We’ve got a lot of pine trees on the farm. Very old ones. I’ve talked about them before. The barn and ‘D’ house all sit amongst them. They tower into the sky more than 60 feet and when the wind blows up from the south, which it does a lot for some reason, they bend and sway a remarkable amount. Song birds and woodpeckers and big ole crows gad about the top most branches.
I like them.
But in the way of nature, things live and things die and one of our big old pine trees succumbed this spring. I could swear it had been green this time last year, but about May massive amounts of bark and limbs began to fall earthward and it was clear that the least of the big old pine’s problems was a massive infestation of pine bark beetles.
Nestled as it was behind the barn, every weekend I have been terrified to come to the farm and see the thing laying across our barn, or across the chicken and turkey coop (I could imagine feathers still flying as the it hit), or worse yet, laying across something of one of our neighbors. (Yeah, when I say this thing is nestled I mean nestled.)
I called Hymie.
He showed up, two helpers in tow, with a pickup full of azure ropes and chainsaws, took one look at the pine and sa