05/26/2026
Many of you may have seen the news about the tree that fell here the other day. I (William) talked about day one of clean up, but at the end of that day, we still had a huge part of the tree leaning on the cottage and so much to clean up.
We've very lucky that our neighbors have been super nice about it all. When things like this happen, you never know if people will get defensive or combative. That certainly wasn't the case with them; they very much jumped right into action, and we were able to clear all the mess on our side of the property in two days. That's really quite the feat if you ask me because it was a huge mess!
So, yesterday, we made a plan to get back to work in the early afternoon—after the sun had been out a bit to dry things off. We continued to remove some of the smaller limbs and things away from the large part of the tree that was still leaning on the building. They even brought a little chainsaw/trimmer for me to use! (I have to admit it was really fun to use!)
After we cleared some of it away, it was time to try to get the large trunk cut down and not harm the building or the windows nearby. They cut things down in sections to allow it to fall gently, and then tied a rope to the top so that on the last cut, they were able to pull it as much as possible away from the building as it came down. The plan worked well, and the tree came down with little damage…only one or two shakes were damaged during it all.
After that, it was time for total clean up! Thankfully, our neighbor's son was around with his big truck and we were able to use that to haul everything to the back of the property. I lost track, but I think we took, at least, six or seven loads back in total. Some of it was large logs, which we stacked up to be cut/split into smaller pieces later, and some of it was brush and small logs—we created a brush pile with these and will go through to collect some of the smaller logs later, but it'll make a good habitat for the rabbits and other creatures for a while, too.
We still have a few bits of debris on the roof that we've been unable to move or look under. So, we're hoping there's not much damage under there (it was under the heaviest part of the tree). It rained a lot the night before, so if there was something, I think we'd have seen it coming through the ceiling, and we haven't. But, our neighbor said he'd bring his big ladder over at some point soon to take a better look (none of us had a large one available at the moment, and the roof slope is too steep to be on there safely). Other than that, we only saw a few places where the roof was distorted a bit, and we'll have to do a little bit of repair work to make it ok again, but that shouldn't take more than a little time and effort, we hope.
All in all, I'm pretty proud of the work we did and how quickly we were able to get this done. If we'd have had to have someone come and do this for us, it would have cost us quite a lot of money, and we probably couldn't have afforded it right now. Had we used insurance, it probably would have taken weeks to get done, and we could have risked more damage with things hanging around—not to mention the hazard that it would have put us in trying to get in and out.
We're super thankful for the help from our neighbors and how they reacted to everything. They hit the ground running with us from the start, and were super helpful and kind the entire way through. It was also great to actually meet them and get to know them a bit more. They've already talked about how they might be able to help us with a few other projects around the cottage, and that's super huge to us. We're so thankful for our community and all the kindness and support that we have around us.
