more crop tree release

We are cutting mostly soft (red) maples, but occasionally we have taken down some aspens too.  Neither are great for firewood; we'll use the maple but make brush piles out of the aspen. Some of the aspen is too big for us so we are girdling them.  They'll fall eventually but make good woodpecker holes until then.  Since none of the trees that we are cutting are top heavy, a couple trees have hung up on other trees; that requires cutting off small sections of the trunk and dropping the tree down a couple of feet at a time, like a string of pearls, until its branches clear the tree it is hung up on.  It is rather tedious and nerve-racking as you have to be careful not to get the chainsaw blade caught in the trunk of the leaning tree and everyone in the forest has to watch where the leaning trunk will start to fall as it can change the direction of fall with each cut.  Every once in a while we do get a tree to fall exactly where we were aiming.

Today one maple fell just as planned and it even managed to prune off several dead oak tree branches from one tree we were releasing. At this time of year it's still easy for us to identify the trees; oaks still have dead leaves, maple bark is silvery, and aspens have bulby buds.

Paul has tried to keep the stumps low to the ground but with larger trees that becomes quite a chore, sometimes requiring the use of a wedge to keep the stump off the chainsaw blade.  It is hard work, but we are making progress.  We have released about 35 trees so far. We have blue dots on the keepers and red slashes on trees to cut in the future.

 

Reading  Tillie, a Mennonite Maid: a story of the Pennsylvania Dutch **** Reimensnyder  A tough young girl makes her life goal happen with no help from her very strict father but lots of help from the English community.