The property we live on has bamboo planted by the original owner. This property was acquired after several owners had ignored it and let it take over the yard. As long as we have lived here I have wanted to remove the bamboo, but with just a shovel this was nearly impossible. After my long period of poor health, the little bit that I had been able to accomplish against the bamboo was completely gone, and the area was completely overrun. I’m not sure why, but I have no picture of this area before the Eradication Project began in earnest, and without the help of a neighbor with a cultivator (that’s a back hoe with a thumb), there would be no progress to document with photography.

So, the best I can do, to give you an idea of how choked with bamboo the area was, is to give you a picture of the area after all that bamboo was piled up in the middle of the area for disposal after being dug up by the cultivator.

There are actually three piles, but the big one in the middle became a major project all by itself. The building seen between the two large tree trunks is my workshop, and the other building in the background is my neighbor’s house.

This is an earlier picture of the site. The pile is seen on the left edge of the photo and is not green with new growth. The tree with the yellow pile of dirt in front of its base is one of two magnolia trees that needed to be removed.

So, I dug it up, removing roots that were in the way.

Until I thought I was ready to make it fall. Now the theory was that I would dig and cut all the roots out from below the trunk, keeping one of the main roots on each side and one in the back intact to act as pivot points. The plan was to come back the next day and cut the two roots on each side of the tree allowing the weight of the tree to settle into the hole. With the back root still intact, the top of the tree would be whip lashed into the desired direction using its weight and leverage to make it fall where I wanted, rather than the direction the tree was leaning.

While everything came out as I expected. I never got to cut those two roots. After leaving the dropping of the tree for the next day, I went inside to have dinner and enjoy the evening. Well that evening a heavy soaking rain softened the ground around those two roots allowing them to settle into the ground, starting the motion I would have initiated by cutting them. Once the tree settled, the top swung in the desired direction…

…and it came down all by itself. I was able to cut up most of the tree top by myself, but had to ask for help from a neighbor to cut up the trunk

As I beganpulling stuff out of the pile and burning it, it didn’t take long before all three piles became piles of mostly dirt, and getting anything from them for burning was getting harder and harder. This was about the time I tried to pull a bit of junk from the small pile beside the road, and fell into the road breaking my hip. As a result of the accident, I paid a tree cutting service to take the other Magnolia tree down and haul off the uncut portion of the first tree trunk.

After getting back on my feet, I commissioned the cultivator to come back and shake the dirt out of the remaining piles of stuff and spread it back out around the area it came from. This made it very much easier to get rid of the remaining stuff.

With the piles gone and most of the dirt spread out where it was needed, there are still several things I will need to do before I can start putting up my solar panels. The trunk on the left edge of the above image is a Hickory tree that will need to come down and off camera on the right is a large, old, maple that will need to be taken down before it will be safe to put up the solar panels. While the sun on the solar panels is not much effected by these two trees, the major areas of the garden space are heavily shaded by these two trees throughout most of the day. Two magnolia trees had already been taken out because they blocked the sun, so these trees need to go as well.

So, I cut it down. Now, I have owned chain saws in my life but never had much luck with two cycle engines, so when Harbor Freight advertised thei new Lynxx battery powered chain saw, I had to give it a try. This is a 14 inch saw and replacement chains and bars are available from Lowes, so maintaining the saw is easy. The saw is powered by a stepper motor which allows it to get the last bit of juice out of the 40 volt batteries it uses for power. This tree was hollow, so cutting into it was easier than if it was solid, but after using the saw a while, I’m convinced I would have been able to cut through it if it had been solid.

I started cutting up the fallen tree from the top branches, working my way down to the trunk. This work went fairly quickly. The very top branches got pilled in several piles and burned in place. Once the leaves were dry it took less that 20 minutes to burn down to coals. The remainder of the tree top limbs were cut into manageable lengths, and several of these pieces were cut long to be used as rollers for moving some of the bigger pieces. Once the upper limbs had been removed the remainder of the trunk cutting has gone more slowly.

The last remaining trunk pieces were the biggest challenge. The piece visible in the above picture is balanced in a very strange way and deciding how it might behave while cutting was not easy. So while cutting pieces off this last segment, I pre-placed other cut pieces for the log to settle on if and when it decided to role one way or the other.

By this point I had learned an important lesson about my new saw. A dull blade wears out the batteries and takes lots more effort to cut, specially large cross sections of wood. To get this far, I used 3 chains, and then decided to buy a sharpening tool.

So, once I get the rest of this cut up and disposed of, I will start digging up the Hickory tree and begin set up of my solar panels.

Things are progressing well so there will be another update on this project in a future posting.

Stay tuned!