Trees

We did some overdue cutting of dead trees last week. With our boom lift, it’s now much easier, safer and faster to bring trees down. The main trees we felled were two ash trees that had been dead for years in the yard of the converted one-room limestone schoolhouse where Haidy and I live. These were the two trees that we turned into pumpkin trees this fall.

the pumpkin tree

Like millions of other ash trees in recent years, our ash trees succumbed to an invasion of the emerald ash borer. I suspect that otherwise they would still be thriving. The one closest to the schoolhouse was thoroughly spongy from the borer damage. I am surprised that it stayed upright as long as it did. As we were deciding how to fell it, we noticed that it was swaying in any slight breeze. We could actually jiggle the enormous tree a bit just by pushing on it. After tying a strap to it up high, Pollo and I tried to down the tree by just pulling on the strap. We were unable, but I think that if we had added a couple of other husky workers to the pull, we would have toppled it by hand. We did not cut it at the base ahead of toppling it. Our John Deere pulled it over with almost no resistance at all.

the pumpkin tree is gone

The school was built in the 1840’s. I suppose these ash trees were planted sometime in the 1800’s.

Angelic Organics farm is situated across the road from the schoolhouse. My dad attended the school in the early 1900’s. He occasionally mentioned how much he liked those ash trees. A woman who grew up next door also attended grade school there—that was in the 1930’s, when my my mother taught there. She showed up a few years ago with her daughter for a picnic under one of those ash trees—the one further from the schoolhouse (referred to as the other pumpkin tree below). She just laid out her blanket and had the picnic, didn’t ask anyone if that was okay, didn’t introduce herself. I guess she felt like the tree belonged to everybody who had attended school there; it was part of the commons.

the other pumpkin tree

elevated by our boom lift, Pollo saws pieces of log off of the other pumpkin tree

the other pumpkin tree is gone

There was once a third ash tree in our yard. I wrote about this drama in Farm News several years back: a storm was approaching, the wind was picking up and the windows were open in my truck in the driveway. Kimberly, my farming partner at the time, was about to head out and close the truck windows when she became fearful of the wind blowing a tree over on top of her. I scoffed and said it would be almost impossible to get a tree to fall on oneself, even if that was what one wanted. She paused a few seconds to take that in, then mustered her courage and ran out the door to close the truck windows. Fortunately, she had paused to hear me proclaim that it is almost impossible to get a tree to fall on oneself, because with that amount of delay the third ash tree snapped off in front of her, not on top of her. She would probably have been crushed without that delay.

Notice that a cedar tree is growing out of the stump of the other pumpkin tree. Life wants to happen.

ash tree begets a cedar tree

the replanted cedar tree

Update on the Shop Color

In last week’s Farm News, Its Own Spiritual Force, I wrote about choosing a paint color for our machine shop. After enduring several years of glaring white on the overhead shop door, we painted it last week. I think the expanse of red and the detail of marigold do a good job of subduing the pulsating Mixed Veggies color.

striving for balance

Overheard

Retired dairy farmer:

“Knees gave out in ’98. Sold the cows and four days later the barn blew down.”

Thanks

Thank you for being with us this season. Extended season is coming next, for those of you who signed up for it.

Warmly,
Farmer John