Timber! Sort of...

While I was busy with clients and teaching a fiber class all afternoon, J. was busy with the chainsaw. 

Before we brought the sheep home I knew that wild cherry leaves were toxic to them. We have a few wild cherries, but they were a distance from the sheep pen, so I was just going to keep an on things. Yesterday when B. and HC were over and looking at the sheep, I realized that we did indeed have a wild cherry growing right next door to the sheep pen, through the center of a mulberry. I knew we had the goody entwined volunteer trees, but I had never really paid attention to what the second, taller tree was. 

It made me very nervous for the health of the sheep, so J. agreed to take it out this afternoon. He wasn't terribly excited by the project, but is a good guy and wanted to keep the sheep safe and my anxiety about them low. It was very helpful that a husband came along to the fiber session and much preferred to lend a hand to the tree removal project. They were successful, but I'm probably just as glad to not watched J. in a tree using a chainsaw. 

The remains:

All the other branches had already been hauled away by Chuck the Tractor and his trailer.

The stump; you can see it was a fairly large tree.

And the mulberry that was left behind. The wild cherry had grown 6 - 8 feet taller than the mulberry.

I have spent time collecting all the cherry leaves that I could find from both inside and outside the sheep pen. I will rest a little easier now.