Friday, April 17, 2009

B-i-i-i-g Loss

Cadence and I arrived home from our calf expedition to see a view to the sky and a huge pile of debris where our gigantic silver maple tree had stood. I must admit, I felt a bit choked up. I don't know how old it was, and we can't count the rings to find out because it was hollow all the way down to the ground, but the trunk was 123 inches in circumference near the base.

The wood peckers will miss this tree - they often pecked away at that amazing machine-gun-fire rate on it, but at least we got it cut down before it housed nests. It was a bit of a menace -- it kept dropping large boughs and was threatening to crush our chicken coop if a bad storm hit, but I hated to see it go. In addition to the loss of the tree, it costs a small fortune to get a big tree like that removed!
But we were happy to pay Kyle Herring and his expert team to do it. They even thoughtfully measured our pizza oven and cut the trunk into lengths that will fit inside, once we split it.
This wood pile will be a splitting headache. Enough fuel to cook quite a few pizzas, though!





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It always makes me sad to see any tree die, but at least it did little damage to the rest of your property and provided you with a source of fuel for your pizza oven. Yum. Silver maples are very pretty trees.

Donna at Suburban Sanctum said...

Yes, it is sad to see a tree go, but at least you got some good firewood out of it, and now you have a safe space for your chicken yard. Glad it all came down safely.