Ever since Chris and I cut West line in 2019 I knew I'd have to get after it sooner or later. Well, 5 years later I decided it might be now or never as the spring green-up seems like it's just around the corner and removing trees is 100% harder after leaf out. ... and I'm getting old! Opening the pond called FishBowl up to a full view from the cabin was always the end goal. Every year the trees got bigger, I got older and break even point just might have been behind me in the past tense.
Had a warm up and help with Olivia, we took down 3 standing trees and 2 that had dropped into the SkiJump plot after being girdled last summer. This was a nice wild cherry that was a back leaner over the pond. I wanted that wood so latched the winch on it about 20' up.
We had a great time with Movie night and elk burgers with neighbor Cliff and got busy the next day. Collected a years worth of wild cheery for smoking - so dang good.
With those five cleaned up and not needing a chiropractor and hand fulls of drugs I got after it Tuesday AM. Total of 14 trees done and 9 of those by myself Tuesday. Stayed with the trend of dropping three or four, limbing, bucking and getting the limbs cleaned up.
A 22" Silver maple needed to go and it's been two years since a dropped the last one in the pond so with no chance to pull that back leaner over I just let it go into the pond.
My excitement grew with each tree I fell, knowing it's just about the last act in a long long play. Opening the curtain bit by bit, opening up the show rather than closing it.
Besides the medium sized bonfire stack, I put up three stacks for my boy's mushroom hobby, Cherry, Yellow Poplar and Sasafrass (not100% on sasafrass ID). They're supposed to age 4-6 weeks then get inoculated - That'll happen at turkey season.
I'll get torched sometime this summer. All in all pleased with the entire project and all the folks that helped, Guthrie's, Mooch, Dean and Cliff (God rest their souls), Oliva, Zak and my girlfriend of 36 years.
Left some small Dogwoods on the bank and a big'ol gurl of a silver maple.
A bonfire, some stumps to cut off at ground level and delimbing the exposed limbs of the maple that went swimmin with the fishes are the only small chores needing done.