It’s All About Conversion and Team Effort
It’s All About Conversion and Team Effort
by: Bob H.
Many of us have log burners.
We love to keep warm with a fire like this:
For a log fire, we need logs! They don’t appear on your doorstep by magic, a process of preparation has to be gone through. Let’s see what goes on at Western Depot….
We have some lovely tree donors, like Judith – (also a hard-working volunteer with us at CCT – and provider of cakes – we love Judith) This one belonging to her family is a Sycamore which overhung three or four neighbours, power lines to 20 properties and had a rotten core. It was BIG, around 4 feet at the base.
It had unfortunately to go, so Judith arranged to get the power turned off (only allowed for a few hours) and the tree surgeons got to work.
When massively reduced, the “pole” was taken down to ground level.
After some minor(?) reduction of the high limbs, we now had a pile of “chunky” wood.
As all the planning by Judith had been going on, head of the loggery, Dave P, had been seeking for willing volunteers to get all this lot back to the Western Depot Loggery. Soon he had 11 volunteers which included 3 chainsaw operators, 3 drivers and of course – Judith (we hoped she’d bring cake too!).
As the logging and recovery was all due to happen on a Friday, we assembled on a frosty morning where leader Dave P. gave us a comprehensive team brief. A number of our assembled company had never worked around chainsaws before, but the instructions were clearly well understood and, as a CSO myself, I was never in doubt that all instructions were followed to the letter.
So it began, CSO’s soon had large and not so large chainsaws howling away at full power, logs were leaving site as the shuttle convoy shuttled and the loaders toiled and loaded away.
At lunchtime, we sat on logs of prepared wood to ensure social distancing was maintained – and ate Judith’s cake (Thank you Judith, we love you even more!)
Soon and with great skill and dexterity – and more than a little pushing – we reduced the massive pole to manageable chunks, tidied up the site and left it clear.
Meanwhile, missing all the fun (and Judith’s cake) Maurice H and Roland de P had been grafting away back at WD, unloading, cutting and initially stacking the “smaller” stuff in preparation for splitting and stacking to dry. Far from being unsung heroes, they were a large part of the day’s success.
A highly successful properly planned and coordinated team effort of which I was very proud to be a part of. Thank you all.
