Taking Down Trees

We had a busy afternoon yesterday....spent it outside...The G man took down about 4 trees, then we lit a fire and cleaned things up....

Here's a before pic of our side yard, as you can see, lots of work to be done....Second tree on the left is a pine killed by the pine beetles...

Eventually I'd like to have a sitting area under the trees...

There's a fairly small window up here, as to when you can safely burn, and the time is NOW before it gets Too dry. Over the last couple of years, we have taken down all the pine trees killed by the pine beetle, except the big one we had in our side yard.

It had to come down...these trees are a HUGE fire hazard - people around here say "it's not IF we have a big forest fire, it's WHEN we have the fire"....these dead pine trees are everywhere, it seems. It has been really good to see how many people are falling the trees, and cleaning up the brush. Of course it makes excellent firewood, and the majority of homes up here have woodstoves, so yes, we can all make good use of this wood. There's also a market for the denim pine, but you would have to have a LOT of these trees to make it feasible to have someone fall them and sell them off....

Here's a closer look at the dead tree....

Here's a before pic of the yard closer to the barn...the deciduous trees are aspens (very similar to poplar), the coniferous trees are spruce....

The G man took down the 2 aspens on the far left.

Then we lit a fire and cleaned up all the limbs....my friend asked me to save some of the tips from the aspens....I did not know this, but goats Love them! And her fella told me, in tough times years ago, if there was no hay, farmers would fall aspens and feed the branches to their cattle! Apparently, there are lots of nutrients in the tips, bark and limb wood....

So, once we got Most of the work done, we figured, Hey it's Friday, hey it's 4pm....so we broke out the home made beer! Gotta love it!

Our plan for today is to have another fire on the other side of the barn. This is where the G man's sawmill has been set up since last spring, so there is a big pile of ends and trimmings we can burn...that'll clean it up really nice down there!

Enjoy your Saturday!

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