Trees Fall BTU a Plenty

Ms. Arcen climbed up to the center of the tree fall to examine the hole left in the sky when the huge oak at her feet came down taking with it 4 other mature hard woods including the one she is sitting on. For scale I took this one of her all the way back from the base of the old oak which is parallel to and about 12 feet off of the ground.

I have spent just over 8 hours so far since Monday night on my side of the tree fall damage clean up. That time was spent cutting back into the heart of the fall, throwing, stacking, dragging and of course twisting wire to mend the damaged sections of fence line that retains the dogs. On the first night in dusky light while I was cutting back into one of the main leaders of the oak I felt something warm on my arm then all of a sudden it was running on my neck. ANTS!! I hit the kill switch on the Husqvarna and frantically almost in a panic wiped away the dozens of black carpenter ants that had made their way up my arm and were running all over the back of my neck and head. Upon further inspection I found hundreds, if not thousands of them in a chaotic stream zig zagging out of a crack in the main section of the oak very close to the leader I was cutting on. These black ants are ultimately the cause of the tree's death and fall over during a heavy wind on Sunday afternoon while I was in the Outer Banks.

The clean up on my side is finished but the big job on my Good Neighbor Arturo's side has just begun. My saw at 16" is not enough to get into the bigger parts of this now dead fall so Arturo went out yesterday and dropped a dummy knot on a brand new Husky 455 with a 20" bar. There is prolly around 6-7 hours of ripping left to get the fallen trees back to the edge of his yard. With that cutting I will have plenty of wood to get on my side then split and stack for next year's BTU consumption. All of the hardwoods that came down as a result of the fall will be able to be cut and moved to my side, however 25 feet of the main trunk of the oak will be unmanageable with our paltry equipment so it will be left in place in the woods.