Farmer Dean makes like Paul Bunyan

My dad stopped at the barn Friday around noon and asked if I would bring my chainsaw down in the pasture and cut a tree off his fence line. Someone had called and said there were six black cows in Lowder’s driveway, which is about a quarter mile away through woods and fields. He went to check did not see any cows, came down here and counted and his 43 cows were here. But he found a downed tree on his fence with cattle tracks on the wrong side of the fence so his cows were the likely culprits.

I told him I did not think I had any chainsaw fuel. I checked and I didn’t. But there was some year-old gas in the tank of my Stihl that might be enough to do the job if I could get it started.

I carried it to the pasture, jerked on the starter cord for 3-4 minutes to no avail. I told my dad I would go get a bow saw. I was not looking forward to sawing through a 10-inch diameter tree with a bow saw so I called Levi and told him to meet me at the barn... Of course he showed up wearing sandals and we had to come back to the house to get him some boots.

While at the house, I grabbed my Estwing camper’s ax off the back porch to carry with us. I have used it mostly for kindling and have never been too impressed with it.

We get back down in the pasture and I start off with the ax first. I was surprised how well it chopped. I chopped a bit, Levi chopped a bit, until we got about two-thirds through it. Since it was elevated off the ground a bit, I jumped up and down on it until it cracked. Then we elevated it some more and jumped on it until it broke off clean. It actually went fairly fast.

This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 11:16 AM with the headline "Farmer Dean makes like Paul Bunyan."