Hawthorn tree cutting this Spring

This Spring I spent a little time cutting the hawthorn trees in the SW corner of the south pasture.  I didn't spend near as much time as I did last year as I had other things to do.  

Before I got carried away cutting on the box elder trees by my house I spent an afternoon with the chainsaw cutting some hawthorn trees and also a downed tree trunk.  The tree had fallen years ago.  I left it be to dry out before cutting it for firewood.  The tree was getting to where I was concerned it would completely fall down. I didn't want it fall on any cattle who would rub against it.  One end of the tree was as high as me.  As you can see, turkeys and other birds liked to sit on the tree trunk.

It then took me two afternoons to stack the logs and also clean up the branches and debris.

After I finally finished cutting on the box elder trees I spent another afternoon cutting more hawthorn trees.  By this time the grass had started growing and was getting tall.  That made the cleanup of the cut branches harder.  Not that the large branch cleanup was harder, but the small branch and debris cleanup was harder as it was hard to find the small stuff in the tall grass and hard to rake it through the tall grass.  This time it took me three afternoons to cleanup stuff.

Last year the hawthorn thorns punctured my wheelbarrow tire. This year I used an old smaller wheelbarrow that has a solid tire, not an air filled tire.  This worked better.  No flats.  I won't go into detail about the thorns like last year, but, yes, they punctured my fingers, clothes and the bottom of my shoes.

It is nice to have a little less hawthorn trees.  Next Spring I will try to do the removal before the grass starts to grow.

A little after I started to chainsaw stuff.

After I cut and cleaned up stuff.

What remains of the tree trunk stump. 

Some hawthorn logs stacked between two remaining hawthorn trees.   The "white" trees behind are a different tree.  Not sure what kind of tree.  At least that tree doesn't have thorns.

This is the stack after my first cutting.  Don't know why but it often was partially knocked over.  Was it due to the crows taking a break from feasting on the dead cow nearby?  Now that the cow is mostly eaten, and the crows left, the stack of logs is completely staying stacked.

Last of the Hawthorn photos for now

Here are the last of the hawthorn photos from the work I did cutting some of the hawthorns this Spring.

Before

After

Before and After.

Another after photo.

Before

Before and After.

Some more after photos.  This area was fairly dense.  No before photos as it wasn't that photographical.

This tree I left part of the broken branches.   I didn't want to get a ladder to reach higher than what I could from the ground.

Even though those branches are broken, after a few weeks leaves started to come out again.

This is an area I had cut the trees to remove them 44 years ago when I was much younger.  Dad maintained the area so the trees didn't come back.  The trees in the background are the property line and how this area formerly looked back then.

In some areas the trees are trying to come back.

A new chain when I started, and this is how the chain looked when I got done.  I had to replace this chain to cut my pile of branches at the end.  The chainsaw bar is fully extended.  That is how much the chain stretched.

I'm glad to be done with the hawthorn cutting.  Maybe this Fall, maybe next Spring I will cut some more of the hawthorn trees.

Other trees in the hawthorn tree area

Here are a few photos of other trees in the hawthorn tree area.  I think these trees in the next photos are either cottonwood or poplar trees.   Years ago I had a beaver chew through much of one tree until it fell.   I have eight or so left of these trees and I put chicken wire around the base of the other trees to stop the beaver.  It worked.   This is the only place on the ranch I have these trees.

Here you can see the cottonwood / poplar trees in the background of this photo.  The tall trees.  The hawthorn trees are the trees in the front of the photo.

This side of the hawthorn area had lots of evergreen trees (spruce) growing right next to one another.  I cut down a number of them to only have four spruce trees left.  That should give them room to grow.

Of spruce trees I had cut I left part of a few of them.  That is in case the cattle want to rub against them to scratch an itch.

Here is one of the downed Spruce trees from a few years ago.   I have enough firewood right now so I left this tree as it is.  It is off the ground so it will keep for a while and not rot.  Hawthorn trees are behind the fallen spruce tree.

