Day 187: Christmas Tree Farm

As I've mentioned in some of my recent posts, we're experiencing a bad fire season in California already. The development that our cabin is in has its own forestry department, focused on keeping the development safe in the event of a wildfire. This year they are beginning detailed inspections of each property, and providing information to homeowners about what they need to address. The unit our cabin is in was inspected in early June, and as expected we have work to do. California recently changed its laws with regard to how far from a house there must be defensible space, so even though we'd done work last year with the approval of the forestry department, they said we needed to do more to come into compliance this year. Obviously, in the interest of keeping the house safe, we've undertaken the work. Well, my dad has undertaken the work.

What you see here are the results of two hard days of work chopping down smaller "ladder" trees (short trees that can cause a fire on the forest floor to climb up to bigger trees) and limbing of trees that will stay in place (cutting off branches either half the height of the tree if small or all branches up to about 6 feet off the ground on larger trees).

It looks and smells like a Christmas tree farm around here! The cuttings are stacked at the street for the forestry department to come pick up for disposal.