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The looming menace by the barn, an ancient, massive, and very dead sugar maple finally came down. Actually, it crumpled about twenty feet up, leaving a gorgeous snag. A good illustration of how dead trees fall over unexpectedly; when it came down (sometime between feeding the horse and returning home at 9ish) the wind had essentially died down and it was dry (and so it wasn’t waterlogged). Thud. Nice of it to miss the barn. Didn’t do the fence any good, but it needed repair anyway.

The photo was taken a few years back. It finally broke just above where the forked branch going over the barn is in the photo. The trunk fell quite nicely along the fence line, which did require a bit of jury-rigging at night with the aid of car-lights. The section of trunk between where it broke and the top fork in the photo is now neatly arranged under the fence line and all the rest (which was in the road) is picked up*, so the town can’t get wobbly about big old trees. I can’t say I will miss walking under it several times a day.

*The toy got its first real trial! It managed to move the trunk just enough so that it lies along the fence line, it can stay there for the next decade or so. 22 horses is not enough, however to pick up a sugar maple trunk of that size. Nor is the chain-saw hefty enough to get through anything other than the limbs. There is a reason it is called Rock Maple.