Lumber Jack

On Thursday morning, I had a friend, a life long lumber jack from the Northwest coast, come over to finally cut down the last piece of the old dead white oak tree in our back yard. As you can see, it was a gorgeous day.

He made short work of it...has a 39" chain saw (which he has been using for 25 years), and he just started cutting around the bottom.

Then we wrapped a chain around it, hooked it to his truck, and pulled!

The stump was big - 36" by 30", and it had two hearts (you can't see them very well in the pic).

Once down, he had to cut it every 16" so the boys can split the rounds into manageable sized firewood.

I donated the whole tree to any Boy Scouts who wanted to invest the time and labor to come cut and sell fire wood to earn money for summer camp.

John did a great job. The tip of his chain saw is touching the ground behind the stump. I should have had him put it up on the stump so you could see how big it is. What am I going to do with the stump, since we could not use a bulldozer or backhoe to knock it out of ground without damaging our septic and phone lines? In one word - hugelkultur (goggle it)! Another friend suggested it, so we are going to give it a try.