Farewell to One of Our Red Pines

Our lake home came with a pair of red pines right next to the corner of our screened-in porch. One of them fell in a windstorm the first summer we were here, actually while we were still moving in and getting settled. That left a snag/stump and a full-fledged tree, which has done fine until recently. Last year, it started to show signs of dying. Its crown of needles became more and more diminished, and we started worrying about the possibility of it falling on our house or falling and having a root ball tear up the corner of the porch. So, we decided to take it down this year. I hated to do it, but we have lots more red pines growing all around us in the woods, and we have planted more, so I guess this is all for the better.

Here I am looking at the snag after it was dropped. One of the two men I hired is about to drag the snag away from the base of the full tree with his pickup.

Then came the main event. This sequence of pictures shows the tree being cut and falling.

Kathie made a little movie while I was snapping the sequence above.

Rather than waste the wood, I decided to have the tree cut into timbers and lumber that son Will can use in building his timber-framed structures on his property up in northern Minnesota. The logs were loaded onto a truck and hauled to a nearby mill.

A couple days ago, I picked up all of the timbers and lumber and stood it up in the garage to dry until I can haul it up to Will's property near Grand Marais, MN. The timbers in the foreground are 8x8 timbers about 9' long. Most of the rest of it is full 1" lumber that can be used for roofing and other purposes. It is fairly damp still, so the garage is very fragrant. I feel good about not wasting a resource like this. In a couple of weeks, I'll stack the lumber with spacers for further drying and to insure that it does not warp or bow. Later this month, Kathie and I will haul it north and assist Will and Sandy in erecting one of the timber-framed structures Will and I worked on a couple years ago. You can read about that here, if you are interested.

With the red pine gone, the house looks a little different or naked, but it is surely safer in the event of a storm.