High Wind Tree Incident

Removal process in progress

The week before Thanksgiving, we had some high winds and one of our trees blew down into our barn. Upon closer inspection of the tree, the limb was rotten so that was why it broke away from the tree. What a huge mess that tree created.

Removing the branches from the barn roof

My dear husband spent several days limbing the fallen tree, stacking the wood and repairing the roof. Luckily, he was able to make all the repairs before heavy rain fell.

The rotten part of the tree and why it fell

The first day he worked non stop for about six hours trimming the limbs. He cut the larger limbs into size for burning in the wood stove after it cures. Then he loaded the wheelbarrow with the limbs and stacked them into the woodpile. He figures that there was a about a cord of useable wood in that tree. He works smart. He varies his activities so that he keeps moving and spreads the workload more evenly across a variety of muscle groups. He is always thinking about how to do a job more efficiently and he makes sure I'm around when he is walking on the roof or doing an activity that he could injure himself.

Limbs ready to be transported to the woodpile

We had Miss J the following day, so he rested his body from stacking limbs and played with her instead. If it had been me out there, I wouldn't have lasted too much more than hour and it would have been five days before I felt like I had my energy back! For him, his hip that he had replaced was sore. He stopped working when it told him it was tired. He rested it the following day because it was still sore. Before his hip replacement, he would have finished the task in one work setting. I'm glad he has "matured" to not only listening to his body; but, following how it feels as well.

On the third day, he finished cutting the limbs and he patched the roof with a piece of tin that a friend dropped by for the repair. He did buy a battery drill so he could apply the tin to the holes. He said that he had wanted one for years; but hadn't purchased one. Had I known about his "want," Santa could have brought it much earlier!

Bits of limbs cut where they had fallen

We didn't have enough electrical cords to stretch from the house to the barn so he needed it. He was excited that he was able to purchase it for less than he had previously budgeted!

We are fortunate that he likes to putter on projects and that he is fit enough to complete projects like this. We are also fortunate that he can take care of many repairs himself. If he weren't so handy, we would have spent a lot of money to hire the work done. I also doubt that the work could have been completed before heavy rain fell on the fourth day after the tree incident!

His hip seems to be fine. The barn still looks "naked" without the tree; but, otherwise, you wouldn't know that there was ever a limb on the roof.