A break in the weather.

This morning we woke up to 4" of snow (it's still coming down), but over the weekend we got a break in the weather. Enough to get the shed torn down and the big walnut tree cut down.

I actually got really lucky with the tree. 

The intention was to drop it toward the front yard, but I did a poor job of making the first cut. 

The poor seat cut combined with the offset weight of the tree and a slight breeze caused it to lean toward the back yard. We had already tied a rope to it and tried pulling it over toward the front yard but it wouldn't budge, so I had to do a bit more cutting to get it to come down. 

So I cranked up the saw and cut for no more than five seconds before the base of the tree snapped and slid off the stump landing with a thud just a foot or so from where I was standing before falling over into the back yard. 

Not according to plan, but in the end it turned out to be the best place for it to fall since that's where we were going to be piling all the brush. The original intent was to have the clean up area centered over the future driveway where I was going to be scraping away the topsoil anyway.

For now, I'm leaving the trunk intact hoping I might be able to sell it to someone with a hobby sawmill. I really hate to see such a nice trunk turned into firewood.

If the weather clears again next weekend, we'll be working on pulling down the other little trees in the background.