Shooting Down Trees and Shoveling Diet Coke

This past Saturday, my father-in-law, Raymond, and two brother-in-laws, Donnie and Lee, cut and split wood at Raymond’s house near us, off US 68. They have a good bit of property (about 45 acres) and after the remnants of Ike last year, they lost a lot of good timber. The plus of that is that they have a wood stove and so do we! So we are not hurting for firewood this year.

I did a scouting trip with Raymond, and he showed me the trees he wanted cut. Good wood, not too big, easy access trees. The best tree was an elm that was about 50′ long and about 3′ wide at the base. It was pushed over by Ike’s winds, still partially rooted to the hill, and stuck in some other tree tops.

We got the other wood he wanted cut up and split, but the one in the tree tops remained, even after severing it at the base. One lone grape vine at the top was holding the entire tree up at an angle of around 50º. I told my in-laws that I felt that a couple good shots from a shot gun would bring it down. They laughed, but in the end (and some good shots by Donnie, Lee and I), it was what brought the tree down! We saved the trunk section that was the hold-up to show the ‘missed’ shots embedded in the tree!

Then later, since it was still below 20º F outside, the Diet Coke cans that had been left out on the porch the day before, had ruptured. It was so cold out that they were still frozen. So my brother-in-law, Lee, just used a shovel and cleaned up the mess in the snow. So we shot a tree down, and shoveled up the Diet Coke! One never knows what will happen at Kiser Ranch…