Thursday: May 15 Lot Clearing

Today was yet again another great day at Murphy Brothers Tree Service. We started at 7:00 am and ended at 4:00 pm. Our job for today was to clear the perimeter of a homeowner’s property so that they can eventually put a fence up. I never realized until today about how curious people are about tree work. In fact, the person next door to the people were working for was an old man, and he stood there all day today and took pictures of us as we worked for some strange reason. We started removing trees at the side of the yard closest to where the street was. For the most part, we did not need the bucket truck on this job. Instead, most of the trees were able to be felled, which means you make a cut at the base of the tree and the tree goes right over. I learned and watched today about the proper way to fell a tree. First you put a line in it to pull it over if needed, and then you make a pie cut in the base of the tree, which the face of the pie cut locates where the tree will land. Then you make you back cut on the backside of the tree slowing and the tree will fall over. At Murphy Brothers, they are professionals at this. Most of the time if the tree is tall they will tie a line into it and have a few guys on the line pull it over just to be safe. I got a chance to try to fell a small tree towards the end of the job. I was successful at doing so! I am starting to realize how many different aspects there are in the tree business to make it run smoothly. Tomorrow, I hope to get back up in the bucket truck after it was just had its yearly inspection on the Ariel lift this afternoon.