That Should have read "urban" parts. Just read it again and was like what??? I'm "Urban" Woods! I guess all the traveling to rural locations lately had my head forgetting my actual habitat. Who knows...maybe one day not too far off I will be "Rural Woods"??
Reverse car hoard... it's going to Peterborough with our friend Eric, over Temple mountain he goes! I hope he makes it all right. He'll be back for more.
Took a 20 min drive this evening to a town called Rutherford where I know there are those big old suburban trees. This was the scene at one unfortunate persons home. This scary red oak tree had about a 6'-1/2" DBH. I've seen 3 houses like this around my area and word is they are condemned because they're rocked off their foundations. Not sure if this is the case here. Anyway I was able to score some dried top crown wood from this tree and there was plenty more in the street that wasn't dry. If I lived nearer I would pick away at it as rounds are big and need to be wedged and sledged. Tempting as that was I was able to drive around and get some smaller roadside pin oak and maple cut to more manageable sizes . It was heavy wet stuff so I didn't push the total cargo weight being I had a length to drive on hwy's with pothole ramps.
That thing is a monster! Hard to tell from the pics, but did the crown clip the house? If the house took a direct hit from that trunk, it would have gone straight through to the first floor! So much wood, I wonder how long it will be there.
From what I can tell as an amateur investigator, it looks like the crown base clipped the corner of the house pretty good which then rolled the tree enough to get it off the roof. Disclaimer, the crime scene evidence was a little corrupted since a power company came and did some cutting. So maybe it rolled off while crashing down in the storm or maybe they had to cut the tree from the house?
Rutherford is a desirable commuting and walk-able neighborhood with quaint restaurants and shops. It gained a resurgence of interest about 15 to 20 yrs ago when young professionals started moving into the old homes fixing them up as large one family homes or dividing them up for apartments. Believe it or not that house which appears to be a multi-family dwelling is worth at least 1 million, but probably more.
Well the tree didn't help with the appearance and the neighborhood for around city limits is rather quaint, but yes these homes are way over priced here and for decades I've been scratching my head in disbelief at the housing market and how it keeps rising even when we had the foreclosure pandemic. Just FYI for you country folk and suburbanites, I just read an investment article from the CEO of Zillow giving future guidance of the real estate market. They say that given the great shuffling we are now seeing with people fleeing the cities there is actually a shortage of homes.....Get ready for more rising prices! The article says with the new stay at home culture that houses are becoming all in one dwellings: a place to work, your gym, Your tele-medicine doctor visits, your childs play ground and public park, your public pool, your arcade and movie house entertainment center etc.... It makes sense now that everyone built their Mc Mansions while family size ironically shrunk. So just some news for you wood hoarders to expect more development and traffic in your quiet towns. By the way I predicted the great exodus from the NYC 25 years ago due to all the great history being erased, local factory jobs leaving, video conferencing abilities, and native New Yorkers being replaced by hipsters causing sky rocketing rent. I thought for sure after 9/11 it was going to be the end and yet it somehow boomed while all those things I mentioned got worse. The city became more expensive and less desirable so I scratched my head some more. Now it finally seems it is happening. So I was wrong for 25 years and now who knows, this may not be the end of the cities, but another boom in the making? I mean are those speculative developers who've added millions of square feet of livable space going to take billion dollar losses on their empty glass towers?
There's a shortage of homes for sale in my town. Spillover from Boston. Despite the lame school system, houses are going for above their asking price.
A few days ago while driving to the dump I spotted out the side of my eye what appeared to be a very punky dead fall maple in the back lot of an abandoned Walgreens that closed a year ago. Well it didn't really close, they moved further down the road to a newly built custom building. I actually have 3 Walgreens and 2 CVS's in my small town aloneWell at least there is still some Mom and Pop Pharmacies left which equal about 10. Anyway, looking to get back to scrounging much needed dry wood, I decided to visit this perfectly sheltered spot today to check out that big maple. It's relatively easy to cut on this site and out of the way of business owners and onlookers. Then upon getting up for a closer look it turned out to be Oak! This was the scene. That's my foot on there for scale... its a size 14 Ok I lied its closer to a size 10, but its a pretty big trunk in the 24" class. It was a bit of work for the Ego 16 " blade, but it powered thru. Obviously this buried the blade as I needed to attack the round from both sides and annoyingly I didn't match the cut so it was almost like cutting it twice . So here is the cut off log that came with a pretty severe angled base and so I cut it a little longer and I'll true off the end later. (Hey I need to make my stacks pretty just like all you guys on here...I gotta keep up with the Jones's!!! ) Anyway I'm happy the spalting has only degraded the wood about 25% and the heartwood is untouched! The wood is slightly damp from the weather, but it has none of the original green moisture left and so if I split now it will be ready for the winter. I will keep hitting this log till it's satisfactorily gone. This cut off is about 175lbs so that's all I'm taking today along with some smaller branches. I am pretty happy because though this tree was a storm casualty it was already dead so not as sad as when you see a beautiful oak fall. In this case the storm actually helped make this tree usable, otherwise it may have stood dead for another 2 0r 3 years becoming a spalted waste. Plus it's a rather large bank of seasoned oak that will get me comfortably prepared for burning season.
Mystery wood solved!...Sorta. You guys remember a week or so ago I thought I scored some maple at the dump, but the bark didn't seem to match and it cut so easy that I then speculated it may be willow and finally concluded walnut after I tried on line ID-ing the log. Well now I just split some and low and behold my first instinct was right and it is a maple, just not sure what variety with that bark ...Sugar maple? We don't get much sugar over here near Newark, so I was hesitant to call it out plus bark is still not well matched. It split like a dream and even this crotch piece split with one swing! Anyone have an opinion? Definitely not walnut. The Oak I scored today also split like a dream with the maul (pictured below). I was a little worried because I first needed to quarter it up with wedges and it gave a little resistance with some stringiness. Not a hint of resistance with a high velocity thwack of the mighty maul and very clean splits. Only issue is it's not as dry as I would have hoped and I'm now upping the degrading punk percent to 30% as sap wood is pretty destroyed yet able to produce a solid enough split. I still think I may be able to burn it this season given the light weight per mass factor.
I don't know Molly, Doesn't seem red enough nor flamed like box elder grain effects. As you can see the heartwood remains in a tight segregated pattern from sapwood. I'm not ruling it out though as it did strike me as being rather red for Sugar maple. It also seems lighter and splits like the best case scenario for maples. Does that sound like Box Elder? Your picture is a pretty good match I must say and it's a better match for the mystery bark also. I think I have only split box elder once before that I can remember so I'm no expert on that species.
