Of Fallen Trees and What We Do With Them

In my last blog post, I mentioned that a tree had fallen on our fence.

It’s a pine tree that was growing on the other side of the pasture fence. When it uprooted and fell, it got caught in the branches of an oak tree, so it didn’t hit the ground. Being precarious and therefore dangerous, it had to come down. 

This is actually a fairly common occurrence here. It’s always pine trees because pines are pioneer trees; they grow quickly in untended open areas, then gradually give way to young hardwoods. This is called succession. They grow tall and spindly competing for the sun. Their fast growth makes them weaker and subject to uprooting when the ground is too saturated or breaking mid-trunk when the winds are high. Fortunately, no buildings or critters have ever been hit (including us!) although we’ve lost a lot of fences from this happening. These trees were the motivating factor in buying Dan’s portable sawmill and have provided most of the lumber we’ve used for building projects.

Dan first checked to make sure it was safe, and then let the billy boys into the pasture to eat the oak leaves.