The tree fellers came

The two large trees on the front lawn were removed in a two hour operation today.  A five man crew, two of which were new employees on their first day.  That worried me as there was no pre-start safety briefing and neither of the two new employees were given any safety equipment (boots, helmets, safety glasses, ear defenders).  The owners of this company obviously don’t understand new employees are far more likely to be injured than experienced employees.

Only one man used the chainsaw and he was very good felling both trees and cutting them in manageable sections within 90 minutes.  I had anticipated all the large timber would be cut up and sold a firewood, however it was all pushed into a large shredder and converted to mulch.  One assumes there is just as much value in mulch as firewood.

The large green machine is the mulcher.

We had paid for the stumps to be removed and this was completed by a remotely controlled grinder.  A rotary spinning head containing sharp blades mad quick work of grinding back the stumps.  They were ground down to 30cm below ground level.  I didn’t want the stumps taken any lower as one of the trees was on top of the gas, electrical and data lines to the house.

As we anticipated, the house is receiving far more sunlight.  That will be very useful when the solar panels get fitted to the north facing side of the roof.

Severe winds are forecast for tonight as a storm heads towards southern West Australia.  It’s already gone prematurely dark.  There hasn’t been any rain this winter and I’m assuming the farmers will be hoping this storm breaks the drought.  We’re almost a third of the way through winter and still wearing Tshirt and shorts. 

Today we realised it’s a year and three days since we left the UK.  Still missing life on ‘The Cut’.