Over the last few years, I've noticed the birch tree that shades the patio and deck seemed to be losing quite a few branches and some of the bigger limbs were completely dead. I trimmed off a bunch of them last fall thinking it was just how birch trees grew. This year when only a few limbs produced leaves, I knew I had a problem. After some internet research I learned that the bronze birch borer had likely killed by beloved shade tree. I'm no arborist, so by the time I realized I had a problem, the tree was too far gone. After some of the larger limbs came down this summer, I knew I had to get the tree down before it did any real damage to the house.
Anyone who has had to pay to have a tree removed knows that it can be a bit pricey. Our market is not different. Talking to a few neighbors who have had trees removed in recent years, I figured it was going to cost me at least $1000 to hire it done, probably more. Luckily, I know a couple guys who have spent 30+ years cutting trees together... (que A-Team theme song and dramatic smoke as we walk up the driveway) my Dad and I.
After one winter paying for fuel oil in his first house, my Dad had a wood burning stove installed and has heated the house using wood ever since. Other than when we might leave for the weekend, the furnace never ran in our house growing up. I literally cannot think of a time in my life where we were not cutting trees and splitting logs. Its just something we've always done. Unlike painting the house, this was going to be a DIY job.
Cutting down the tree could not have gone any better. My Dad arrived at 9am. By 10am, the tree was safely on the ground. By 11am we had it loaded on the trailer. Dad's notch cut was about as perfect as could be - we missed the locust by a foot or two, and only had a few branches just slightly brush the garage on the way down. The big fear was that the tree might tip on to the house because of how it was leaning. To remedy this, we anchored off my locust tree and used an ATV winch to keep tension on the birch tree. As Dad was making the back cut, I ran the winch to keep the line tight. Once I saw the tree come over center and start to fall on its own, my Dad stepped away and the birch came down as gently as I've ever seen a tree land.
Because the tree was full of bugs, Dad did not want to risk bringing anything home and killing his birch trees. We cut the straightest section of the tree up so I can make some bowl blanks for the lathe, the rest got hauled to the dump. I'd say that $30 in disposal fees and a half day's work was a pretty good deal compared to what it would have cost to bring in a service.
It wasn't all rainbows and lollipops though. As smooth as things went cutting down the tree, getting rid of the stump would prove to be a bigger headache than I expected.
I called around/emailed a half dozen of the tree services in the area. What I figured out pretty quickly is that they are not interested in coming out to grind one stump when they aren't also getting paid to cut down the tree. Literally none of them got back to me. I can't say I blame them, its just business. I did find one guy on FB Marketplace who had a stump grinding service, he only wanted $400 to do the job. Yeah no. Time for Plan B - rent a grinder and do it myself.
I roped my neighbor into the deal because he had a few stumps in his front yard that I knew he wanted gone as well. We agreed to split the rental fee and help each other with the work. I ended up renting a grinder from Home Depot. Without going into all the details, I learned a lot about stump grinding machines over the course of the day, having to exchage the machines twice due to mechanical issues. We did get all of the stumps ground up, but it took us 12+ hours to get it done, most of the time was spent troubleshooting machines and driving back and forth between the store. I bet we spent only 4-5 hours actually grinding stumps. I have to hand it to the guys in the rental department - they were really good about swapping out machines and knocked the rental fee down quite a bit for all our trouble. My half the bill came out to $60.
Here's the spot where the stump once was (well, if you dig several inches down, its still technically there):
The amount of wood chips was mind boggling. It filled up the 95 gallon yard waste container to the brim. I even packed the chips down as I was shoveling them in. 95 gallons is just shy of 13 cubic feet. I'm sure the collection guy wasn't too impressed with me.
So that's the story of the birch tree. I'm going to be planting a couple more trees in the back yard this fall to take its place. The birch will eventually reappear in this thread in the form of bowl blanks on the lathe. Should make for some pretty interesting projects as there is quite a bit of spalting and bug holes in the wood. Until next time...
