Wagmore Farm Step 3: Timber!

In previous blog posts, I talked about the first steps The Husband and I have taken to clean up the grass and brush on our new property.  Moving up the "woodiness" scale - next we had to tackle the trees.

Both Pete and I love forests and trees, but as soon as we viewed the property, we knew there were some trees that had to go.  It turns out that the insurance company agreed with us, so the trees had to come out sooner rather than later.

Here are the problem trees:

Giant pine trees RIGHT next to the house.

I'm guessing they started out as cute little decorative trees?

Note the hardwood trees on the right.

Planted next to the septic tank.

And when I say next to - I mean w/in 6' - yikes!

Can you say roots in the drain field?  Not good.

Six lovely poplars.  They were tall,

 and the wind rustling through the trees was great.

Having "unstable" trees w/in 30' of the house - not so great.

Pretty maple tree in the front yard.

Branches touching the house is no good.  Goodbye, maple tree.

We had a couple more trees come out - another maple that was planted right next to a prettier maple.  One of them had to go - sorry not-as-pretty tree.  And a large locust tree.  Locust are not nice trees.  They're big, thorny, and send up little baby locust trees everywhere (I mentioned these baby locust in another post).  Good riddance, locust.

So what became of all these trees?

The poplars

The evergreens

All the wood piled together.

Anyone want to help us split wood?

Along with the firewood, let's have some of the trees chipped....

2 piles of wood chips that are approx 4 'x 5' x 40'

Good thing we have a lot of land...?

The horsey among you will appreciate that I asked the tree guys to save me a couple 10' logs to use as jumps.  With so much land, I feel compelled to have a some cross country jumps scattered about - and how cool to have my own logs!  The funny part:  they saved me 4 logs - each about 10' long and 8" (yes, that's inches) thick.  Sigh.  I'll still be using them for jumps - just not on the same scale...  Of course, it will be a long while before I have a horse, so not so bad, really.

Here are some pictures of the "naked" property.  The house doesn't look so charming without all the trees.  

The front

The side.  No trees around the septic now.

The back.  So bare.

Our current conundrum with the property is what to do about the house.  I think we're almost there on the decision - hopefully I'll have something to post soon!

PS - I want to say thanks to my Dad for meeting with the tree removal contractors, collecting the bids, and supervising our small-scale logging operation.  We'd like to offer you some firewood and wood chips  for all of your help ;)