Spring poles

We cut down five spring poles on Saturday. Two yellow birch spring poles are pictured here. They are created when a tree bends and stays that way.

Spring poles create a lot of shade; branches on the top of the bend get a lot of sunlight and keep growing, even though the main truck does not. The tall branches on the first yellow birch in the photo above were probably 40 feet high. This shade from these useless branches means less growth for trees to the north that are still standing. That's why we cut spring poles. But you need to be careful. Much energy exists in the tree because the bend is so severe. You can't cut into the spring pole as you would a regular log. If you tried to, the bar and chain would get stuck rather quickly due to the massive amount of compression in the bent tree. So you must make small cuts and even shave off some of the wood on the inside of the spring pole. Then you can cut through to that point from the outer side of the bend. We were quite successful in our spring pole work. This is a pile of one yellow birch and one white ash spring pole. This was a different yellow birch than the two previously pictured.

Red maples frequently become spring poles. Their relative lightness can't stand up to some ice storms or strong winds.

On the way back up the hill, another busy woodpecker was spotted.

Life enjoys the sun

We are in the second of what should be five sunny days. The panels are loving it! So is a busy woodpecker, working on a nest about 50 feet high (thanks to a broken white pine).

What a wonderful few days to be a shiny, happy, peeling young paper birch!

16 megawatt/hours party

We are celebrating a very bright and shiny day. This was also the day we surpassed 16 megawatt/hours (16,000 kilowatt/hours) of production from our solar panels. Yesterday, we took the big saw into the woods for some cutting of broken or blown down future firewood. The wood (red maple and paper birch) was also split. After being taken to the area around the house, several of the pieces will be cut again. None of this wood will burn until the Fall of 2017. Here are pictures of the new wood.