Art of Proprietation: We have some woods behind the house

Out behind the house, we have a mix of forest and fields. The original owner of this house was a turn of the century wood mill owner and as little as 50 years ago, the whole property was logged. Since then, there have been quit a few pines that have gotten pretty big. Big in my terms anyway. Some of them were approaching 48" in diameter. And since some of them were hanging around close to houses, we wanted to get them down in an orderly fashion before they blew down on their own. I thought about cutting them myself, but they were going to require winching, and well, the bar on my chainsaw just wasn't big enough. At 16", or even with a bigger bar, my chainsaw was not going to cut these trees. And given their proximity to houses, it would take more experience than I had to take these trees down without crushing something.

I was hoping I had enough timber to trade for the work. I talked to several loggers and they ranged from too small to too big. It was like Goldy locks and the three bears. The too small logger was more of a tree service guy and he wanted three grand in cash to come in and cut the trees we wanted down and didn't think any of the trees we had were worth anything. He said many of them were too big and wouldn't be accepted at the mills. The second logger looked at what we had for trees and felt there wasn't enough volume to justify the road building or cover the cost of moving in his equipment. But the third logger worked alone, and with the spring road closures for mud season, he had some slack time and was willing to entertain a smaller project.

The idea of the arrangement was the logger would take down our problem trees in exchange for taking our big pines for lumber and pulp. No cash was to change hands. Initially, the project was going to be a wash for us. We were going to get rid of the risk of these problem trees falling, but at the cost of a significant amount of lumber. To us, anyway. The logger was going to use an entry point at the opposite end of the property. Not a bad place, there was an existing woods road there, but not particularly useful to us either. But, as things turned out, the woods road was too soft and the logger used an entry closure to the house. This new entry was a also a woods road, a steep entry that was passable for my two wheel drive van if it wasn't wet or snow covered. In order to be able to bring in a log truck, the logger widened and smoothed out the road. It's now easily passable for my van. As it turns out, we not only got rid of our problem trees, we also got a bonus new road into our upper field that we already think will be very useful to us.

These are some of the problem trees. They are on top of a bank and sit over a house. In an uncomfortable way. If you look down at the bottom, you might see the 15 foot stump of one that came down in a storm 5 years ago. Where that tree came down, there is a new building. Hence why these trees make us nervous. There are also a couple of trees below the bank, closer to the house.

That's a pretty good sized skidder at the bottom of the trees there for reference.

That's the Skidder pulling down one of the big ones with a winch. The logger cuts the wedge out, puts the tree under tension and then starts cutting from the backside. It might take a couple iterations, but eventually, there is a relatively thick web left and he pulls the tree down with the skidder. It's a balance of not damaging the tree but keeping it under enough tension to prevent it from falling on the nearby house.

This is a typical area after the logger has cleared the trees and dispersed the dead limbs. Certainly not pristine, but not a wasteland either. I have seen clear cut lots before and this is so much better. We'll plant some annuals before the poison ivy gets established and hopefully fill the niche first.

That's actually the same tree as the first picture, but looking down hill at the stump and the house it was leaning over.