After a night of strong North Westerly winds we spent the day on clean up duties dealing with storm damaged trees. The tracked chipper proved very handy at this job dragging branches and timber out of the lake!

We have been carrying out more line thinning in Barnstaple, Shirwell. Line thinning promotes sunlight to neighbouring trees. After felling the trees, all timber is extracted and then chipped for biomass. 

Establishing tracks is the first step of any Forestry work, good tracks are the key for efficient timber extraction. This site in Barnstaple required 2 weeks of assisted fells using the digger before the tracks could be installed. 

It was another day of Ash Dieback work for Xtremetrees, here we are removing a few large limbs that were posing a threat to the property.

Ash dieback is a widespread disease but particulary bad in the Southwest. The disease is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus which causes leaf loss and crown dieback in affected trees and can lead to the death of the tree.

We were called in to dismantle this large Monterey Pine tree on the outskirts of Barnstaple.

We started by climbing the tree in order to remove all the branch wood which we then chipped and disposed of at local allotments.

The next stage was to install a pull line to enable us to fell the trunk itself, which we calculated to weigh 4000KG. Once on the ground, we cut the trunk into four sections and took them back to the yard using our crane trailer.

The timber was then cut, split into logs and used to fill 15 dumpy bags!