Yesterday, I walked through the woods with my father-in-law. He pointed out standing dead that he wanted me to take down so I could use the wood for firewood this year. Two huge beech trees looked to be dead, but they were so big I was a bit apprehensive to tackle them myself, so I decided to pass on them and tag more manageable ones.
Early this afternoon I headed out to start cutting and I was pretty surprised to find that one of the trees I was looking at yesterday actually broke off about a third of the way up and only thirty feet or so of trunk was left standing! It took me a minute to figure out what happened. It must have been during the heavy rain and wind last night.
What are the chances of that? I spent a few hours cutting and splitting (with my wife Amber on the wheel barrow, she insisted on helping) and got the tree all cleaned up. It was very cool to find a tree I wanted already dropped when I went in the woods!
To the best of my knowledge, no one heard the tree fall.
