Deadfall

The high winds earlier this week brought down a few small trees onto our neighbor's hay field.  Since they let us use the field to exercise our horses, we do them the favor of cleaning up deadfall.  There's more than enough to keep us in firewood, which I suppose is good.  The reason why isn't so good - these are nearly all ash trees, which are being killed by the ash borer beetle, native to China.  We've lost dozens of trees, and I expect them all to go eventually.  The only winners are the woodpeckers who drill all over the bark for the yummy (one assumes) beetle larvae - the tree killers.

The two prematurely dead ash trees we cut up today: