Tree Cutting – The loss of one of our great grandfather Oaks

Tree cutting, finally biting the bullet and getting a “real” chain saw. One of the things I’ve always loved about this home and property are all the ancient trees we have. Being Minnesota the majority of our trees are pines but right beside our deck were three oaks that had to have been upwards of 150 years old. Thinking about how they were here even before the house was built just amazes me. Those trees saw all of our wars and hard times throughout this country and stood watch over this home since it was first built in 1905. Unfortunately though a major storm took one of them out this spring.

The one we lost was not terribly surprising but its always sad to see a tree that old go down.

Ever since I moved in back in 2015 I knew this oak was well rotted out entirely down its center. (I guess that’s not uncommon with old oak trees.) I played with the idea of taking him down to avoid what might have been catastrophe but, because it was an oak, I figured it still might out live me.

But this spring we saw insane storms and even a tornado touch down just a few miles from us. Ninety plus wind warnings and our phones going off on us to seek shelter became almost a common occurrence.

This old oak finally went and we are very fortunate that it caused very little damage.

It fell away from the house, perfectly between two other, smaller, oak trees and landed in our little stand of old spruce trees. It literally did NO damage. If it had gone the other way it would have taken out half of our deck and maybe our kitchen too…

Unfortunately for us this was not our first tree down this year either.

(I’ve lived here since 2015 and never lost a tree before…)

Earlier in June we lost a Norway (red) pine that fell just perfectly over our BRAND NEW GARAGE ADDITION and then over the whole garage!!! When I saw it my heart just thumped to my feet.

Seriously?!

But we got lucky with that tree too as the only damage we had was a little bent flashing and a broken weathervane. (Must have been a seriously slow fall…)

My brother and dad took care of that pine for us but it was clear: Lodi and I needed to be better prepared.

The oaks, spruce and couple of maples we have are pretty special here as the majority of our trees are crazy old and absolutely enormous Red pines.

One I’ve been ignoring is a gorgeous great grand father pine that’s just huge…

Unfortunately though its about ten feet from our garage and leaning that way… *facepalm*

With the oak going down it was time to bite the bullet and buy a decent chainsaw. We decided on a Stihl with a 20 inch bar which we picked up from our local Ace hardware. I even happened to have a 10% off entire purchase coupon!

Between us Lodi and I have a lot of experience when it comes to building or running just about anything.

But experience cutting up big trees?

Not so much.

And we have both learned the hard way to be cautious!

So, we were happy to hear Scott’s brother wanted the Oak in exchange for him coming out and helping cut it up. (Oak is a wonderful wood for inside fireplaces and wood stoves!)

We would have happily used it in our fire pit but this was one heck of a good trade.

The boys worked on it for hours one weekend.

(I was the unabashedly lazy one that morning and slept through all of it… Do I feel bad? YES. Do I regret it? NOT ENTIRELY…

I’m a do it yourselfer but have no shame in admitting that some jobs I am not comfortable tackling. People get badly hurt and killed in accidents around here every year and generally they’re just regular folks like us cutting down trees for their fire pits or wood stoves.)

Still though I could have helped a lot more than just sleeping through it!

They got it done without me and that beautiful oak all stacked up. What a huge undertaking!

The storms this spring sadly caused something in me I never expected: A bit of dread when it comes to our big trees now 🙁

They counted the rings upwards of 150!