A Danger and a Blessing

For the last several years we had a large dead ash tree in our yard.  The tree happened to be right outside of the kids' bedroom and each time we'd have strong winds I'd worry if the tree was going to fall on the kids while they slept.  There were a couple occasions I actually moved the kids into my bed and I slept on the couch.  (FYI-those occasions also tended to be times when Rich would have to be gone on a call for downed power lines.)

The tree also had the power line that ran to our house right next to it, so there was no good way for us to take it down without the power company disconnecting the line for us.  We had called the power company a couple years ago and waited for them to come out, but we didn't have anyone show until this last fall.  Thankfully, just before Christmas (and a major ice storm), the tree was taken down!

The wood chips the tree removal company left for us from the tree.

Well, since Christmas time, the tree has been in pieces...large pieces...in our front yard.  Rich spent an afternoon over Christmas break chopping it, but there was still a lot left.  Finally, on Good Friday, my parents came over with their log splitter and chainsaws and helped us get all the wood cut up.  (We're extremely grateful for my parents offer to help.  I would have never imagined how much work there was in that one tree...especially if it had to be choppe by hand!)

The wood all stacked.

 

After 3-4 hours of splitting wood, we had a huge pile!  Rich took a truckload to his grandma to use next winter in her wood furnace and we spent Saturday afternoon stacking the rest of it around our chicken coop and cleaning up the twigs/sawdust/etc.
 

Where the tree was after it was all cleaned up.  There is one large chunk that we left that someone asked for.  Morgan and my mom actually counted 44 rings on that chunk and 59 on another.  I'm not sure how old that makes the tree, but I'm guessing closer to 59 years?

My dad thinks we may have enough to heat our house for a whole winter, which would be great if we had a wood stove!  LOL!  We're apprehensive about a wood stove because we don't know the first thing about installing one....and it would need to be in our wet basement, which I'm thinking would rust out the wood stove.  It's also where I store our canned goods and I don't want them getting hot, so we'd need a way to separate them so the canned goods could still stay cool.  It'd definitely be a bit to figure out, but would be a huge blessing if we can make it work....fuel oil is expensive! ;-)

So our potentially dangerous tree turned into a potential blessing of heating our house.  I'm sure the wood will still be a blessing for someone else if we're unable to use it. :-)