Knock knock Fraxinus

What a difference a storm makes? When we embraced country-living ~30 years ago, we were largely at variance with our new neighbours as to priorities. We loved that the field-boundaries were full of scrubby trees and bushes. Dau.I and Dau.II named one arboreal section of the walls "Fairy Village" and used to hang from the branches waiting for fairy sandwiches and fairy tea. In 30 years, girls can grow from toddlers to taxable assets for the economy & modest trees can grow to sky-scrapers. We've never lacked for firewood because, in stormy weather ash sheds top-hamper but rarely up-roots.

A bit of consultation since Storm Éowyn focused attention on four mighty ash Fraxinus excelsior on the edge of the lane leading up to our yard . . . and beyond to the moors and mountains behind our house. That lane is a bit of a walker's motorway: it would mortifyin' if a visitor got tonked on the head by a falling branch. Also at risk [litigation alert!] was the abutting neighbour's shiny new sheds which are almost under the canopy of the nearest big tree. We were informed that it would take two days to bring down a tree-and-a-half and that would require the rent and delivery of some height-for-hire like a spider-lift. It would take longer still and be more expensive to do it old-style with ropes carabiners spurs and flip-line.  
Get back to us with a price and a scheduled time we said
I will certainly do that he said
the silence surged softly backward however

But into the breach rode Eoin Glavey of the Déise. Called us up with an hour's notice on his way home from another job. 
Could he come by for a scoping visit?
He could, and he did. I unburdened myself of all our arborial anxieties. He nodded and took notes. At the kitchen table, we put the various jobs in priority order: 

1. the tree-and-a-half by the lane
2. a Scots Pinus sylvestris which was shading the new solar PV array
3. a forest of mostly ash which was looming over the power and telephon lines
4. the biggest, ash-dieback deadest, twa corbiest, ash tree on the property: leaning out over the field of our other farming neighbour
5. a long horizontal Scots Pinus sylvestris branch which the kids used to swing from but was now a) an accident waiting to happen b) shading a shrubbery of blueberry and lavender.

 While I was hiking in France, Glavey Tree Experts sent us a quote: they'd do the whole list in one day and, if €acceptable, get back to us with a date. That date was Friday 7th July 2025 - be ready for an 08:30 start. You know you're getting old when policemen tree-surgeons look young. I made a slab of flapjacks. Six young chaps sprang out of three vehicles [one hauling a brash-chipper] more-or less at 08:30. There were more saws than sawyers:

But that's appropriate. Tree-climbers&limbers need something [one] handy. Fallers will require a much larger saw both energy-wise and bar-length. In between, everyone needs to be able to handle a saw even if the 'pprentice will spend most of the time hauling brash to the chipper and sweeping up the leaves and twigs afterwards. And then there are saws on poles with which much of the thinning round utility wires was carried out. Poles the length of which only your anti-grav fever dreams can imagine. Some of Team Glavey were down the lane climbing and limbing:

One of the four adjacent ash trees was in much better shape than the others and we had agreed that it could be reprieved. That allowed the tree-monkey to set a safety rope high up on a solid branch and from that purchase swing about reducing the top-hamper from the other three condemned trees in turn. Meanwhile back in the haggard, the other climber was determinedly getting on top of the solar-panel occluding Scots pine:

I had promised my neighbour-above that the tree on our shared ditch would be down by tea-time and there would be nothing left but saw-dust. In the event not even sawdust because the 'pprentice used the leaf-blower to such good effect.  

One of the lads was a civil engineering student a week into his summer vacation job: a lot of book-learning there but here meeting tension and compression for the first time in real life. It was heartening how everyone looked out for each other and took a little longer on the job to let the newbies push their envelope. I've spent every subsequent day reducing wood-piles to logs; splitting the logs to billets; and stacking the sticks against Winter 2027. Taking it handy!: I can haul brash about with the best of them; and saw logs and split 'em but I can't / won't do it on the clock and I won't / can't do it for 4 hours on the trot . . . with 4 hours after lunch.