Bowed Over...

 The last few winters have brought almost unprecedented periods of rain, wind, and heavy wet snow. This resulted in many trees falling down, losing branches, or getting bowed over. While some of the bowed trees spring back up after the snow and ice melts, many don't. It's not just saplings, some of the birch are six inches at the base and maybe thirty feet tall. So I've been cutting down the ones that are still bowed over and salvaging what I can for firewood.

While most of the aspen were smaller saplings, some of the birch were larger and needed to be hauled up to the wood yard with the tractor. This is the same tree leaning over the dog yard in the first photo in Finally It's Spring (5/13/23). After bucking them up to wood stove length, they get split and stacked out to dry. 

With the wood from these smaller birch and a couple of larger ones that fell next to the dog trail, we'll have plenty of firewood for heating this coming winter. It warms yah twice!