Men's Breakfast and Work Party

October 19, 2024

A men's breakfast was scheduled for 7am on Saturday, October 19. It was intended for fellowship and the meeting of a couple of needs for our congregation. We needed to do some ceiling inspection and work over the choir loft which needed the placement of the large lift in the choir loft. We also needed to move our dumpster to address the damage to the asphalt by the trucks which picked up the dumpster contents. Tony Mode organized the meeting and provided our breakfast.

We started the day at 7am with an enjoyable breakfast and time of fellowship around the tables. Present for the workday were Tony Mode, Pastor Doug Thompson, Peter Thompson, Noah Thompson, Billy Ridgway, Jim Stearns, David Moore, Dennis Luense, Rod Nave, Phillip Vineyard, Roger Goldsborough, Johnny Huffman, Keith Weaver, Bob Wade, Matthew Smith.

Our starting task was to provide enough manpower to get the large lift up ramps and onto the stage and choir loft for examination and preparation for the holiday season. With the necessary lift work done, attention was turned to the parking area for tree trimming. One dead tree was removed.

The largest task was to move the dumpster and trim the nearby trees to improve access to that dumpster. The dumpster was sitting on a concrete pad, but the approach to it for removal of waste was on vulnerable asphalt which had been significantly damaged. With Billy Ridgway's pickup, the dumpster was moved northward a few feet onto the asphalt so that the garbage truck's approach to the dumpster could be on the firm concrete pad on which the dumpster had sat. The other problem was low-hanging limbs over that concrete pad and on the trees along the east side of the parking lot close to it. Correcting those deficiencies was the main agenda for the remainder of our work time.

David Moore had come prepared with a long pole chainsaw. He had cut off a large overhanging limb from very large nearby tree and was now cutting a smaller limb above it. He is standing on the bed of Billy Ridgway's pickup after the moving of the dumpster. Tony Mode and Pastor Doug observe.

The next step was to cut off the overhanging large limb which might restrict the emptying of the dumpster.

The blade on the pole saw was not long enough to cut all the way through this large limb, so David had to cut from both sides.

Even then, the blade on the power pole saw was not long enough to finish the cut, so David resorted to the longer blade of a manual pole saw to finish the cut. Tony holds the power pole saw which had served well, but just didn't have a long enough blade to finish the job.

While David worked on the big limb, others of our group had been carrying limbs from other trimming to our waste area at the edge of the property. Roger Goldsborough had brought a trailer which helped greatly with that. L-R Roger, Johnny Huffman, Billy Ridgway, ? , Keith Weaver, Bob Wade, Pastor Doug.

To facilitate removal of more of the big limb, Billy backed his pickup in and David sawed the limb from the truck. Jim Stearns had brought a pole saw with a longer blade, so that helped. We were carrying the trimmings to the extreme left across the grassy area.

David drops the final required removal from the large limb so that lifting the dumpster would not be impeded.

Watching this last log fall were Johnny Huffman, Bob Wade, Matthew Smith, Phillip Vineyard and Peter Thompson.

The final challenge was a high limb we called the elbow which had extensive foliage and might fall on David as he cut. A line was thrown over it an several of the guys pulled on the rope to move it away from David when he cut it.

With the final limb on the ground, we finished moving limbs and debris to the storage area and called it a finished job at about 10am.