Turning lemons into lemonade

So we have a large housing development going in behind us, which when done will total 335 homes. We live on a heavily treed lot, populated with what is known as Carolinian forest. Most of Canada is covered with Boreal forest, which is very different. This was our view from the roof in the fall back in 2018:



This was last fall:



There are more homes behind us now. About 10 meters of that wooded area is on the developer's land, and despite our best efforts to have that preserved, in early April all the trees along the back of our lot, and the lots either side of ours were cut down:





I feel particularly bad for the people behind us, who paid a premium for what thought were going to be wooded lots, only to find out that all their trees were being cut down. This is all due to a large elevation change that was designed into the new subdivision, where all the lots behind us are 1-2m lower than ours - why I have no idea. This means that a retaining wall has to be built on the property line, so all those trees were removed and the entire area excavated down.

There are two of ours trees that are right on the boundary, shown here at the red arrows:



These are both 100% on our property (on the very edge), but given that the roots of both these maples will be heavily impacted by the excavation for the wall, we had no choice but to remove both trees. They simply would not have survived the damage that was going to happen to their root system, so they were both cut down as we couldn't risk that they would come down on the new homes. They could both fall towards us without hitting any structures, but falling the other way (which is likely due to the elevation change) would have been very bad. The one on the left was approx. 18 meters tall, and the one on the right was approx. 25 meters tall.

This first video I took from inside the house for the smaller tree:


The larger tree I took from outside:


It landed right on the stump of the first tree, with a heck of an impact:



This was a very sad day for us, because we had looked after all the trees out there (even those not on our property) since we moved in here. We had arborists come in to give advice, trimmed up dead limbs, deep root fertilized them, for all those years...

So we had lemons...lots of lemons...but we needed to make some lemonade. So we had the guys cutting the trees down trim up a large section of the trunk from the larger tree:



We contacted a company to have it cut up, but the first task was getting it out of there. We didn't want to bring large machinery in from our property, because it would just decimate the lawn, so we made a deal with the builder behind us to help get this removed. That in itself was a rather difficult job - my back of the envelope calculations told me that this trunk weighed around 4,500 kg.

The builder was trying to drag the trunk down an incline, then thread it through two already built homes - it didn't go well. This is a series of short clips showing the first of several straps snapping, then the guys basically dragging the trunk right up against the foundation.


And this is where it sat for weeks, until the ground was dry enough that they could get an excavator in there to move it:



Eventually, the trunk was moved and loaded onto the trailer of our sawmill guy:



To be continued...

Cheers, Al

Can't wait to see what you make of that.

When I was about 5 years old, a maple seedling sprouted in my sandbox. With my mother's help, I transplanted it to an undeveloped area adjacent to our property, where it grew for 50 years and became a pretty impressive specimen. Unfortunately, it eventually became unsound and had to come down. It was a strange feeling for me, having seen that tree grow from a seed to that height during my lifetime. Sad, but it did live a full life at least, unlike your trees, Al, that were taken down before their time had arrived.

This is some serious tree removal / lumberjack work, Al!! 😲

I don’t know why humans have to keep using more and more land instead of repurposing the parcels that they / we have already soiled! 😒

Good luck Archer, looking forward to the next installment.

We just received bad news from our arborist that our massive white oak in the back yard is dying and nothing can be done to save it. We had been treating it to ensure a healthy root system as we are thinking about an addition, but ultimately the health of the tree has always been our primary concern over expanding the house. It's heart breaking to think a tree that has seen an estimated 100-115 years will need to be taken down next year because of a disease that cannot be treated. Seems it's becoming common in the north east forests and we're losing white oaks at an alarming rate.

I've been thinking what to do, and how to do it, but I really want to honor this tree if/when we do an addition.

Had a lovely 80 year old sugar maple in my front year when I moved in, stunning orange and vibrant red leaves in the fall the size of my hand. By about 5 years ago half the limbs were barren and the leaves were small when they did come in- it was the natural lifespan of a Maple, but was depressing to take it down.

Great choice of cuts (sorry), given the band's roots (sorry again) are also in Ontario.

'...the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw.'

I didn’t consider that trees had a life span, but I learned this spring. My fully mature maple didn’t leaf out, and then it dropped a large branch in the first windstorm of the year. It had to come down. Planted two new red maples and a red oak in its place.

Al, your story and pics are touching. And reminded me of law school, when we learned about the right of lateral support in property law.

