18 months ago a large mature tree at the end of a neighbour’s garden at the top of the Lane fell into wheat growing in the field behind our house, and lay there for a couple months. The farmer pulled it onto the grass strip at the field edge before the autumn ploughing, since when it has remained blocking the grassy strip, which we sometimes use as a mud-free short dog walk. I saw it has a minor inconvenience which entailed me and the dogs walking into the cultivated part of the filed to navigate around it. Chantal saw it as firewood, and last week asked Mike, the neighbour in question, whether he minded us having the tree. Since he didn’t know that the tree had fallen (he has a very large garden with what is almost a spinney at the bottom), he had no objections, and we planned to remove it to our wood store this weekend.
Yesterday, after our meal at The Elms, we headed out to the tree, just as it started to rain. By the time we had put everything that we need over the fence at the bottom of the garden (chainsaw, wheelbarrow, bow-saw, large plastic bags) and walked along the Lane and back behind our house the rain had become torrential, as we removed the smaller branches;
Chantal isn’t out of focus – the camera lens was wet! Having removed the branches, I made a start on part of the trunk with the chain saw. The weight of the fallen trunk trapped the saw blade twice, each time necessitating me getting my shoulder under the trunk to take the weight while Chantal tugged at the chain saw to pull it free, not without considerable effort by both of us. The second attempt stretched the chain, making it unusable. We were cold, exhausted, very very wet, and we still had to put the wood over the garden fence and into the wood store. By the time we finished we just slumped in front of the 3 hour film Django (which, incidentally, is only really a two hour plot).
This afternoon we headed back to the tree, having re-tensioned the chain saw, to tackle the trunk, this time in sunshine.
In better conditions it took an hour to turn the trunk into logs, and another hour to transport the logs around the field edge, over the garden fence, and stack them in log store;
Based on the stock of delivered wood, we reckon that the tree has provided us with over £50 worth of logs, and an awful lot of exercise! We will be buying Mike an edible gift as a token of our appreciation.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
