California’s intense rain storms finally brought problems to my home. I own a “big” lot (a little over 5 acres) with an old “orchard” of eucalyptus trees that were planted around 1905. The trees were planted in rows to form a 25 acre “forest” intended to be harvested and sold to the Ford Motor Company for the front axles of the soon to be marketed Model T Ford motor car. The Model T didn’t use wooden axles, but it was an attempt by a local entrepreneur to be prepared for a new market. (I heard about this scheme personally from the entrepreneur’s granddaughter, so am tempted to believe the story.) Eventually this forest was cut up into home sites, some 2.5 acres and some 5 acres. I purchased a five acre plot in 1991. Most of the trees have been removed to make way for our house, a small barn (now my shop) and pasture when we had animals (horses for my daughter, sheep for my wife, goats to eat the weeds.)

Last Sunday I was awoken by a text message from my neighbor asking if I heard the load boom in the backyard. I was asleep and missed it. However, in the morning the source of the noise was obvious – my barn was sporting a very large tree out of it’s roof. A 20 inch diameter eucalyptus tree had fallen onto my barn, camper and pickup. The limbs reached over the top of the barn and were resting on the roof-top solar array. At first glance it looked like a disaster.

However, after a morning of cutting and cleaning away the smaller branches and leaves, it turned out that the solar array was unharmed, as were the camper and pickup. I still can’t determine of the roof was damaged because the tree is still sitting on it.

The shed roof took the brunt of the problem, and is still holding up much of the weight of the tree – protecting the barn roof. It doesn’t look like it in the picture, but the crooked part of the trunk is resting on the shed roof. The three 4″x4″ posts holding up the edge of the shed roof were driven straight down into the ground about 24″ like big nails. The tree was very “bushy” and had smaller limbs reaching far beyond the ridge of the roof, and out over the top of the camper on the left. You couldn’t see the barn through the limbs and leaves. Those were all removed in order to lighten the loads on the barn and roof. I think it is going to take a crane or something similar to get this tree off of the barn without causing further damage – the earliest that can happen is perhaps in two or three days because my tree is just one of hundreds in the area.

Luckily it appears that most of the cost of removal and repair will be covered by insurance – I finally get something back from twenty years of paying premiums. I will have another year’s worth of firewood out of this nice big tree.