We have a gnarled overgrown grove of black hawthorn on our property, right next to the road.
It's the only grove of trees in this field and (in theory) will offer a superb patch of shade when we get livestock. However it was so heavy with dead and low-hanging branches as to be almost unusable.
Black hawthorn is well named; they have vicious one-inch thorns, something you really don't want slapping you in the face.
It was clear someone before us had made some attempt to thin this grove and bring it under control, but for whatever reason they stopped only a fraction of the way through. As a result, we had downed branches on the ground as well as endless deadwood in the trees themselves. Coupled with the rockiness of the ground, it was a formidable mess.
We have a county program coming in sometime during March to thin some underbrush (for fire-control purposes), and the county representative who walked through the property with us said if we wanted to trim the hawthorn grove and pile the branches to one side, the county workers would chip the pile. That was all the motivation I needed to arm myself with a variety of saws and nippers. Time to get cutting!
I don't know what spirit of optimism made me think I could get the whole thing done in a couple of days, but let me tell you, it didn't work that way. Each gnarled tree was such a tangle of living and dead wood that I had to carefully excise what needed to be trimmed and what didn't.
But hawthorn wood is gorgeous. Look at those colors! (Don ended up taking chunks of some of the larger branches back to the shop to play with later on.)
A few of the dead branches I removed were so heavy that the best way to pull them out of the grove (without stumbling over the rocks or getting slapped in the face with other branches) was to drag them out with a rope.
I tried to keep the twistiness of the trees intact while trimming away deadwood. The more I worked in this grove, the more charmed I was by its organic qualities.
I debated taking this branch off at all, despite the fact that the dead portion was dragging the ground. I mean, it has such character, doesn't it? Besides, it had a living branch growing upright which I didn't want to get rid of.
I ended up cutting the dead portion off while leaving the live portion intact. It hangs low, but not slap-in-the-face low; and it preserves the character, I think.
Some of the dead or broken branches were way too high for me to reach. I finally got a stepstool and a long-handled arborists saw (which we bought at a yard sale) which helped a lot – and was also much safer. I didn't want any thorn-filled branches falling on top my head.
It took me about two weeks of hard labor (working when weather permitted) to get everything done, but the results were splendid. When spring comes and the leaves fill out, it should be a lovely spot.
Here's the view from the road. Looks like nothing, doesn't it? Certainly it doesn't look like it should have taken me two weeks to complete. (That's an old magpie nest in the branches.)
The pile of deadwood destined for chipping is certainly formidable.
There are still a lot of branches on the ground in the grove, but I plan to conscript both Don and Older Daughter in helping drag them to the slash pile.
Meanwhile it was time to yank thorns out of the bottoms of my shoes...
...and clean up all the flesh wounds.
Another project, done.
