Forest labor on Labor Day

Three hours of work yesterday morning helped expand the firewood and kindling supply.  The cutting and lopping focused on apple wood.  One of several trunks broke off of a big stump, falling across a walking trail and into several smaller trees.  Then, additional cutting led to more wood from an apple that the bow saw took down a few months ago.

Apple has perhaps the most beautiful heartwood around.

The impacted stump still has plenty of apple biomass.  Remnants of the broken stem can be seen on the right.

A baby oak and several paper birches took a direct hit from the fallen apple trunk.  The oak bends a bit now, but should be OK, especially with the extra sun it will receive.  The birches will be added to the future kindling supply.  Here's the oak:

Even with the loss of some paper birches, the delightful species is not anywhere close to extinction on the hill.  Here's a shot of three young ones near the impact point of the apple.  Like the oak, they will get more sun now.