The Stick Trick…Simple but Effective

Hey it's Brock here with Rock Hill Farms And one of my regular viewers just sent Me a short little video clip teaching me A trick that I'd never seen before and It's one of those things that seems so Simple and obvious like everyone should Know that but I'd never heard of it or Thought about it before and I thought Man I need to take that out and show it To you guys and the relevance of this Trick is based on that tree right there That's been Bugging me for a while now because it's Got a little bit of a lean to it it's Setting on an incline and if it falls There's a chance that it would fall and Land on either my shop or my Quonset hut Depending on how it fell And last night we had winds a storm up To 70 mile an hour winds and I laid Awake at night worrying about if that Tree was going to be on my building this Morning so let's take a look at the Trick and see what you guys think of it So the only tools you need for this is One stick and a basic understanding of Middle school geometry so I just picked This stick up off the ground it was Laying under a tree over there And I'm going to put it against my Shoulder And hold my arm out with my fist like This as if I was holding that Branch up In the air

And then make a mark right here which I've already done And I cut the stick to the same length As my arm the way I'm planning to hold It so now I've formed an equilateral Triangle with this being 90 degrees These two lengths being the same I can extrapolate that and use that as a Pattern for a much larger equilateral Triangle that will also have the same Length as height and we're going to Apply that To this tree right here This tree Is a threat to fall on my building or Depending on the lean which we're going To go look at it could fall on my Quonset hut so now I'm standing with my Stick the bottom of my stick at the Bottom of the tree And when I look at the top I'm seeing the top of the tree So what that means is I've formed an equilateral triangle Again that the distance from me to the Tree will be the same as the distance Of the height of the tree here's an Illustration of the geometry explaining Exactly what I just said in a more Visual form that might be easier to Understand I took this from another video so I'm Going to put a link in the description To the video I got this image from if

You want to check that out so now I know that I have a three foot stride Length I can just walk over to the tree And count my strides now I'm actually Going to measure it because the three Foot stride length isn't exact but Actually knowing how many steps it is is More important to me than knowing how How tall the tree is It was 30 steps to the tree which means That tree should be 90 feet tall now I Tried to use an app that estimates tree Height I couldn't get it to work So we're going to take a measurement From right here where I set the stick And actually see how far it is because I Don't know my exact stride length I'm Going to go around to the other side of The tree and do that again because I Think I'm slightly or I know I am I'm Downhill from the tree and this would be More accurate on flat ground I wonder if that's on camera a rabbit Just came out from under this tin and Ran across there I'll find out So We're going to measure it once and then I'll know what my stride length is So it was 75 feet from here to there Which means my stride length is two and A half feet not three feet And I believe that if I was placing money on

The height of this tree I wouldn't say 75 I'd say 65 because we're downhill From it and that affects the way I held The stick Let's go uphill and take the same Measurement and then see how far that Tree is from my building all right let's Try it from here If that tree were to fall this direction Right now according to my measurement it Would land right where we're standing That's the very tip Got the same number 75 feet So I think I'm also a little bit downhill From it here I could go uphill but I Wouldn't have a path to walk my my Runner through because of all this brush Now let's see if what would happen if That tree fell It is a big tree So the tree is only 40 feet from that Building 35 feet from my propane tank And it's 65 feet from the Quonset hut So the top branches Where we're getting up to a smaller Diameter might hit it if it fell that Way I just did all my walking around it and I think The trunk would angle Just in front of the door on the Quonset Hut and I would have minimal damage

But I've been trying to decide what to Do with this tree I just made a video Yesterday titled How to cut down Big Trees I feel like I'm pretty decent at it but This one intimidates me because of the Positioning it's at and what's in front Of it I have to take it towards the Building And I a mistake would be very bad on This one And the other thing is we're on a really Steep downhill so it'd be hard to clean Up the mess of a tree that big on that Really steep slope down I think for Right now I'm just gonna leave it Yesterday we had a storm That was Supposed to produce winds up to 70 to 100 miles an hour which is insane even For us here in Tornado Alley but I was Laying there Two in the morning wondering if there Was a chance of this tree being on my Building when I woke up in the morning So just something to be aware of but I Thought that trick with the stick was Pretty cool and I think you're gonna get Pretty good accuracy from it so anyways I appreciate you taking time to watch This video I'll put links on the screen To a couple more of our videos and I'll See you next time