Cutting down tree tops

A few years before I was born my dad planted several spruces up by our summer house. They don’t grow here naturally, but people planted them in the 50’s-70’s to use later as building material. About 15 years ago my dad did cut down a few and built a garage back at our home from the material he got out of it. Still most of it has gone unused and grown quite tall and around our summer house that has now become a problem. Last winter a few broke because of the strong winds that hit us here and one treetop landed on our house and broke a corner of the roof. That is why this years project has been cutting off the remaining treetops.

That is my dad in the middle of a tree. You can’t even see the bottom of the tree here, but because the branches doesn’t go all the way down my dad had to use a latter to get up the first 6 feet of them. After that he uses the branches to climb.

When he gets half way up he cuts off all the branches while sitting on a couple of branches up there. The rope you see is not for his security. This he ties about four feet above the place where he makes the cut and then I stand on the ground pulling as hard as I can to get the treetop to go where we want it and not on top of the house which is in the right hand corner of this picture.

Here he is standing tying the rope to the tree for me to pull. After that he sits down again, ties a rope to himself around the tree under the cut he is making. Then he saws the tree right off.

Afterwards the whole family helps cleaning up while my dad cuts the top into fire wood.