My Family the Lumberjacks

Last weekend (Oct 5th) my family came over for a work weekend. We love our house and our yard. The back yard is a bit overwhelming. The first owner of the house loved pine trees and did not feel the need to trim them over the 20 years she lived in the house. Needless to say, our yard has layers of pine needles and no grass because of all the shade. We really want to open up the back but having 70 ft trees cut down adds up when you have 10+ in your yard. My brother-in-law, M, volunteered to cut some of them down for us. So they loaded up the truck and headed to Nashville. We rented a lift and I'm so bummed because we were working so hard that we did not get a picture of M in the lift. We had a great day and 1/2 day working together. We cut 7 smaller (diameter) trees down and M trimmed the lower branches off the remaining trees.

Jeff and I are so thankful for my family and for how hard they worked to help us with this daunting task. They saved us thousands of dollars. More importantly we enjoyed having them at our house and for the quality time with each other. Mom cooked most of the weekend and Hannah played hostess making sure we had plenty of water all day. Having Mom in the kitchen only served as a reminder of how wonderful it would be to have family closer to us so that we could work and dine together more often.

Here are pictures of the first tree coming down.

M cutting the base and Daddy supervising

Jeff and Cody are ready to guide the tree so that it doesn't fall on our neighbor's fence.
Timber!

Cody brought his 4 Wheeler and trailer (Praise God!) and we used it to carry the limbs to the street. The city of Franklin picks up any limbs that you trim/cut yourself. We really loaded it up. The picture below does not do it justice. The piles were about 4 feet high and expanded the width of our front property. The city worker was not going to pick it up at first. Thankfully, my dad and M were outside when he arrived and they assured him we had done all the trimming/cutting ourselves. It took him 3 trips to pick it all up.

We still have lots to do with respect to the yard. We are so thankful for my family for helping with one of the largest projects.

Thanks Family!!

debra