Hawthorn branch pile

Here are some photos of the branches I cut and saved when trimming branches in the area where most of the hawthorn trees are located.  A lot of the narrower branches were tossed as they weren't good enough to save for the woodstove. Those branches are not in the photos.  Many of the branches in the photos were from the hawthorn trees.  A little over a dozen branches were from the downed evergreen trees.    

Some other branches were from trees I don't know which variety they are.  Here is a photo of one of those.

The start... and the end for the saved branch pile.

I chain sawed up the branch pile and it made a pickup load of branches.  How I got all the branches into just one pickup load... I don't remember.   More wood for my woodstove this Winter.  This, and the other branches I cut up earlier this year, may be all the wood I need this Winter.

Hawthorn thorns

The hawthorn thorns are nasty, as you can see.  This is mostly new growth from this Spring.  Look at how long the thorns already are.

The hawthorn trees are very pretty in the Spring when they bloom.   They produce berries for the wildlife.  Here are berries on a branch I had cut.

The cattle aren't interested in the berries, but they are interested in the leaves. With all the green grass back then, some cattle insisted on eating some of the hawthorn branch leaves.  How the cattle didn't get stabbed by the thorns is a mystery.

After I had finished cutting and removing the hawthorn branches and removing the tree stumps, the next up was to get rid of (cutting) some odd-and-ends of branches on a few trees, then the small pieces of branches on the ground that were left.  I didn't want to step on the thorns or have the cattle avoid the ground and grass due to the thorns.

While the hawthorn wood is strong and doesn't like to be cut or broken off, I then found on the ground all over quite a few small branch pieces that had broken off the larger branches.  Really?!  Just to be annoying to me?!

I got a rake and raked to gather the pieces.  The less I had to touch the branches the better.  That was because I keep getting stabbed when touching the branches, even when I wore leather gloves.  I raked up over a half dozen wheelbarrow loads of pieces. 

The hawthorns were hard on my rake and I had to fix my rake when the branches and grass took the rake head off the handle.  I wasn't thinking clearly.  I just wanted to be done with the hawthorn work.  Using a wheelbarrow?  Not the best thing.  The wheelbarrow's wheel is filled with air.  And... the wheelbarrow tire went flat after the first day of work.  Most of my wheelbarrow loads was on a flat tire. Not the easiest way to move a fully loaded wheelbarrow.  I didn't bother fixing or replacing the tire as it would get flat again.

After I had finished the hawthorn work, in between other work items I found some time to work on my wheelbarrow tire.  My neighbor Curtis thought I could fix the tire like I do with my bicycle tires.  I gave it a try.  After I got the tire off the rim I looked for thorns.  I found 10 or so that I had to pull out of the tire.  Days later I worked on patching the tire.  Where were all those punctures again?

Once I thought I had patched all the punctures I inflated the tire.  After a while the tire started to feel softer.  I put the tire in a water trough and found four air leaks.  This time I marked the spots.   Now too find the time to re-fix the tire.

Hawthorn tree stump news

Back when I was working on my hawthorn tree trimming and stump removal, I didn't get all the news posted before I got distracted with haying and other news.   The last I posted back in June I thought I only had a few more workdays left on the hawthorns.  As usual with the hawthorns, what I thought would take a few days took much longer.  I did finish in June just before I started my hay cutting.

This update is about removing the stumps of the hawthorn trees I completely cut.  I cut more hawthorn trees, but not all hawthorn trees were completely cut due to the time I was spending on the cutting and removal.

It's almost been a month since I worked on the hawthorn trees.   I forgot how many tree stumps I dug and chopped to remove.  Six?  More?  I removed the tree stumps for the trees I had completely cut.  That is because the tree stumps were sprouting new leaves a week later.  I want the hawthorn trees completely gone.  So that meant removing as much of the stumps as I could.

New leaves already.

One day several cows decided to help me with the stump removal.  Haynes the bull watched/managed from a distance.

Haynes the bull.

The last stump removed.  The dirt areas in the photo were where I removed some of the stumps.

I'll try to get the last of the hawthorn tree photos posted soon.