Last Fall, Tommy, Jody and I cut down the last tree in our front yard. The hard maple was a fixture in someone's yard for at least sixty years...long before we bought our home this tree existed.
Unfortunately, the tree began to lean heavily toward our home. It was only a matter of time before a Missouri wind storm or tornado came through our area, roaring with a vengeance, causing the tree to land on our home, destroying it in the process. Her sister tree had to be removed several years earlier. I don't remember the other tree causing as much hard work as this tree has created for Tommy and me. Evidently, ten years or more makes a big difference in tree cutting and removing at the Carter house.
We laughed when we saw the mess in our front yard, made jokes about how we would not be bored this winter. We had hard work to last us until Spring. On any given day we could walk out our back door and stroll through a downed forest, complete with birds, squirrels and eventually rabbits. At first we worked fairly steady on the tree with intentions of having the sucker trimmed, cut, chopped and stacked by Christmas. In reality we had the tree trimmed...almost by Christmas. There were dozens of two to three foot round blocks of wood cut, laying all over the front yard. Very little splitting was done for the next few months. A tree has to be "worked up" to remove it from the area where it fell. The weather was getting nasty, cold with the occasional snow. I could think of forty million reasons to not go outside and work on that mammoth in the front yard. After all, it wasn't going anywhere.
We did manage to burn several loads of tree toppings; branches too green to burn in the wood stove and too small for kindling. The trailer we hauled our toppings on was soon bogged down in the mud and mire. We waited for the ground to freeze before we could remove the trailer. Finally, the trailer and tree were reconnected. They spent the winter together in our front yard. Over the course of winter, the trailer slowly slipped deeper and deeper into the ground. Once again, finding itself stuck.
Tommy and I built the trailer about seven, if not more, years ago. We were having Jacy and Melodi's birthday party on October 30th at our home. We needed a trailer for a hayride. We worked on that trailer all week. It was worth it. We had a fun night with a bonfire, cookout and hayride. No one fell off the straw bales as we drove up and down and around
Atterberry Hill. Sometime this Spring, the cart needs new lumber and another coat of paint.
By the side of our house is another load of split wood about this size. We could not come up with a plan during the winter on where to put all of this wood. The main focus was to make sure we only had to move the wood once. Stacking wood is hard work. The fewer times the wood has to be touched the better I like it. The only trouble was in the middle of winter we had no where to store the split wood...now we do! We have a huge concrete laundry room made so we can store our winter wood in there. It is empty and as soon as our backs loosen up, we will begin filling that room with next winters wood. Hopefully, in another month the front yard will be cleaned up, the flower beds will be blooming, the hummingbirds will have returned and we can start painting our house for the last time! Hmmmm...
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