Broken Oak

I was hiking up the hill to an area of our land where I hadn't been for a while when I came upon a large oak tree that had recently fallen over.  I don't know exactly when it happened.  It could have been during the heavy wet snow we had back in October or it could have happened more recently during one of the windy winter rain storms.  In any case it must have been at a time when no one was around, otherwise we surely would have heard it.  It was a large but weak tree - the base was rotted hollow from insects and fungi.  We have a number of such damaged trees on our land.  Our long term plans for managing the forest is to remove the worst of the infested trees and try to halt the decay of the others.

There wasn't much of a base to the tree and what there was split in a spectacular way.

As can be seen, it did not fall all the way to the ground but rather hung itself up in a neighboring tree.
I don't know how I will safely clean this up.  However, since it is not near any of the current activities on the land, I will probably leave it be for now.

Storing Tree Trunks

Since last summer we have been cutting down trees on our land to make a clearing for our building project.  The fact that we are not done with this process this many months later is a good indication of the extent to which we underestimated the magnitude of this task.  Perhaps all this exposure to fresh country air has made us a little crazier than we were when we started, but we recently decided that we should make this task even more challenging.  Up until now, when we fell a tree we have been cutting it up into short sections suitable for firewood.  We got a great collection of firewood by now.  It's mostly oak with a little bit of maple and poplar.  Actually at this point we have years of firewood stored up; we really don't need any more.  Also, most of the wood we have been cutting up into firewood has been really nice timber, worthy of fine wood working.  So we decided that rather than cutting it up into little pieces, we would try to save it in long lengths which we could later mill into planks for woodworking projects.  We don't want to mill the wood immediately since we have as yet nowhere to store milled lumber out of the elements.  Logs can be stored for future milling if you are careful how you handle them.  They have to be kept off the ground and the ends have to be sealed so that they dry more uniformly so as to reduce cracking.  We decided to cut all future good trunks into 11-13 ft sections.  This will be tricky.  Some of our larger trees have trunks  12 to 15 inches in diameter.  Such a log can weigh as much as 900 pounds.  This is near the upper limit of what our equipment can handle.  It is interesting to think that people used to handle such logs before there were diesel engines.

This is a maple log being prepped for storage.  We started with some of the smaller trees to get the hang of it - this one is only about 6-7 inches in diameter.

We cut the ends square and remove a stripe of bark along its length to promote uniform drying.  We put it on some cribbing to keep it off the ground.

A small oak log being prepped for storage.
These smaller logs are relatively easy to handle.   The tractor pulls them easily.

The last step is to paint the ends of the logs with a sealant. 

We sealed the ends of the three oak logs immediately.  We will seal the ends of the maple log in a couple of days once it has stopped dripping sap.

Winter

O, wind, if winter comes,
can spring be far behind?
        Percy Bysshe Shelley




Of winter's lifeless world each tree
Now seems a perfect part;
Yet each one holds summer's secret
Deep down in its heart.
        Charles G. Slater




I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape.  Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.
        Andrew Wyeth




Now is the winter of our discontent.
        William Shakespeare

Some of our equipment at the partially excavated build site during a snowstorm.

It's either cold and frozen or thawed and muddy this time of year.
Either way, progress is made at a reduced rate.

We call this road the "West Boulevard".
Completed this Autumn, it is now the main access to our build site.