Cutting Our Ash Trees (Blog 255)

For the past several weeks, my son-in-law David Reynolds and I have been cutting timber on our Botetourt County land.  The standing trees that we have targetted are all ashes.

The reason we are doing so is the emerald ash borer which showed up in Michigan in 2002 and has spread relentlessly since then.  As far as I know, this Asian invasive has not yet been found in Botetourt County, Virginia where we live, but sightings have been documented several counties away.

The adult beetles eat the ash's foliage, but that is not the major problem.  It is the insidious larva that ravage the inner bark which eventually causes the deaths of larger trees.

I wish that David and I did not have to do this timbering, but at least we are both laying in a supply of firewood.