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Cottonwoods have about 100 year life out here on the plains and once they are at the end of their useful life these softwood trees are often diseased, stressed and prone to lose large limbs at any given time. As such, they often become unsafe and quite frankly a nuisance as large limbs can break off quite unexpectedly, taking out fence, equipment or anything else underneath them. Not to mention the cleanup necessary each year when these trees and their fallen pieces are sitting on farm ground. In this situation, we had a large, old, and diseased Cottonwood sitting on a field edge about 1/4 mile from the creek that was causing us problems and hindering our ability to farm the area around it. As such, we evaluated the tree's health and after some deliberation opted to remove it in the fall of 2008.
This was quite a tree in its day, but like most older Cottonwoods, its time has passed.
Terry Kastens and Lester Yoos showing the size of this tree. You can see that this tree split into two main trunks early in its life which is very common with non-hardwood trees in this area due to freeze and/or other damage. Unfortunately, this fact is often the downfall of these trees as the weight associated with each trunk puts a lot of pressure on the core tree and often results in splitting the tree right down the middle. This tree was also plagued with some disease (unidentified by me) that left it with gigantic boil like features and various lesions.
The first step in removing a tree is getting the hole dug on the backside of the tree. This serves as a focal point in getting the tree to fall in a specific direction. Here Lester Yoos is using his D5 Cat to dig the hole as well as cut brace roots.
Here is Lester Yoos sitting under the root ball taking a break. There was still a lot more digging to do at this point.
Next, on the opposite side of the hole a big mound of dirt is put into place to get the Cat high in the air so as to facilitate a good location for putting pressure on the tree to get it to start getting off balance.
Here's the final minute of Cat work to get the tree to come down. It took a total of three hours from start to finish to get this tree on the ground and then another couple of hours to gather all the pieces and parts and to get the area cleaned up.Living on the semiarid High Plains, we hate to take out trees unless absolutely necessary. The shade and beauty they provide are welcome additions to our mostly barren and treeless landscape. Unfortunately, the often harsh climate associated with this area is not conducive for longer-lived hardwood trees often fond back east. Primarily, our native trees are either Cottonwoods or Rocky Mountain Junipers, which can be both a blessing or a burden.
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