Crow’s Nest: Clearing ash trees around play area

By Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager.

As you may have noticed we’ve been very aggressive about removing ash trees along our roadsides, starting even before the Emerald Ash Borer began to decimate these trees. We still have one more year of this effort to complete which will in the end have removed more than 200 trees near public roads and wires. Now, with the farmer’s assistance we’re turning to farm field edges and just last month also realized there were five ash trees located near the kids’ play area across French Creek from the visitor center. We took them down so that they would not post a risk to users of the play area.

Above, Aubrey preparing the face-cut, the first step in the process of safely felling a tree. Top, Aubrey and Alison are cleaning up the trees after they were dropped earlier this week. We’ll get a chipper in there some time when the ground is frozen (and, when the branches are not under deep snow). We’ll give away firewood to our neighbors. And with a donation of trees from Octoraro Native Plant Nursery, we already have some small and medium-sized species of trees to fill in the gaps and beautify the play area.