After spending most of the summer getting wapped alongside the head by the branches off this tree, I decided it was time for it to go. The tree had been brought down last Winter by some ice storms that had swept over the area. Since my To-Do list is usually pretty full, the whacking and burning of this guy just kept slipping towards the bottom. But, with the mulberries weighing down the branches I was finding it increasingly difficult to just mow around the thing. So, I decided it was time for it to go.

I started on a Wednesday night by sawing the main trunks off of the portions of the tree that were still upright. The ice storm had just bent the branches so they were still trying to grow. Cutting them off would mean the leaves would fall off and it would be easier to get into the middle of the branches with my chainsaw.

On the following Saturday, I fired up my chainsaw and went to town. After a couple of hours, the lawn was covered in various piles of tree bits. A dozen trips later with my trusty John Deere and wagon and the whole thing was in the brush burn pile in the horse yard.

I coralled the horses into the SE paddock and lit the pile - yup, definitely got some good flames on that one. The brush pile started off being about 15 feet tall. By the end of the day, it was nothing but a pile of ashes.

While I was working on the brush, Tyler was working on clearing out the old straw from the lean-to on the side of the double corn crib. We have no idea how long the straw had been in there. But, it had been long enough for all of the twine strings to rot and for the bales to fall apart. So, we're thinking quite a while.

There were a couple main reasons why I wanted the straw gone. First, it was nasty. Second, I wanted to feed small square bales of hay this Winter and I needed someplace to put them. Third, there's an old chisel plow in the back that I wanted to get out of there.

While burning the straw, Tyler and I found lots of interesting things - thankfully no snakes! We found several beer cans. Some clothes. We even found the bones of some sort of small cat like creature. The bones were found in the ashes of the burn pile. The fire had gotten so hot that when we tried to pick them up to examine them, they turned to dust.