Lumberjacking

Back to lumberjacking! With a twinge of irony as draw down our stores of homegrown lumber (cured and stored in Rosslyn’s carriage barn), we’re once again compelled to cull a few mature ash trees that are dying back and threatening to tumble across our outbuildings. So — despite the fact that we’ve endeavored over the last year to use our lumber, indeed to reduce the inventory that has occupied too much barn space — we are once again felling trees that will become lumber, firewood, and mulch.

Although I’m not afraid to harvest a tree when circumstances warrant, it’s nevertheless a poignant passing and sentimental benchmark when towering trees that helped define Rosslyn’s environs over the years must be culled. But storm damage to several of Rosslyn’s oldest feature trees in recent years, combined with a perspective shifting meeting with our insurance estimator this past summer, compel us to undertake some selective tree removal of unhealthy / dying ash trees located too close to the carriage barn and icehouse for comfort.

So it is that Aaron and Tony turn their attentive energies to lumberjacking five ash trees (including one that split in half last winter/spring) and two monumental trees flanking the east and west of the icehouse, both of which have dramatically lost their foliage on recent years leaving both with only a few flourishes of the canopies they boasted even a few years ago.

As Aaron brings his seasoned expertise to bare, methodically whittling down these behemoths before felling to reduce the risk of property damage, Tony matches him on the ground, transforming former trees into future lumber, firewood, and mulch.

Thank you, Aaron and Tony!