Thursday, January 22, 2015

Cleaning up the woods

About five years ago we had a rather big storm that knocked quite a few trees over in the woods around us (and also in our yard). Several trees fell over the path that Callie and I take through the woods just to our north, the path that leads down into the river valley. Well, in last couple of weeks two guys have been out there clearing it up. They're cutting the downed trees into meter-long logs for burning and stacking them to dry.

A view of the new clearing from the path, looking down toward the river valley.

They're also cutting more than just the downed trees, making a huge clearing in the middle of the woods. I don't know if they guys doing this own the land, nor do I know why they're doing it now, so long after the trees came down. I do know that I'm happy not to have to crawl under and over those tree trunks when I walk down there.

The leaning trees last April. They had actually fallen farther since, forcing me to climb over and under the trunks to get by.

The second photo is from last spring. As time went on, the trees kept getting closer to the ground. And now they're history. For comparison, the pair of trees on the right in the bottom photo are the same pair standing in the center-right of the top photo.

4 comments:

  1. That's a lot of work. Before we moved to France we experienced on of North Carolina's famous hurricanes. There were over 20 big trees blown down on our property. I spent the better part of a year's weekends sawing them up and clearing them away. Glad I don't have to do that again.

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  2. When Bill and I lived in Pennsylvania this was our scenario. We lived on 6.875 acres of heavily wooded land on the side of a steep hill. Beautiful woods but trees always falling over. The year we sold our house a big wind storm came through and literally knocked down thirty or forty trees like matchsticks. I told Bill "It's just as well we've moving because it was take us the rest of our lives to clean up this mess." No trees on our one acre lot here except the ornamental plum tree (which doesn't bear fruit) out in front of the house and the beautiful river birch trees I planted. No deer either or squirrels (thank goodness). But Bill says (even this morning) "I miss our property in Pennsylvania." And I guess I do too.
    Ron

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  3. stuart, sounds like a lot of work. I'm glad I'm retired...

    ron, we have to fence out the deer, and the squirrels (ours are red) are few. We actually like to see them once in a while! Sounds like the PA property was beautiful, but as you say, a lot of work to maintain!

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  4. Wow. What a job! And what great photos!

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