Timber

JL Felled his first tree two weekends ago. He had been talking about it, and I'd been doing my best to ignore him. But he called up his buddy Dario, fired up his saw, and cut 'er down. Why now? Well, we had plans to put a corral in that area, and the tree was dead and eventually would need to be cut down. We figured it was better to do it before the fence went in so we didn't have to worry about the tree taking out our new investment on its way down.

The tree. It's hard to see in the picture, but it's the big tall dead one at the front of the pack. It's an old Cedar Elm that the Oak Wilt people fessed up to killing 2 years ago when they treated the area for oak wilt. They dug a huge trench to separate the oak roots, and accidentally cut the roots to this tree.
My fake out picture. Here's James ready to "catch" the tree as JL pretends to be cutting it.
Here's Dario giving JL a few tips before they begin.
Making the first cut.
Timber! I actually have this moment on video. If you ever really want to see it, let me know and I'll fire up the ol' player.
After it was on the ground, all the kids had to run over to tell the guys how awesome it was!

And here they are cutting off the limbs for our fireplace and smoker.
PS: We FINALLY got rain on the ranch! About 10 minute before the guys got done with the tree, it started to rain. It rained the rest of that Saturday and all day Sunday!
We got over 3 inches!! What a difference that tiny bit of rain has made too! Things are brighter and flowering and coming back to life around here lately!