To be continued?!! I kept waiting for the lemonade, wondering if you were going to turn the two trees into an archery range. Then they went too. Big bummer.

That trunk is impressive. And it was as tall as some Doug Firs out here. It also looked like the beginnings of rot so rather than it slowly die, I assume you'll preserve it by turning it into something beautiful.

Looking forward to the lemonade.

Look at all those knife handles……Every time I see wood lately..

I have bought some lovely wood lately (for knife handles)

Tasmanian Blackwood

Tiger Myrtle

Purple Acacia


Ringed Gidgee


Mixed

Though in a few years if air drying.

Probably 3-4 years in a shed.
or
2 months if kiln drying. 😉

Here in Ontario an average of 71 hectares (175 acres) of agricultural land is used for development, every single day. People in larger urban centers are looking for cheaper housing, so they spread out to smaller communities like ours. Many new residents we have met have come from places like Toronto for example.

The land that this new development was on, was prime farmland. The population of our small community here will quintuple or more with all the development going on (the one behind us is the largest one, but not the only one ongoing or planned).

Sorry to hear that. Living on the lot that we do, we have had to take down many trees over the 26 years we have been here. The largest volume was as a result of the Emerald Ash Borer, which has decimated the ash trees here. We have taken down at least 30 trees on our property from that alone.

We have taken down dead and damaged trees of various kinds. Some because they were a danger to us - we had a large black cherry tree right behind the house, and there were 2 trunks coming from it. One was perfectly vertical, but the other leaned right towards our bedroom. We initially had them cabled together, but eventually they had to come down due to rot at the base. We had the trunks cut into board length sections, then hired someone with a portable sawmill to set-up in our driveway, and sawed it all into lumber. Sold off most of it, but still have enough to do a project with in the basement...

When the subdivision my house is in was built in the early 1960s it was largely planted with trees that had 50-60 year expected life spans. Most of the ones in my yard are gone; only two big ones left in the back yard. We've planted new ones here and there over the years, but there will likely will not be a big shade tree in the front yard during my remaining life, as the one we had took 30+ years to get to a nice size/ spread. There are plenty of tall trees along the back property line, which are mostly in the neighbors' yards. Some have a lot of dead spots on them, and we will likely be seeing large limbs and full trees coming don in a couple more years. Quite a few are tall enough that the back half of our house is n the danger zone.

We have planted some trees in place of those lost. Some just seedlings that will take years to develop into something (they are just twigs sticking up from the ground right now), but others we bought some trees that were already 10 feet tall - one maple and 2 red oaks. We will probably add more next year...

Regarding the laws, well I don't want to turn this into that discussion really. But let's say that we have learned more about municipal politics, land title transfers, objections to land title transfers, etc. than we ever thought we needed to know as a result of this whole thing.

This whole ordeal is more than just trees, and it has been infuriating, sad, and sometimes downright funny. The need to remove the 10 meters of trees on the developer's property, plus the boundary trees, all stems from the site engineering that was done for the new subdivision. The abrupt elevation change between adjoining properties required a retaining wall, drainage, catch basins, etc. It could all have been avoided if they had just gradually changed the grade, rather than making this very extreme transition.

They cut down all the trees back in the spring of this year, and when we had the developer out, he said he was under pressure from the municipal engineer to get this done. Of course they cut the trees down, and then nothing happened until the last couple of weeks...

There was already one lawsuit against the developer for killing trees in another neighbours back yard 3 houses down from us, so we knew that this issue with our trees was going to be contentious. The cost of cutting down these two trees was going to be in excess of $10k with the quotes we had received, and I really didn't want to spend that money because a billionaire decided to develop the field behind us. We had some leverage from a prior interaction with the developer's lawyer, and used that to get them to cover the cost of cutting the trees down, in exchange for us not suing them for the loss of the trees.

The developer had hired his own arborist to declare that our large maple was already dying off. It wasn't a perfect tree by any means, but it had plenty of life left in it. He wanted me to admit that the tree was dead or dying, and I said it was a moot point because the tree wasn't going to survive the damage done by removing 1/2 of it's root system...as these photos illustrate. This one shows the top of the roots as they started to dig away right at the property line:



More roots:



Hacking away the root system with a backhoe:



Shot along the retaining wall location:



They had most of the wall constructed by yesterday morning, and then in the afternoon, I noted the large stones that formed the bulk of the wall were all being removed. I went out to talk to the contractors again, and they said they were tearing it all out and starting over...they had completely messed it up and the stones were all too low...