January always means lots of work!

Each year Charlie comes, at our request, and chops down trees.  He creates a huge mess.  A mess that we have to spend hours, days, and even weeks cleaning up.  But the end result is a barn full of firewood.  So we don't complain - well, we do complain, but we acknowledge the fact that we brought it upon ourselves.  And when we sit in front of a cheery fire as the snow falls outside, we toast Charlie and all of the work he created for us.

This year we ended up with far fewer trees lying on the ground that we now have to yard, buck, split, and stack.  That's because two of the trees Charlie took down were big, as in really BIG.  Right by the driveway where you turn onto our property was a huge Douglas fir -- at least 24 inches in diameter and close to 100' tall.  It was dying.  The top has been dead for years, and we'd rather have the firewood before it all rots. Also, we worried that a big wind would drop the top into our driveway.  So we opted for a controlled fall in the direction of our choice.  This might be the largest tree Charlie has ever taken down for us.  It fell in the front meadow -- totally flat and the tractor can pull up right beside it.  This wood will be easy to split in place, then hauled directly to the barn.  No extra work relocating all that heavy wood.  The banner photo at the top of this page is Charlie notching that tree.

From there Charlie moved to a huge old madrone that was also slowly dying.  We've agonized for years over whether it was time to euthanize it.  the problem is that it is halfway down the road to the lower meadow -- very visible, very much a part of our daily scenery. But this year it was time. Watching that one come down was awesome -- and scary.  The big fir, straight and uniform, fell with an earthquake-like shake, but it just laid there. Madrones, on the other hand, grow toward light and are twisty, with huge crowns of wild branches. When it hit the ground, it spun and bounced back up before it laid still.  Easy to understand how a logger could get hurt. After this one came down, we teased Charlie about having to stay the night -- he dropped the tree with his vehicle trapped on the roadway below. We all worked like mad to cut and clean up all those limbs. This tree is also going to be very easy to split in place and haul to the barn. 

That black object in the lower right corner is Charlie's truck --
 down-hill of that tree he is cutting.
Pay attention to the height of his cut, in relation to his height.
Then see #4 below!

Notice that Charlie is nowhere to be seen in those pictures!  He knows how to work safely.

Then, Charlie returned to the steep slope where he worked last time and wacked down a bunch more of the tall, skinny, suppressed trees.  The most depressing thing is that this is the area we were so proud of yarding last August. It hadn't been clean for very long, and here it is messed up again!  But because of their size, we know we can handle the tedious work of limbing and bucking, so all Charlie did was lay them on the ground.  These trees represent future mega hours of hard work.  But we prefer this health club to Gold's Gym anytime.  Nothing like dragging a couple hundred pounds of wood UP a hill to get your heart and lungs exercising.  Way more enjoyable than walking on a treadmill with a puny 5% grade. 

Charlie is a fascinating guy.  He is sooooo good at what he does. This was his warm-up that morning: taking off dead limbs from a tree right along the driveway. We were tired of it looking so ugly. Note the waist rope holding him up there as he pulls up his chain saw.

Below are pictures of the easy job that awaits us.  All we have to do is split these babies right in place, load them into the tractor trailer, bring them to the barn, then stack them.  No uphill anything.   Of course getting some of that madrone onto the log splitter will be its own kind of ordeal.  Madrone is VERY dense wood and consequently very heavy. Thank goodness the logsplitter pivots and we don't actually have to LIFT any of those rounds.  The big ones weigh more than 200 pounds each.  Charlie felt so bad about leaving such heavy work for us that he called that night and offered to come back and help us split them and he would do it for free.  What a neat guy!  Before we refused his offer, the two of us went back down there and rolled each and every round out of the shrubs to the edge of the roadway.  If we can roll them through the brush, then rolling them onto the log splitter should be doable -- another typical workout at Long Shadows Health Club.