After a winter storm, we had 2 pine trees snap part way up their trunks and fall over.  Here is a picture a few days after they came down.

Two trees down during a winter storm.

Long-time readers may recall that last time a tree came down, we were unable to handle it ourselves and instead we hired a tree service for assistance.  This time the trees were not immediately threatening to fall on any of the fences and the trees were a little smaller in diameter, so we decided to try to handle it ourselves.

This was made possible by a new tool we received as a holiday gift..

A chainsaw!

It is a small size chainsaw with only a 10 inch blade. It is also battery powered so there is no engine to maintain and operation is very simple.  There is a simply a 2 button trigger to hold down both buttons to operate the saw.

On a recent warm day, I decided to try out the new chainsaw. I first removed all of the branches from the downed trees using various small trimming tools like hatchets and loppers to save the chainsaw battery for bigger cuts.

Then, it was time to start cutting the trunk.  Working my way from top to bottom, I cut the tree into manageable 4 to 5 foot chunks that I could move off the lawn into a pile.  Being the first time using a chainsaw, it took a little while to get the hang of it and it took just over an hour to cut up the first tree into sections.

Here is a picture of the resulting pile of logs from one tree.

Pile of logs from the downed tree.

The chainsaw battery ran out of power on the very last cut of the first tree so I finished the last cut by hand with an ax. I left the second tree for another day after I recharge the chainsaw battery.

The remaining downed tree.

Now we should be able to handle small downed trees without needing to resort to calling the tree service!