Miguel, who had just built a ladder out of metal purchased from the local ferreteria (hardware store), was chomping at the bit to try it out. He welded together a ladder from steel bars, and each section is 3 meters long, so it will now be long enough--provided all three sections are hooked together--to get to the top of the tree houses. We needed two sections to get up high enough for Miguel to get to the crux of the problem.
The whole process took a couple of hours, and it was just Miguel, myself and Keneth at times, along with the ladders, a machete and some rope. Miguel shinnied up the tree, strung a rope around the branch that was going to be cut down, and then we pulled the ladder up to the level that he could stand on. The ladder is one heavy bugger, so we couldn't just prop it up against the tree (and besides, the grown down below made it really tough to move it around).
After whacking away at several smaller branches, we tied a rope around the big section and pulled on it, while Miguel cut away with the machete. The branch, at its base, was about 10 inches around, and when Miguel cut the main part away, the metal ladder that he made and was standing on, shot about 5 feet in the air and bounced. Miguel was about 30 feet up,
riding it out. The ladder, roped to the tree, was hanging about a foot off the ground at this point, and Miguel was having a hoot and a holler.At last, it was time to cut the branch away from the base of the tree, about 20 feet was left of it. I had ahold of the rope attached to the branch while Miguel cut away at it. Just before I gave it a final tug, Miguel told me to stand to the side, as the branch was going to come my way (the opposite direction of the power lines). Good call. I moved about 6 feet to my left, gave the rope a final tug, and the branch came barreling down, leaving a hefty divot in the turf near to where I had been standing.
One down, another two to go . . .
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