Day 184 - Tree Moving Party

 Moving a bunch of dead trees sounds easy enough. Not having the equipment to move it easily makes things trickier. Having little to no chainsaw experience to cut the trees into smaller pieces and move them made it more difficult. Barely having time to even think about this project let alone do it made it almost impossible.

Almost. 

Luckily, I used a bit of creativity and a whole lot of friendly help to get the tree moving party started.

Through a simple social media request, I was able to get a handful of people to join me one afternoon to move trees from where they had fallen in the dead ash stand to where they wouldn't be in the way of treating and mowing the land. That was the plan at least.

But plans can change.

That afternoon, a few former students, siblings of former students, and a parent joined me in a tree moving party. The nasty humidity wasn’t greatly appreciated and after a few trees, I knew the tree moving party would be a short one. Though a number of trees were able to be moved by two or three of us, the sheer number of them along with annoying branches and crumbling bark made it less of a party and more of a problem. A pleasant surprise was that one of my former students brought his tractor and was able to move some of the larger trees away.

As we moved trees to the edge of the trail, he would use his chains to grab hold of the tree and drag it to our future natural play area. Before we wrapped up for the day, we tried to organize the trees into sections to make as much of the land accessible but there was so much work to be done.

Luckily, there were people interested in helping. The student with the tractor came back a  second time to move more trees. Plus, one of the gentlemen who helped take down the trees in the first place came by to cut some up so I could more easily move them.

I was extremely appreciative of the help, but annoyed I didn’t do more.