One Heck of a Trail Day

Several Elderberry and Potluck Farm members work regularly together to maintain our beautiful trail system which consists of miles of trails across about 130 acres.  This week the Trail Team needed some help!  A 125 year old red oak crashed across one of our streams, blocking 3 trails (and fortunately missing our trail bridge!).  Today we had a team of people who tried to clear the tree while maintaining social distancing!  A challenge for sure.... but we were able to clear all but the trunk that crossed the stream.  It's always amazing what a community of people can do together!

This is Little Creek - a stream that feeds the Flat River.  You can just see our little bridge
in the background - this is before the tree fell!

This is the tree that fell, but so hard to get a sense of how big without people in the photo! 
This is the bottom half - the top of the tree hit the opposite side of the stream

Michael and Stewart showing the tree's root ball (at a 6' distance!)

Here all of the top of the tree has been cleared.  Much of that was done a day ago by Richard, Stewart, Michael and Cathy.  Today additional helpers continued the job - Richard, Vonda, Mike, Karolyn and Michael in this shot

Vonda, Karolyn and Cathy cart away limbs and branches while a few people run the chain saws

Ross in a mess of branches, while Rob (other bank) readies the
big chain saw to cut the trunk

Rob used to have a tree cutting business, so is a pro at this. We had him cut us a few
rounds to use as tables on our log cabin porch.  Maybe we will feature those tables one of these days!

Stewart and Mary cutting and clearing logs - there is some great firewood here!

We all guessed the age of the tree, and the guesses were all under 100 years old.  The tree just did not seem
that big (about 2' diameter).  But the rings were very close together, and Mary count 125 - more or less.  It was a dense tree!