The Old Oak Tree

      I am blessed to have several huge oak trees on my property. Sadly last June one of my favorites fall over after we had several days of heavy rain. The reason this one was a favorite was that I had a tree house in it when I was little and it was huge then. The property was originally my Great Grandparents and my parents and I lived with them for several years after I was born before Dad built a home on the property. So I've lived my whole life within a couple of 100 yards of this tree. I measured the circumstance and and calculated the diameter to a little over 4'. By counting the growth rings it was somewhere between 150 and 175 years old.

 

I had stopped sawing when I took this pictures because I had hit something in the tree and dulled the chain on my saw. After we got the tree apart we looked and saw I had hit a nail about a foot inside the tree. I counted the growth rings and the nail had been there around 45 years. This would have been about the time I had the tree house in it. Probably one I had hammered into it years ago. So 45 years later it came back and bite me and ruined my chain.

It's making a pretty good size pile of firewood. I probably have that much more to split.

The following are from back in June right after it fall. I wasn't home but our neighbors were and confirmed that it make a huge crash. 

I had my wife stand in front of the root ball to give you an idea of how big it was. As a disclaimer please ignore her hair. She had just washed it and fussed that it looked bad.