Firewood

Last week I was looking at the buds coming on the apples and pear trees in the orchard. Our orchard was planted over 80 years ago and had been neglected for a very long time before we arrived at the farm. I'm slowly trying to bring it back into production by pruning and re-planting trees. Several very large branches had come down in the storms over the winter.

I asked Henry to come out with me to cut them up into firewood because I have some trouble getting the chain saws started; I'm just not strong enough. While we were there, I noticed that one of the trees had only one branch with buds on it. I asked him to cut it down, planning to put in a replacement tree. He said it might take him a while, as the tree had a good diameter. He cut a notch in the side he wanted the tree to fall and discovered the tree was almost entirely hollow! No wonder it had not produced fruit well in the years we've owned the farm! The dark spot in the picture is not wood, it is the hollow place. Only the light stripe of cambium was holding the tree up!

It took him about 5 minutes to get through the trunk, and drop the tree... then I lopped the small branches off. Most of the large limbs were hollow as well. We did get a small stack of firewood, one new tree, planted and some very nice "strips" of applewood for me to make into cooking spoons for presents! All around a pretty good morning.