Weekend of Cutting Trees

Throughout my life we've had some pretty hardcore wind storms here in the Pacific Northwest.  My family has always lived near a lot of trees that surrounded our house.  As a little kid, I've slept with ear muffs, slept in the innermost part of the house away from windows and even stayed up all night long worrying about a tree hitting the house.  I lost sleep over a silly thing that absolutely terrorized me.  To this day I am still afraid of trees when the wind blows.  I always promised myself when that day came to buy a house there would be no large trees near the house.

In 2012, we had a winter storm that brought 13 inches of snow and the next day it all froze.  It took the tops off of trees, it bent trees in half, we heard cracks, pops and bangs.  A lot of trees and brush came down.  I was surprised none hit the cars or the ducks and chickens in their pens.  One of the tops of a tree actually snapped and hit the side of the house and I was beside myself.  That was the first time in my life I heard what a tree hitting the house sounded like. Luckily it only ripped off the gutter and put a small hole in the roof we didn't know about until it started leaking.  It always could have been worse.

Since then, nothing has hit the house; but you just never know which tree near the house would finally give up and fall.  Dad had always expressed interest in thinning out some of the "dangerous" trees has he would call them.  Unfortunately other things came up and his time was spent working on those.

While I was still living at home, we had a few significant wind storms that brought some of the large trees down and they were loud enough to wake me up.  Those nights I didn't sleep very much.  They are still to this day, sitting up on top of the hill next to the house rotting away.  Dad might get to them eventually.

This weekend he got me, Ben and Doug to come out and help cut down a few smaller trees that were leaning towards the house.

We used cables, chainsaws and the truck to pull them down.  Dad cut them up and we piled up the logs in one pile and the debris and limbs in another to be set on fire.

By the end of the day we got the problem tree as well as some of the ones that had fallen over the years cut up and rolled down the hill to be stacked.  They will be split at a later time and then taken over to Grandma's wood shed.

Dad also had mentioned that he had a contact that would come over and cut down trees in a 100 foot radius around the house.  He wasn't sure when they were going to come and do it.  He thought maybe sometime this early spring.

Next Adventure:  Doug's 33rd Birthday