It’s taken a while– seven months, to be precise– but we’re finally making some serious progress on removing the fallen trees in our yard and the surrounding forest. Over the course of those months, I’ve been taking a few hours here and there to limb and buck the trees, leaving us with piles of branches and stacks of firewood littered all over our property.
I donated an enormous amount to a local Boy Scout troop, who sells the wood as a fundraiser. The Scoutmaster told me “We’ve learned that around here, people would rather buy firewood than Scout popcorn.” Yeah. I remember when my boys were selling Scout popcorn. The price was exorbitant, and the popcorn was probably the worst I’ve ever tasted. I mean, it was awful… so bad that when other Scouts would drop by my house to sell popcorn, I’d pay them for it but ask them not to deliver. I was happy to donate to the cause, but I didn’t want that horrid stuff.
Anyway, back to the story. The Scouts carted off two huge trailers full of firewood. My friend Austin brought his whole family over last week, and together we disassembled three entire trees and loaded up his trailer. His friend Nate also came over, and took off with a mammoth load of larch wood, which is apparently really good firewood. All told, I probably got rid of ten trees’ worth of wood.
But those pesky fallen trees were still in my yard, and no one wanted them. I hired a local contractor named Roberto to come over with his heavy equipment and take care of them. Yesterday he rolled up the driveway in a front loader and went to work. He scooped out two of the root balls in my side yard:
In the photo above, he’s doing his best to fill the enormous hole left by one of them. Then he drove around to the front yard and started on the three trees there.
It was pretty impressive to watch him cart around these multi-ton behemoths like they were pick-up-sticks.
Pepper got a turn, and she threw a couple of tree trunks around!
Just kidding. There are probably liability issues if he lets customers drive the machinery.
In the end, Roberto hauled away a total of nine dump trucks’ worth of stumps, branches, and assorted debris. We’d been accumulating it for months as we worked through the destruction. Now we have massive holes in our yard where there were once majestic towering trees.
I’m sad not to have any trees in my front yard any more, but at least we don’t have massive overturned root balls! Next step: topsoil and some grass seed, followed by a few months of patience.