Yesterday was a cold day in hell, and it warmed right up...as soon as we were finished, LOL!

I can't remember snow in the middle of April here in NE Oklahoma , so when we planned a trip to help a small Church in Cleveland Ok.; that was the last thing on our minds!

This small Church is mostly old folks, and there was a tree threatening to fall across the road. We scheduled a trip to fix it, and arranged for the police to block the road. When we called them, it was 70 degrees; when we arrived, it was 30; and snowing!

Here was the problem tree, after we strapped it about 25 feet up:

It was windy, the wrong way of course; so I put some counter pressure on it with this:

You can see the Church in the background here.

The tree was badly rotted, and had lost about 80% of its wood at the base; and we intended to just pull it over with the 2 ton winch. Fortunately, we brought the heavy chainsaw, because it laughed at the winch!

This is all that was left intact, but it took about 5 minutes with a 22 inch bar to finish bringing her down!

Billy thought it was petrified, but when we got it down; we found out it was black Walnut, and it was just plain Hard!

It was almost sad to haul it back to their trash pile in the back lot....

I may go back, with a sharp chainsaw; and cut a piece large enough for a rifle stock.

We had a lot of traffic backed up when we finally got this down, but I was so busy, I didn't get a picture of that. The local Police were very helpful, and that really made the job safer. Especially since this tree was so tough!

We cut these limbs down with a ladder and a pole saw, so she would fall clear. It went according to plan, except for the hardness of the wood, and the snow, LOL! We had the tractor along to level the pad for a shipping container at the homestead, which is out the same direction.

As soon as we were done, it warmed up and got pretty....