Posts Tagged ‘forest stewardship’
Vine Interruption
What started as a typical walk through the woods with Asher yesterday afternoon suddenly shifted on a whim to become an industrious “de-vining” effort. Because it is easy to navigate off the beaten paths this time of year, I frequently allow Asher to wander wherever his nose takes him. Sometimes he turns me around enough that I lose my bearings. Asher can bring me to spots where I’ve never stood before.
In one such spot, I noticed a trunk of grapevine that was thicker than my wrist. We have a general policy of favoring our trees over opportunistic vines but some of these in the center of thick growth have evaded our notice long enough to become monstrosities. The problem is that the rare times I discover such huge vines I don’t have the tools with me to do anything about it.
Yesterday, I decided to act on my chance. With Asher unknowingly tagging along, we marched the long walk back to the shop to get the small chainsaw trimmer and then back again to take on the large, woody vine trunks.
There were more than I realized. In every direction I turned, there were additional branches of the serpentine limbs either climbing another tree or putting new roots into the ground. With the power of that saw, I severed the link between every large chunk I could find.
I’m not sure what I will do with them, but I brought back a couple of trophies from the wildly twisting large sections.
I had tethered Asher to a nearby tree while I worked to find as many of the aggressive tree-climbing troublemakers in sight. Upon exhausting myself of the effort and returning to collect him, I found Asher gnawing on a bone he had found near a large hole he had dug.
I sensed we both headed back to the house with a similar air of accomplishment.
Now, if I can somehow maintain the surveillance in that thicket throughout the coming growing season, that would be just great. Otherwise, they will just return with a gusto unmatched by all the many plants we actually prefer to see thriving in our forest.
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Some Progress
I’m pretty sure I mentioned that the cleanup from our late winter tree trimming was going to be such an extensive project it would take the full summer to accomplish. I think that under-estimates the size of the project. One reason is the number of downed branches that were in our woods before we added to it with the trimming.
As we start the process of collecting branches from the trimming, it leads to a seemingly unending supply of other downed wood that also deserves to come out. We spent most of the morning yesterday cleaning out the section of woods where I had pulled down the three leaning widow-makers last summer.
This created monstrous new piles on the edge of the trail.
After lunch, I brought out the tractor and chipper to get down to business. We started in the back yard where the smaller maple tree branches were in three reasonable piles. With so much to do, I probably was trying to go too fast. Not paying enough attention to the exit chute, I was still feeding branches in after a plug had formed.
The spinning blades of the chipper will continue to pulverize the wood into dust. The dust finds any opening to escape and a cloud starts to form around the machine. That part finally got my attention. Oops.
After a significant delay to open the unit up and remove the plug and scraps wrapped around the spindle, we got back into the groove and made reasonable progress. By the end of the day, we hadn’t made it around to the two newest piles we stacked in the morning, but we converted one of the oldest piles in the woods into a mini-mountain of chips.
As much as I’d like to have our entire property done all at once, I’m working to accept the partial progress as good enough. Getting the chips spread along the trail helps to serve as a nice reward that soothes my angst in the mean time.
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Tree Down
Sometimes a simple walking of the dog through the woods feels more like a reconnaissance mission of surveying the ever-changing status of our property. Certainly, after a few days of strong winds there are changes to be expected, but I’ve been surprised more than once about how easy it is to miss what eventually seems to be obvious.
Did this tree make a sound when it toppled?
We didn’t hear a thing. I expect I may have walked past it one or two times in the days since the gale force gusts blasted us for hours on end last week, but yesterday as I joined Cyndie and Delilah for morning chores, I spotted it immediately as we approached.
It fell in a perfect direction to avoid getting hung up in any other trees and pointed away from the trail. With all the other downed wood from our days of tree trimming awaiting attention, it’s possible this old poplar will be left where it lays for nature to process.
If we were intent on cleaning up downed trees and branches throughout the full extent of our meager stretch of forested acres, it would be more than a full-time job for us.
In the last couple of years we have focused our attention on the patch of trees closest to the house by the barn and back pasture, picking up dead wood that has made its way to the ground.
This is the time of year, before green leaves obscure the view entirely, when the extent of branches brought down over winter is so easy to spot that it intimidates. There is so much to be picked up. It doesn’t give any impression of our having done so last year. That is, until one strolls through the forest at the west end of our land to see how much is on the ground where nothing has ever been picked up.
I wonder what a year-long time-lapse recording of the trees and ground in our woods would look like. Timed right, I bet it would appear to be raining limbs and branches.
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Additional Artistry
Day two of tree trimming picked up right where they left off the day before. They breezed through the tasks I had planned so efficiently that I was able to add a few bonus trees to what I originally expected possible. Even with that, they finished before the end of the day and credited the invoice for the shortened time.
I heartily endorse the work of JCE Tree Service out of River Falls, WI. Tree Cutters, Matt and Dan, represented both their company and their profession impressively well. These guys are visionaries. I like to refer to tree trimmers as artists for the beauty they enhance from living trees, or the improvements they create in a stand by removing dead ones.
The task of thinning a busy tree is a daunting one. There are so many cuts that will need to happen, but it is a process that has to occur in individual steps. Once they are up in the middle branches, they must keep in mind the perspective of the whole tree as it appears from the ground, while they survey and select from the relative limited views up close.
Some decisions are obvious, but more often they are not, so these guys are performing a constant analysis while they work. It is a fantastic performance of physical labor, mental processing, and creative artistry.
It would be very easy to get carried away and make an ill-advised cut. Think: bad haircut.
I’m happy to report that our trees all look fantastic. It amazes me to see a tree that looks perfectly normal with as many pruned branches laying beneath it as there are still attached overhead.
As I’ve already written, I asked them to focus on cutting and not bother with cleaning up what is on the ground. It definitely helped to speed up their accomplishments, as they got everything done that I wanted, and more. Walking the trails with Cyndie to review the work at the end of the day, I got a sense of the amount of work I have created for us by that plan.
That’s okay. The work will be a labor of love. We will have a nice supply of wood chips for our trails and firewood to split and burn in the fireplace.
Best of all, the trees on our property which have been nagging me for attention for years will instead, now bring me great joy every time I see them and walk beneath them.
Thank you, Dan, Matt, & JCE Tree Service. Job well done!
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Relative Something 