Making Over Our Montana Forest

I love living in the woods of Montana! The smell of conifers, the scurrying of critters, the beauty of wildflowers on the forest floor, the sounds of songbirds and the swaying of massive, majestic ponderosa pines in the breeze. But to live in the mountain forests of Montana means you need to be proactively prepared for the possibility of wildfire. 

We know that firsthand. In 2013, a dry lightning storm sparked the 11,000-acre Lolo Creek Complex Fire in the mountains above our home when we lived in Lolo. It charred 17 square miles of forest, destroyed five homes, triggered the evacuation of 2,100 people including a ranch where I worked for eight years and was rated the nation's number-one firefighting priority. Huge chunks of ash and even small pieces of charred tree limbs fell from the sky onto our neighborhood from the fire several miles away. Law enforcement stopped by to notify us to keep an ear for sirens. If we heard them on our streets going forward, we would be forced to evacuate. Luckily, firefighters worked hard, the weather eventually turned and the flames died down so that didn't happen.

Conducting the great 2019 Holyoak tree count

Now we live on six acres amidst a stand of ponderosas just below the mountains in the foothills above the small community of Frenchtown. As pretty as the trees are, there were too many of them too close to our home. We needed to establish a defensible space so if a wildfire ever did threaten our home, we would be able to make a stand. And there were a lot of trees on or place. How many? In the spring of 2019, Lori and I estimated there were 1,003 ponderosa pines on our property and that didn't take into account anything shorter than six feet nor the aspen or other tree species. 

We wanted to remove some particularly tall trees that were too close to our home, including one that was already dead. We needed to drop that big, brown thing before it decided to drop on its own and take a structure, a car or a person with it. We called a tree removal service and were quoted $4,000 to remove two giant ponderosa trees. Four grand?!

Seeking a more financially feasible solution, we then talked to a friend of ours, Mike Stoker, who is a commercial logger. He offered a much better deal. Mike would bring his heavy machinery to our place, remove the trees we requested and also thin trees below the shop for no charge. In return, he wanted to claim the logs and sell them to a mill. Deal! Mike was busy doing contract work on Forest Service land so it wouldn't happen in 2019. 

In early May of 2020, we heard the rumbling and watched as the big rigs lumbered onto the property. It was exciting! I had seen logging machinery in action at a measured distance but being up close was really cool. Mike manned a feller buncher, a self-propelled machine with tracks, a long arm with a single cutting head and shorter arms capable of gripping and holding multiple trees at once. 

Delimber doing its thing

Two other loggers manned other vehicles. One of them was a skidder, a tractor-like machine with an arm capable of grabbing several downed trees at once and dragging them to a designed drop zone. My favorite was the delimber, which would pick up a tree, hold it parallel to the ground, strip if of all its limbs and then cut the logs into a designated length and then drop them. A logging truck also made several early morning stopovers to load and haul off the logs. A water tender, used to haul water and fight wildfires, also spent a morning on the property to make sure a massive fire ignited in a slash pile remained in control.

Lots of work going on

With all the limbs removed from many trees, there was a lot to burn. And those fires were big and they burned hot! In fact, they smoldered for weeks. The first night was especially nerve-wracking. You see, if the flames spread to nearby properties, we would be liable. I found myself wandering to the window several times late night and early the next morning. We were happy that rainy weather helped reduce the possibility of spreading. 

...baby burn!

Burn...

I took a day off work to watch the fun when they took down the largest trees closest to our house. Lori, Kyler, Lyla, Lexi and I sat on the front porch to take it all in. It was better than watching a movie. This was live action stuff! Mike and his boys showed their skill with the chainsaw. They couldn't use the feller buncher on those closest trees because the trunks were too large to grab and control. The guys told us the direction they planned to fell the trees and then did exactly that. We counted the rings on the downed, dead tree and it was 95 years old. 

Skill with a chainsaw

Spectator sport

Kyler age 7, tree age 95

Kids' paradise

Feller buncher at work

Whacking & stacking

Just a little off the top, please

Kyler at the controls

The kids got in on the fun up close and personal. Mike let Kyler sit on his lap in the feller buncher while Lyla got to spend time in the cockpit of the delimber. And yeah, I got in on it as well. Mike let me cram into the feller buncher with him to watch the work from behind the controls. 

Happy Lyla after her ride

In the end, Mike and the crew thinned approximately 350 trees. And that's a good thing. Thinned forests not only slow the spread of a potential fire but removing the canopy above allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor below which results in thicker grasses and vegetation. And that's good news for critters that rely on quality forage.

After several weeks of work, when the logging equipment rolled off the property to the neighbor's, we were left with short stumps all over. We didn't care about those in the forest part of our place, but we wanted to remove six of the larger ones in the grass between the house and shop. Mike gave his brother a call and he brought in a stump grinder. One afternoon and one morning of work later, and mission accomplished! 

We kept a couple of the larger trees closer to home for shade but removing others really brightened things up. Everything looks great and we feel much better. The big dead tree is gone. Other large trees that towered over our structures are also gone. 

Before

After

So how did we cap the tree removal event? By starting a new era. We planted a new tree - one that will represent the family name and kids will be able to climb generations from now. After all, it's an oak.