I dropped 2 standing dead wood trees today. One was 6in and the other 4in at the base. Bark was flaking off. Between the two, about 50feet of solid wood. Not too much for pictures today. Just my growing pile. I'd guess that's about 20% of what I have to haul cross town. I'm hoping to do the majority of that hauling on Saturday. It's nice to have an amount of wood not needing to be split - just cut and stack. The remaining wood, will need to be split, which I enjoy. It'll be nice to look out, see the pile, grab a cup of hot coffee and go at it with either saw or maul(x27).
My small property, 3/4 acre, is surrounded by 80-90 ft oak trees and few big ash. I count on the foliage to shade the house in the summertime, so they'll stay standing until such time that the leave no longer sprout. We had a real bad infestation of those damm gypsy moth caterpillars this past spring. I see their egg masses EVERYWHERE. Most of them, too high up the trunk to do anything about. We've had below normal precipitation the past 2-3 years, which contributes to the caterpillar problem. There's a naturally occurring bacteria that does the little critters in, but needs normal average rains to grow. I do think we are lucky in the general area to have a diverse makeup of different tree species. Aside from lots of white pine, there's oak, ash, and maple in the area. A few black birch, hickory, and black locust mixed in, here and there.
Gypsy moths are terrible. Fortunately they mostly are gone from around here. Back in the late 80's is when they were really bad.
Yeah Dennis we had them in the mid 80's here and they were gone. I started hearing this past spring of the Gypsy months down in Mass. this past summer and said there ain't none around here. Well as I was out in the woods this fall I started see egg cases everywhere. Not tons of them, just small amounts everywhere. We'll get hit hard this spring with the advance wave of the invasion. And then, next year will be real bad.
Can't like that.... On the egg cases, I don't think you ever get totally rid of the gypsy moths so you may find some egg cases but if you find lots, you are in trouble. I surely hated those things when they came to MI but fortunately they were here for about 3 or 4 years then mostly gone. A lot of folks were scared and the fellow who owned 40 acres that borders our place thought about selling all his oaks that were marketable. I encouraged him to hold off for at least 3 years and see how it went. Fortunately it turned out good. I'd hate to have that woodlot cut off as our house borders that woodlot and it is nice. We missed out on buying that one time...
