This week was spent removing trees that are located within the building site. The trees were removed by a huge Hitachi Excavator ... this machine was made for real men to operate and Matt the guy who runs it was just the guy we needed.
I want to tell you about how we remove the trees the modern way...but if you allow me to digress a minute to the times when the early settlers to the region worked my land. Most of my trees are in the neighborhood of 80' to 120' high. The ages of the trees in case you are wondering are in the neighborhood of 50-90 years old. We know this because of the rings of the tree, each ring represents one year of growth. We call these trees second (or third) growth in this part of the country--first growth would have been the ancient trees which were harvested at the turn of the century (19th) when Camano Island was logged originally. Some of you might remember your history of the great San Francisco fire just after 1900. Much of the lumber required to reconstruct their beautiful city came from Camano and we have signs of the harvest on our 8.8 acres. There are many large old ancient stumps; all of them still show the scar where the lumbermen of the day took their huge axe and cut a slot on the side of the tree--this wedge shaped slot was used to place a springboard (roughly the size of a 2x8) into the tree and that allowed them to maneuver to the height needed to start the huge two man buck saws. The sawyer's took several hours to bring down these giants and unfortunately; we will never see these majestic trees in our life time--they take hundreds of years to grow.
Back to our tree removal, we used the excavator to bring these beauties down. Several of the photos show how the excavator navigates into position; swings its large arm up the side of the tree to plant the double edge fork (known as a thumb). Then the arms hydraulics take over, Matt rocks the tree back and forth to loosen the roots from the soil; once the tree breaks its suction, the tree is ready for the final push--and down she goes exactly (at least that is the plan) where Matt wanted it to fall.
And now some background on the geology of the site. Ten thousand years ago during the last ice age; the mammoth glaciers gouged huge valleys in what is now known as the San Juan Islands. Camano is considered in the furthest south of these valleys and when the glaciers retreated, vast deposits of till (rock, sand, and debris) settled where the glacier once traveled. This glacier till created a very hard, concrete like soil. So on the north of Camano where I live, the soil is only about 18” deep; then the glacier till starts. The problem with this is that most trees, included these huge Douglas fir’s cannot penetrate the till with their roots. So, what does that mean? The tree roots spread out in a very large sphere (mushroom like) and in some cases the diameter of the root ball is 20-30’; however, the depth of the root ball is only 3-4’. These trees are very hard to break free, but once they lose their suction from the glacier till, they release their grip and easily fall over.
Over a dozen trees came down on Friday; we will complete the final tree removal on Monday and also some brush--wild rhododendron, current, blueberry bushes ... hated to see it these go but it was either them or no house.
Now for the pictures (some of the many i took):
Next Week: Monday complete tree falling and removal of brush. Matt will truck all logs to the mill and the brush and stumps to Sedro Wolley to the recycler ... we hope to hear from Island County for the approval of the building permit (crossing my fingers).
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