Norway Maple Tree Removal - Illinois - October 2022

The day finally arrived.  A day that I have not been looking forward to in the life of our property.  That day is the day that our large, mature Norway Maple tree that was located just outside of our front porch came down.  This tree was a lovely tree.  Lived a good life.  We moved the location of our house foundation specifically so we could try to keep this tree.  But, it still needed to come down.

I foretold the removal of this magnificent tree just last month when I posted about the continued decline of the tree.  In mid/late September, we had an early evening storm and lost another large limb.  Dare I say...a 'widow maker' came down.   

It wasn't as if we didn't try to save this tree.  In fact, we surely didn't want to remove it.  But, it seemed liked it was necessary as the limbs kept falling and I began to become worried that it would fall on my house.  Or, my neighbor's house.

Over the years, we've worked this tree.  Gave it a growth regulator in September 2022.  And provided a deep-feeding of this tree the past three seasons.  But, that wasn't enough.  The tree was in decline.  The bark was falling off.  The crotches were rotting out.  One guy even told me that he thought it was struck by lightening.  After living a great life in this spot - providing shade and cover, reducing our utility bills and making our new house feel like it could have been here years ago - it was time to celebrate the life of the Norway Maple.

Here's (below) how the tree looked on the day that the team arrived to remove it.  The canopy was thin, it had plenty of bare limbs, and the bark was falling in big sheets down the trunk.  But, it was *still* a nice tree.  

The mid-day shade this tree provided was dappled on our driveway:

The team from the removal company started by climbing the tree, roping off limbs and using a high-point to lower the sections down to the ground.  They started with the canopy and removed all the limbs.  See below for a look at the guy with the chainsaw about 2/3rds of the way up the tree:

They made quick work and took down the tree limb-by-limb.  See below for how they rigged up the sections and used the tree itself to lower the limbs down safely.  They were total pros.

Once all the limbs were removed, they started to work on the trunk.  Here (below) is a look at how they pulled down the trunk - and used sections of the tree already on the ground as a way to absorb the blow:

All was remaining was the stump.  See below for the bare spot in our bed this removal left:

I asked the guys if they knew how old the tree was - as the rings were hard to interpret/read.  They said they thought it was a 70-year-old tree.  I didn't want the wood to go to waste.  One thing I know - after buying firewood over the years - is that nobody sells Norway Maple as firewood.  That means...(I think) that this tree was destined to end up as mulch.  I didn't want that.  So, I had the guys cut the rounds down to 16" or so and we hauled them all the way back to the rear of our property.  Here, below, is one of the rounds:

I quickly built a new storage rack using the cinderblock and 2x4 system that you see online.  It was easy to put together and worked well.  Here, below, you can see some of the wood on the new rack:

And there were some BIG rounds that we couldn't get up there on the rack, so I left those on the ground.  I'm thinking...this will sort-of FORCE me to start to split these this Winter, so they don't rot-out.  See below for part of the pile of rounds:

This isn't what I wanted with this tree, but the removal certainly opens up some new opportunities with a newly created, large bed that I can plant next year.   That is...once I get the stump ground out.