Joe is the one who cashed in on this one....he recently installed his woodstove and we are trying to get him on board the 3 Year Plan. He got all the wood. Premium wood for sure.
Around here there used to be lots of hickory and walnut trees as our grandfathers always kept trees like that. After all, they gave food and also gave shade for cattle. Today with few raising cattle, the fences no longer exist and small fields became huge fields. Those trees that had been left in fields had to come down. Corn and beans gave large paychecks so the trees had to go to make the farming easier and more profitable. Hence, there are few nut trees around any more. I do know of a large woods not far from here where I used to be a member of a sportsman's club. About 95% of the trees there are shagbark hickory. A beautiful sight indeed. I have a few young ones here that are now giving a few nuts...if you can be quicker than the squirrels. There are fewer pignut but there are some.
Talk about no room for error! Dang! A 95% shag forest? Yes that really must be something to see. If I see a clump of five in the woods it’s a special treat.
Oh it is a beautiful place with a nice archery range. I have a couple trophies from there and so does my wife.
I used to really like it also did some crazy takedowns worst was a lightening struck ash I had to tie into a tree next to it and zipline everything down the whole trunk was splintered what a mess that was to cut I had to put chain binders around the trunk to hold it together to take the crown out it was quite a project that was in the late 70's it was fun I do miss it JB
Nice job Scotty Overkill and blacksmith ! That's a crap load of rope work there. Shagbark doesn't spike nice either, glad ya only had to peel 4'. See ya next weekend!
Yep, everything is a trade off. Messy gutters are usually enough to deter most from keeping trees near their house, let alone insurance. A tree shaded backyard is just so nice though.
Some tight quarters Scotty Overkill Nice job on getting it down safely. You fellas do a nice job of documenting the entire process!
Reminds me of a story my grandfather tells of growing up on the farm in iowa. They had several large walnut trees, and would collect several burlap sacks of walnuts for use throughout the year. Great grandpa devised some setup with the rear end of his model A jacked up and running to crack the walnuts so they could just ave the meat. Grandpa has returned to family farm, which has since been sold. The fence rows are gone. The house and buildings are also gone. Just big fields like you described.
From age 7 until college was over, I lived on Hickory Hill Dr. The forest on that lot was mostly hickory and sugar maple. A good amount of beech, and ironwood. I miss that woods. Nice takedown!
Well, I saved a 40" section of the trunk near the base of the tree, and even though it was hollow, I ended up getting 23 nice long-grain axe/sledgehammer staves from it after riving it down. All sapwood, long grain-split. These would make excellent hafts.
