Uncaging apple trees with STUCK fencing

I have a few apple trees that are ready to be liberated from their protective caging. The previous landowner put welded wire cages (pig or cattle panel maybe) and some t posts in the ground. I tried to pull them out but wow - they are really in there. I started to try to dig them out with a shovel but stopped when I realized I was cutting the tree roots. The part of the land they are on is not accessible with a car, so I can't use that. Does anybody have any ideas? Or alternatively, am I being too precious about the roots? HALP

I would say don't mess up the roots if you can help it. Use leverage instead. Before I had a tractor, I used a 6' prybar (or a wooden fence post) and a short length of light chain, held together with a bolt.  The chain was slipped over the t-post, maybe wrapped around once. The bar went through the chain loop at ground level. I may have used a stump to rest the point of the bar on. Once the chain is under tension, it bites into the t-post quite well. Lift a short distance, adjust, lift again and out it pops.

One way to get t-posts out is to lay a round piece of firewood on the ground, and attach a chain to the post where it meets the ground.  Hook the chain to a long pipe, lay the pipe over the log, and it will give you a lot of leverage to pull it out.  I attached a bad picture to try to show what I mean.  The longer the pole, the better.  Put the log closer to the pole than my picture shows.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I would say don't mess up the roots if you can help it. Use leverage instead. Before I had a tractor, I used a 6' prybar (or a wooden fence post) and a short length of light chain, held together with a bolt.  The chain was slipped over the t-post, maybe wrapped around once. The bar went through the chain loop at ground level. I may have used a stump to rest the point of the bar on. Once the chain is under tension, it bites into the t-post quite well. Lift a short distance, adjust, lift again and out it pops.

Yep, Douglas explained it while I was making my picture :)

Thank you both so much! The drawing is especially helpful. I'll definitely use it for the posts, but the caging is actually really stuck and embedded in the soil. I think this will work for that too - THANK YOU!!!

Trace Oswald wrote:Yep, Douglas explained it while I was making my picture :)

Haha, great minds ... :-)