Firewood # 7 - Silver Birch

Last weekend I had logged up the main trunk of the Silver Birch (see Firewood # 6), leaving what I estimated at about 5m more stuck in the hedge (!).  Today I thought I'd pull the rest out - until the we can make the smallholding pay enough to buy me a tractor, the hardworking Polo will have to do (see Chickens # 8)!



Cut end of birch sticking out of hedge!

The first thing to do was to hitch up the end of the tree to the Polo.  I use some 'salvaged' webbing straps for pulling and lifting tasks around the farm - amazing what gets thrown away!

Polo hitched up to the tree ready to go!

Ben & Jo came to spectate (Kate was asleep after a hard day helping Daddy to buy barbed wire, smokey bacon, woodshavings, and doing a lot of swimming!).

On the move!

It took a while to start moving, but the trusty Polo didn't let us down - the wheels were spinning at times, but suddenly it freed and off we went!



Out of the hedge!

I'd previously guessed that this section was about 5 metres long.  Now we can see exactly what we've got it is actually 8 metres long!  That means the tree was actually 20 metres (65ft 7 and 13/32 inches!) tall.  A whopper!

Have to deal with this next weekend!

There is a lovely fork in the tree about 6 feet up from the bottom.  I'd love to use this in one of our woodland cabins or yurts in the future (see Vision # 4).