 2020.

Thinning Things Out

My hair is getting more and more gray with each passing day.  I'm okay with it and haven't considered hair products to color the grey.  On the bright side, at least for now, although it is turning grey, it hasn't started turning loose.  It is still thick and when I go get a haircut, the barber often pulls out some thinning shears like shown below to thin things out a bit.

Image Credit

I thought of the haircut analogy the other day when I started an undertaking in trimming one of our live oak trees.  It had a lot of interior growth that just needed to be cleaned up. A friend of ours had his live oaks trimmed and the price tag was way more than what I wanted to fork over, so I started trimming this tree and it will take me about a week or so of plugging away at it before I get it completed, but I made a good start.

Of course I did a lot of googling of how to properly trim a live oak.  Here's a little bit of what I learned:

1. Don't trim flush with the limb or you'll take off the collar that helps your tree scab over and heal,
2. Take off all the dead and diseased limbs,
3. Remove any lower limbs that are growing upward to the crown as this will help airflow,
4. Cut away branches that rub together,
5. Trim off 'ugly' looking branches. (Oh, I have one more thing I'll show you at the end that I learned by making a mistake!)

I used a big extension ladder to get myself up where I needed to be to trim with a chain saw, a pole saw, and and hand saw.  The ladder was equally effective in getting me up high as well as making my wife nervous.  I'm not afraid of heights.

Unlike my wife, the cows, goats, and chickens were pleased with my new project because I threw the limbs I trimmed over the fence and the animals ate the leaves and the chickens found bugs and such to eat amongst the leaves and branches.

In THIS POST and another post referenced in that  one, I tell of  how we repaired this live oak that had split down the middle by cabling it together.  You can see a cable spanning a two of the large limbs and pulled tight with a turnbuckle in the photo below:

After a recent storm I noticed that one of the two cables supporting the great weight of the mighty oak had come loose.

I quickly diagnosed the problem - the weight of the tree pulling against the turnbuckle had straightened out one of the hooks, allowing the turnbuckle to release from the eye bolt anchored in the tree.  I'll need t fix that as we are smack dab in the middle of  hurricane season and I don't want to leave the tree vulnerable.

Okay, back to the lesson I learned the hard way.  When you make a cut, you are supposed to paint the fresh cut with some black spray paint.  Newly cut wood is sweet smelling and attracts bugs that will bore into your tree, introducing disease. Painting the cut helps to reduce the risk of bug damage.

You can see my mistake at the seven o'clock position in the photo below.  Rather than doing what I knew to do and make my first cut at the bottom of the limb, I cut from the top. With no bottom cut, the weight of the cut limb tore some of the bark off of the bottom.  That could have been eliminated, but the tree will heal.  I'll just do it right from this point forward.

With the tree trimming about 50% done on this live oak, I think it looks a lot cleaner  and opened up the view under the expansive canopy that just makes the tree look better.  It should also allow a little more sunlight that will perk up the St. Augustine grass that grows beneath the tree's branches.  We all benefit from a little thinning out from time to time.