So we decided to cut the trees in early December 2009. The weather is nice, it’s perfect!
The forest is located above the famous Grande Cascade de Tendon on the hillside of a peaceful little valley where flows the stream of Sapenay which feeds the waterfall. A modest farm formerly cultivated on this parcel before it was transplanted in the 1960s following the abandonment of the farm.
It is necessary above all to perform the tree proofing, that is to say to measure their diameter at height of man, or about 1.5m high using a bastringue (compass or vernier caliper) . Returning home using the logging chart of the grandfather who was a forester, we obtain the approximate volume of each tree according to the measured diameter. There are nearly 400 coniferous trees, mostly spruces and some fir trees, with a diameter of 45 to less than 20 cm with a majority between 30 and 20 cm.
There is no need to scratch the trees with “the pippin” (the claw) to identify them since we have to cut them all.
We park the car below the waterfall and win the plot on foot a few hundred meters upstream. Chainsaw with one hand and bastard on the other for grandpa; basket containing the cans of oil and gasoline as well as the small material of the lumberjack (files, claw, corners) of one hand and the mass of the other for me; the turntable and the snack for Sylvie.
Grandpa cuts the trees as low as possible to the stump: a V-notch as a notch on the front and a horizontal cut from behind. I exert pressure on the trunk to favor its fall towards the chosen orientation. Sylvie helps me when it’s needed and takes pictures.
Straight trees, so small diameters, nothing very complicated! Everything is cut in a few days. We keep in reserve the part of the forest below the plot. The wisest thing would have been to cut each tree as we went along and then unplug them, but the cut according to the favorable lunar period was for us a priority.
To be continued…
