A Milestone Of Sorts

The True Blue Sam team has been blogging and YouTubing for five years, and while TBS is not an exciting blog (between 100 and 200 page loads per day), our You Tube channel where we post our own videos now has well over three million views.  Our first video, Splitting a White Oak Log With Black Powder has over 100,000 views, and is still getting 500 hits per month.  It's too long, and looks pretty amateurish, but folks like the ending, even if we shot it with a cheap camera.

This video is the 600th we have uploaded to our channel, and it is a special event.  The Mrs. and I have been watching this red oak tree for over twenty-five years; it's the prettiest tree in our woods.  The black oaks have been dying off for several years, and it looks like they have done about all they can do on our site, so we are having them harvested.  Our favorite red oak shows signs of root-rot attacking it, and a 4" limb died at a little over two logs height, so it is declining, too.  The logger we have is a nice man, and he let me cut down our favorite tree.  Mrs. True Blue Sam did the honors on the camera, and her mother came out to the woods to watch, too.  The logger moved his skidder well out of striking distance, but that's just being prudent. 

Update:  A viewer on YouTube wants to see the face cut, so here is the stump with the root swells and the face cut set back in place.  The red oak had a flat side facing the direction it wanted to go, so the face cut is very thin, and was totally in the slab.