Trees down & Clean up

A storm blew in as I was headed into town to get a flat tire fixed.  The road was blocked by two trees that came down across it.  With no chainsaw in the car, I turned around and headed home.  I found two pigs out.  A tree had come down in my back yard. No real damage other than to a fence.  I will straighten things up once the storm passes through.  If daylight is on my side, I will go after the trees in the road as well.  I can use the firewood, and I suspect I will get to it before the township does.

So far, 5 trees are down on my property where they did damage.  I can repair all. I suspect if I turned it in to insurance he damage would be about $500.00.  A $200.00 gate got a U in the top rail. A dog pen is down…it may have just folded. Fences damaged in at least 6 spots.  

In all 4 pigs went missing.  They all showed up in time for dinner.

I spent the rest of my day cutting paths through the fallen trees.  3 pigs are homeless for the night.  I will repair their pen tomorrow,  they have bedded down in the hay shed.

I’ll get some more pictures up.  I have all animals back in their pens,    The big discovery today was a large Widow Maker high in the trees on my path to the back of the barn.  My inclination at present is to live with it.  I would have to hire a cherry picker to remove it.

Sorry about the damage.  We are still cleaning up from Helene.  I’ll probably get it cleaned up just in time for the next one!

The gate. It’s works as a gate …just ain’t pretty.

Tree down in a pig pen.  It’s low priority.  No significant damage done.

I was wrong.  Three Widow Makers. Fortunately they are all close together.  I am going to have to rope off the area.  Hopefully another storm will bring them down.

An isolated tree in the woods. Not in my tree count.

Any biochar or mushroom plans?

Hi Gray,

Thanks for asking. My brain is still in clean up mode.   I do have wine caps and a chipper. So, much of the smaller stuff will go there.  

I also had plans for a smoker this year.  I haven’t even examined which kinds of trees went down, but I am confident there was at least one hickory.


….at least 2 of the trees are Hickory.

That might be a cherry hanging over the pig…If so, they make fine smoking wood!

John—OUCH!!

I hate losing trees!  And I lost a few in January to ice.  And I burned up a pole saw taking down one of them.


Hang in there,

Eric

Hi Eric,

All pens are secure.  I am now cutting firewood for fall 2026. Once I get the brush cleaned up, I will go back and rebuild the pens …probably a fall job.

Well I hate losing a tree, but I am pleased that your fallen tree becomes an accidental supply of resources!  Sure, it takes some extra, unanticipated effort, but you will be in good supply by 2026.

I assume your Greenworks saw is still performing well?  I am trying to come up with convincing reasons that my wife will accept as "needs" for me to acquire one soon!  I get this way with new tools (toys).

Eric

Eric,

Yes, I have 2 Greenworks (one was replaced under warranty when it only needed a simple repair) and 1 Makita.   All 3 are fine.  I can cut all day without without recharging . Fortunately, last winter I bought 2 new bars and chains for the Greenworks.  Of course, I used winter to make sure all the chains were sharpened.

I am impressed enough with the Greenworks that my next mower will be a Greenworks.  Their action on the chainsaw warranty won me over, and their product is pretty good.  Prior to going with battery, I had a Stihl Farmboss for about 20 years.  As others have noted, I appreciate the low maintenance and easy starting of the battery saws.  

The frustrating thing is that I was catching up on all the outside jobs I was behind on ….and now this storm hit.   The good news is that the gate was the most costly thing damaged.  I will replace it at some point, but I am in no hurry.

I have 11 acres , and trees are plentiful. The ones that came down were not important in terms of shade.  

Oh yes, I cut enough limbs away to examine the dog pen. At this point, I can see no damage.  It had a tarp over it for shade. It looks like the wind caught it and flipped the pen over before the tree came down. So, the tree hit a folded pen laying on the ground. No dogs were in it.

What is odd, it that the serious part of the storm storm lasted maybe 10 minutes.  The trees on my property fell from NW to SE.  The trees a mile from me on the township road fell from S to N.

Update.

As I have returned to cleaning up more of the mess, I have discovered that only one tree, the one pictured, was blown down in the storm.  All others went down from lightening strikes. This solves my puzzle in the previous post regarding the direction the trees fell. It was the difference between trees down from lightening vs wind.p

One of the larger widow makers came down a few days ago.   It measured about 8’ by 14 feet, and its diameter as 10” at the widest point.  It definitely would have added excitement to the day if it had hit me.

There is another one and the same area still in the trees above a path.  I am going to try to get a rope around it and pull it down with the tractor.

In the first picture is the remains of a large tree from a previous storm o the left. My wife and I decided to leave it in place because several families of squirrels and birds have declared it a condo…. One of the advantages of having no close neighbors and not being in sight of a road.