To Keep Me Busy

While Mike was busy going round and round on the tractor spreading lime in the hayfield, I had a job of my own.
Sometime in the last month or so, a fir tree crashed down on the fence and fell into the field where Mike was  planning on spreading lime on the field.
Looking closer at the felled tree, I found that it was not a whole tree but a ‘school marm.’
A school marm or schoolmarm is known in forestry as a tree that has two tops, where the tops begin is called the crotch of the tree. School marms are a dangerous tree to fall since the tree tops can separate and fall two different directions if cut as a single tree.
The tree that I had growing in the old railroad grade had the crotch more than 20 feet above the ground. One of the tops had broken out and ended across the fence and into the field.
I was able to use a small chainsaw to take all the limbs off the offending mess, cut a Gator load of firewood from the larger limbs and top of the piece down to 6 inches across. Still there was enough of the marm to use as a log 26 feet long. It was a rather large school marm, but now the tree is off the fence and the field is clear again.
The part of the tree that is still standing will continue to grow although it will never be able to be processed into quality timber. Taking down the rest of the tree will go into the never-ending list of tasks that will need to be done eventually.