A Little Tree Trimming

The trouble with having hundreds, probably thousands, of trees on your golf course is that they need care.  They are forever getting hit with a disease, lightening or wind.  When I was a kid, I would ride around the golf course with my dad and he would point out something that I believed to be a truly dangerous disease.  Dad called it mower blight.  I can remember thinking that it sounded so terrible.  Dad made it sound like it was the worst disease known to man.  Mower blight is caused from mowers who run into a tree and scrape off the bark.

One of the hardest working tools we have at the golf course is my Dad’s tree trimmer.  My dad is Tom, Toad Valley’s Tree Guy.  He often comes in with scrapes and bloody arms, but he always gets his way when trimming out dead branches on trees.

His handy tool makes his job easier.

You can often find this tool in my dad’s cart.  Typically, you can see the long line of trees that he has trimmed on the golf course.

He does a lot of trimming in the spring because that it is the best time to trim trees.  He won’t have another opportunity until the fall.

Tom has perfected his method of picking up tree branches.  He puts the biggest branches on the bottom of the pile.  Then, he fills in with all the smaller branches until he has a nice tight pile of branches.

He attaches the biggest branch to his cart with a rope and drags the whole pile to the burn pile that we have on the golf course.

Smaller branches get a little clipping with his loppers.  These are his special loppers.  No one else is allowed to touch them.

How about you?  Been doing any tree trimming in your neck of the woods?