News From Hawkhill Acres

I’ve had a headache for three days now. It’s one of those pounding at the temples, vise grip around the forehead, hot pokers in the eyes kind of deals, but at least it’s a Green Headache. Yes, folks, I’ve gone completely eco-freak and now have an environmentally-correct headache. And it’s certainly sustainable, because it’ll probably be here for at least three weeks.

With the guidance of a forester, we finally decided to selectively cut and improve the mix of hardwoods and softwoods on our sixty acres, before any more succumb to wind, weather and other trees falling on them. We have some nice old trees, but we also have - as they say in Maine - a mess of popple (poplar) and they’re taking over and so are the wild cherries that are so attractive to tent caterpillars.

We’ve had woodcutters look at it before, but they wanted all of the trees or nothing and we weren’t about to clearcut the place. We have too many animals and birds depending on our woods for food and shelter and we have no wish to look out at a bare back forty that’s eroding away toward the swamp.

But now, with biomass boilers and wood pellet stoves popping up all over the place, things have changed. We had no problem finding someone to selectively cut the place, with a contract and oversight from the state. So we signed on the dotted line, sent the paperwork into the state and it was a done deal. We’re even going to make some money out of it. Not a fortune, but maybe enough to pay part of next year’s fuel bill. Or fill up the gas tank in the plow truck.

It was pretty exciting when they drove their feller-buncher into the yard, followed by a skidder  (ours is a high-end grapple skidder) and something that I assume is a de-limber, because that’s what it does to full-sized trees, which it picks up in its claw.  There’s another piece of equipment which may be a Rottine Forwarder, but don’t quote me on that. I’m not Paulette Bunyan. (By the way, in England, they call de-limbing “snedding” which sounds kind of x-rated, doesn’t it? I can just see the old man on the park bench on Laugh-In asking Gladys Ormsby if she wants to sned.)

However, after a few hours of machinery whining and growling, and trees crashing to the ground, the novelty wore off and the headache started. It got a lot worse the next day when the chipper showed up. If you follow the link and scroll down the page to “other” you’ll find that there are very large chippers that handle whole trees and have knives that shred the trees against an anvil. They don’t call it an anvil in the wiki, but that’s what our woodcutter calls it and he’d know.

I think that’s ironic (no pun intended) for anyone who was alive during the heyday of the Excedrin commercial that used a little animated graphic of a hammer pounding an anvil to illustrate the kind of headache pain it could cure. I don’t use Excedrin. I hardly ever use any painkillers, except when I overdo the gardening and have a sore back for a couple of days, and then I take a couple of valerian before I go to bed.

Valerian didn’t touch this headache, so I tried Ibuprofen. I won’t say the headache laughed at it, but it snickered up its sleeve and it still hurt. I’m not going to take anything stronger, so I guess my options are pretty narrow. I can stay here and listen to it or go to the library and use my laptop there. However, with the price of gas, that kind of deflates our profit. And did I mention that they show up at 5 and work until almost 7? Yup. They’re behind because of the weather and have to finish this up so they can keep other commitments, or leave it half-finished and come back when they can.

After twenty years in Maine, I know better than to tell someone to stop a project and get back to us later, so there’ll be a feller-buncher in the back-forty for almost a month. If my posts stop, check the local psychiatric facility bar Day’s Inn. After this, I think I’ll be so traumatized that I’ll shy away from bonsai plants at the local nursery and give up pruning my roses. Who knew that being green could be such a headache?