Our latest job took us to Aish, Stoke Gabriel near to Totnes in the South Hams in Devon. I think mother nature threw every type of weather it could at us!

Our work needed to be spaced out over a number of weeks for various reasons including other work, weather, and working around other work going on at the farm.

On our first day on top of the hill at Aish we were surrounded by stunning views that looked all the way out to Torbay and stretched out across the lovely South Hams countryside including the prestigious Sharpham Estate and Cornworthy. We arrived on site greeted by our cheerful client who was excited to see what the team was capable of in the days to come.

We had been asked to take a mixture mostly of Leylandii and Lawson cypress to ground level that were heavily encroaching on a large barn that was due for construction works.

Whilst that might sound pretty straight forward, there was significant weight of a lot of the trees overhanging the building and the trees had a dense crown so we definitely had our hands full for a good few days.

On our first day we had fantastic sunshine as we put our Forst chipper in place with the Landrover as the A J Paine & Sons Tree surgery team prepped our chainsaws ready for a busy day.
Day one went very smoothly as all the trees we wanted to fell either went without too much persuasion or just a gentle pull on the rigging lune just to set them on their way by hand and we managed to get a lot done as it was such a calm day.

The second day was a different story altogether as the rain came crashing down and the prevailing wind which was blowing towards the barn, so that meant that we had to dismantle a lot of the conifers from rope and harness as we couldn’t get a good enough angle to winch the trees due to the steep grounds around us. Nevertheless we persevered and the pile of timber began to grow and so did the woodchip on site for our client!

Day three arrived and so did the County tractor along with Senior consultant and the main man Alan Paine. Ready to free up some space and sort the growing pile of timber on site, so that we could continue to fell into a clear empty space easily. He also brought some much needed sunshine along with him to restore some team morale and dry up the wet site that the rain the day before had got stuck into and made a bit of a mess. Along with the tractor now on site it allowed us to use it to carry larger quantities to the chipper to save ourselves physically dragging so much – which also meant we could get more done in the day which was an added bonus! By the end of day three we were pretty close to completing most of the trees around the barn and realised one more day should alter the whole outlook of the site and leave us ahead of our original schedule.

In between days three and four which were on separate weeks, snow had hit Devon pretty hard and the access into this particular site at Aish was very steep so we thought it best to leave it a while until we came back to finish the job as agreed with our customer. This was to avoid damage to any vehicles or buildings trying to get in and out of the site which was in hindsight a pretty wise decision as most of Devon struggled to get around it seemed!

Finally the snow came and went and the 4 man team along with the Landrover, Forst St6 woodchipper, and County tractor came energized and ready to attack the remaining conifers to complete the task in hand.
The last few to fell were probably the most dense within the crown but luckily we now had the concrete platform in the farm courtyard to work from which was much easier to process the trees as they came down with the county so we made pretty light work of them. We even had time to remove a few broadleaved trees consisting of cherry, ash and willow before the day ended.

There was another full load of timber to haul away and multiple loads of woodchip once again got distributed onto the ever growing pile for the customer to put to great use in the future for multiple purposes.

We tidied up all the loose ends as always and made sure the site was clean enough to eat your dinner off and the customer was so chuffed he asked for another day if we could fit him in and as we were ahead of schedule we said no problem!

Once again it was a days worth of removing a large group of unmaintained conifers but it just goes to show that hard work pays of and leads to more work in the future.

Luckily day 5 was much more straight forward as we didn’t have a barn to contend with and the trees all apart from 2 would more or less go exactly where we wanted them to on their own.

All in all this was a fantastic job for the team with three trailer loads of timber and over 40+ tonnes of woodchip later I think you could say this was a successful job. With the barn unscathed, and powerlines in close proximity untouched, our years of experience and high quality tree surgery definitely pay dividends when it comes to large scale jobs like these.

Another customer left satisfied that I’m sure we will be in touch.