We have more wood than you can shake a stick at. Whatever that means.

I grew up surrounded by lots and lots of trees in New Brunswick. I love trees and was thrilled when the Lord provided a house for us on a property with many trees. They can be quite a bit of work though.

So far this year we have taken down 6 trees. A big poplar in the front yard was the first to go. It was on our property, but an old break on it had caused it to grow precariously out over our neighbour’s yard. You could see the dead section on it, and it was unknown how far down the rotten part went. Our fear was that it would fall over on its own soon, so we had to get it down. Because of the lean, much of the weight of the tree was off to one side, so we had to hire professionals to take it down.

After a few shocking price quotes, we found someone who could get it down for us for $1000. It’s painful to spend that much without really adding any value to your property. It took just about two hours to come down, and of course I took a time lapse.

All three kids were home that day, so they enjoyed watching the tree be taken apart piece by piece.

It was pretty rotten.

Last summer one of the four willow trees between our house and the neighbour’s fell down in a storm.  It turns out the base was completely rotted out, to the point that when it fell, it just broke off at ground level without any roots coming up. Thankfully, the woodpile took most of the weight, and the part of the tree that did hit our house simply snapped off because it was so rotten at the top too.

A quick glance and you would think the tree looked healthy, yet I could reach into the base and pull out handfuls of soft, wet wood. This made us a bit nervous about the other three willows that were the same age and could also hit our house. When we had an arborist take down the poplar, he pointed out signs of rot at the bottom of two trees, and fungus growing at the top of the third. They needed to go before they too fell on our house.

We wanted to get them down quick before the leaves came out, and we were blessed with a Saturday with nice, warm weather and almost no wind! Makes it much nicer taking trees down near houses that way. My father-in-law offered to take them down. In addition to being a well-travelled missionary, theologian, author, former pilot, scuba diver, artist, and now full-time grandpa to my kids, he also happens to have lots of experience felling trees. My brother-in-law came to help out too.

A giant willow in our backyard that had some real problems. We liked this tree because it gave a lot of shade to our yard and swings, as well as the neighbour’s yard. But it had a large split develop in it that you could see flexing on a windy day. Water was getting in there and was causing the core to rot. This crack was so big, I could stick my hand down inside it and not reach the back.

I had two different arborists tell me that the tree was a danger, one saying that I shouldn’t let the kids play in the back yard on a windy day. That did it; the tree had to go.

The crack went deeper than we thought, over half the depth, at least 30 cm (12 inches) inside the tree. The wood in there was quite wet, so this tree really did have to go.

Of course, I took a time lapse of the whole process!

The sixth tree was crushed by the fifth tree. Poor little apple tree.

I estimate that we got about 3 cords (total of 380 cubic feet) of wood out of these trees, not including the apple tree!

At the end of the day, the family tree still had all its branches and each of us still had our limbs, so we count that a very successful day of cutting wood!