Falling Trees and a New Chainsaw

At 2:15 a.m. the other morning my wife awakened me and said she heard a loud unusual noise outside. I vaguely thought I had heard something, too. I took my flashlight and went out to investigate. One of my truisms (If a tree near a fence falls, it will always fall on the fence.) came true. Not one tree, but two fell on the fence to the east pasture. Set the clock alarm for 6:00 and went back to bed.

Got up before daylight and put the cows in the corral before they found the downed fence. At daylight I could really see the damage. A large branch 20 inch in diameter broke off from a tree inside the yard and fell onto a tree 24 inches in diameter just across the fence. Both fell onto the fence taking down about 30 yards of fence. What a mess.

My first objective was to clear enough to make room to repair the fence. That took most of the day. My little old Poulan chainsaw (32 years old) was cranky and would no start. Had to pull and pull and work on it about an hour to get it started. Frustration. Finally, got it to running and cleared out enough to work on the fence.

Next day I worked most of the day rebuilding the fence. Building fence by ones self is not easy. Turned the cows out of the corral into the pasture. They were happy about that.

Next day I started to clear up all the limbs and branches and saw up the tree trunks. The Poulan chainsaw would not start. I pulled and pulled and tinkered and tinkered to no avail. I tried everything I knew to do. It sometimes would run a few seconds and then die. More frustration.

Today I decided enough is enough. I went to town and after shopping around bought a STIHL MS-230C with EZ-Start 16 inch chainsaw. Went out this afternoon and cut up a bunch of limbs and branches. Wow. That STIHL runs like a real hummer, and best of all it starts with only 2 or 3 pulls.