Last visit, I left you with this situation. A very large sycamore I felled landed smack bang on the middle of a large oak that I was trying to help. This part of my woods is a 50 year old sycamore plantation that needs thinning. The trees have grown very tall and lanky. They are planted closely in order to draw them up tall and straight to make good timber but the woods have been neglected and should have been thinned out years ago. Consequently there are lots of sickly looking trees, too thin or misshaped to ever make good timber. Some have forked (like this one) which creates a weakness which you will see further down this page. There are a few different species dotted about and this single oak has reached it’s potential for further growth because it is crowded out by the surrounding sycamore. By thinning trees around it, you create a “halo” of extra light which should encourage the oak to grow and spread its crown.

Yesterday’s visit was with the intention of getting that hung up tree down. I bought a secondhand winch shortly after buying the woods but have never used it but now it was time to test it out. The base of the tree embedded itself in the soft earth so no chance of pulling it outwards. My best bet was to winch it sideways and one technique is to wrap the strap around the trunk so that when you start pulling, it sorts of unwinds and rolls the tree sideways where it can then drop. Taking the winch wire through a pulley like this, allows you to operate it at 90 degrees to the tree, giving you a safer position and better view. Several attempts at that failed and I was starting to despair. Cutting the tree again seemed too dangerous. Using a winch gives you plenty of distance so was the preferred method.

One more variant to try – pulling it to the other side and by attaching the pulley to the tree, you can double the pulling power of the winch. It’s a very scary operation for a novice and my adrenaline was pumping. As I cranked the handle, applying more and more tension on the tree, the first small cracking sounds indicated some movement. Eventually the left hand limb freed itself and with a massive “crack” fell. But the right hand limb was still ensnared and so as you can see in the photo below, the weak spot where the trunk forks, caused it to split. This was quite dramatic to say the least, and one very good reason to be well away from it with the winch.

So now what? The tree is half down but in an even more dangerous state. Don’t even think of trying to cut it free with a chainsaw! The stresses in that cracked and leaning tree would be released like a wound up spring and totally unpredictable. I managed to get the rope high up around that remaining limb and pulled again. After much cracking and thrashing of branches it was down. Massive relief to my stressed nervous system. Now the fun part of cutting it into moveable logs can start.

The oak doesn’t look to have suffered much damage from the encounter and is now standing free again and has some headroom to expand into over the coming years and I can feel happier about the whole situation.