Tree Trimming

Maintenance

Now that Harvest is complete and the vines are starting to go dormant, the attention turns to maintenance.  There are lots of things that get done over the winter when the vines are sleeping, To start with there are lots of trees that need to be trimmed. The vineyard has many oak trees and as they need to be trimmed to allow access for the tractor and make sure the vines get light.

In this part of the vineyard there is a group of oak trees that has not been trimmed in a long time. The trees are starting to overtake the vines so it is time to trim them back.

When I was younger I had a very close call with a chainsaw. I was cutting a limb and as it fell it pushed the saw into my leg. The saw was still spinning and cut through my pants and cut my leg. The cut on my leg was painful but not that bad. What scared me was that if the cut was a little deeper it would have severed my artery. I was alone and would probably have bled to death.

So now any time I use the saw wear Chain Saw Chaps to protect my legs. I also have a first aid kit zip tied to the milk crate that holds my fuel and oil. Chain saws can do a lot of damage very quickly so it is important to treat them with respect.

Before long I had a pretty good collection of rounds collected that needed to be split. I split my wood by hand. Oak can be very hard to split if you let it dry out. So I make sure that I split my wood either the day I cut it or the day after.

Splitting wood one piece at a time on an old stump is very romantic, but it is a lot of work!

Here is a little trick if you split wood by hand. Get an old tire from the tire shop and nail it to some cribbing. In this case I use some offcut 4x4s.

This does a few things:
1) It raises the wood to be split to a comfortable level.
2) It captures the wood so it does not go flying.
3) It allows you to split several logs as you work your way around.
4) If you miss, or when you split through the log the Maul is stopped by the rubber tire. It is like a shock absorber when the maul comes down.

Here it is all set up to go

Here is the wood after a few strikes of the Maul. Much easier than having the logs go flying off a stump and having to pick them up.

It does not take long to build a pretty good pile of wood

Here is a shot of the trees after they have been trimmed. The vines now have much more sunlight and the tractor can get access to them to spray, net, etc.

I wish this was the only stand of trees that need to be trimmed. Unfortunately, there are lots of them that need it.