Spring - tree tagging time

Spring has finally arrived!

As the season of spring has finally arrived, we still find plenty of snow around our property even when much of it has melted in the towns surrounding us. It's still a bit nippy outdoors, though the sun shines almost every day creating a happy anticipation of warmer weather around the corner.

If you've read our blog for a while, you know our former home was located on three acres, all grass. This new property is similar in size and filled with a forest of trees. As our resident chipmunk came to visit this week, so did three others, all flitting about, racing back and forth in search of seed and food to eat. It's evident to me they too know spring has come.

Orange tree marking tape decorates our trees

Our spring goals are to gather price quotes for falling several trees around our property so we can proceed with carving out some grassy space and a garden out back. Apparently tree falling times are at their peak before the buds appear and foliage makes for a more difficult cleanup.

The past few days, several arborists came to search out our job request, gave advice on trees which were suffering damage and could create an eminent danger for the ability to fall over and land on our home (100+ heights of damaged trees!).

We are in the midst of obtaining price quotes for the several springtime task orientated goals ahead of us. The tree falling job which is first on the list will be huge, but the results will be exactly what we have already envisioned for our outdoor living and property visuals during the seasons to come.

We've been fortunate to have obtained such a kid-friendly and completely imaginary induced type of property with our "forest" filled with a variety of hardwood trees growing on it. So far we've found an assortment of ; Maple, Red (female flowering) Maple, Oak, Cherry and Hemlocks.

We also have the joy of figuring out how to rid our property of dreaded brambling prickly bushes in between most of those beautiful hardwood trees, something we'll have to tend to soon when we create a few nature trails towards the back of the property. I hope we will have raspberries or blackberries out there. Wouldn't that be grand! But first things first. Before anything else on our springtime agenda, we must get these marked trees cut, logged and hauled away.

We've had to tie ribbons around 38 trees in all

There are many needy families living in older brick farming houses with no option other than the oil heating system in their homes to keep warm in winter. The problem is, we've heard from some of them in our new parish that the costs associated with this type of heat system are astronomical at over 900.00 per month when heat merely hovers at highs of only 58 degrees. Imagine those heating bills arriving in your mail box! As a solution financially, they all seem to choose render the usage of wood stoves as their sole heat support, and our fallen trees will soon become a blessing to them to use as their next winter's seasoned wood burning fire pile.

When it all comes down to having men hanging on ropes and chain system off these trees, it may be a true nail biting experience for all of us. Yikes! We'll post more as soon as the snow melts around here a bit more and the bucket equipment, skidders, and other machinery arrives. gulp...