Date: Fri 19-Dec-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

Saddler-Oak-tree

Full Text:

Giant Oak Felled To Protect Antique Barn

(with cut)

BY DOROTHY EVANS

Time passes and beloved old trees get older.

Eventually, they may become diseased, blow down in a storm or, for various

reasons, fall to the chain saw.

Their sudden absence leaves a huge hole in the local landscape.

Often, the decision to fell an old tree, though expedient, is a difficult one

for its owner to make. At the least, he wants to be there when it happens.

Attention must be paid.

A Stake In Its Heart

There is a lot more open sky today over Bob Sadler's Valley Field Road tree

farm and residence, now that a giant white oak tree that has stood tall on the

property for more than 200 years has been taken down.

"I didn't like to have to do it, but several limbs threatened to fall on the

old barn roof," Mr Sadler said regretfully as he pointed to one side of the

tree that showed peeling bark and bare, dead limbs.

The side facing away from the barn, however, looked healthy, showing this

year's crop of leaves still clinging to the outer branches.

"At one time, this was supposedly the llth largest tree of its kind in the

state," Mr Sadler said in a phone call made to The Newtown Bee the morning of

December 3.

As he spoke from his house, Tree Masters, Inc, of Danbury were pulling into

the yard, ready to begin the day-long task of felling the oak. It didn't take

them long to get down to business.

While the top limbs were trimmed back by workman Serge Isabel, who was perched

high in a cherry picker, other tree service employees hurried about on the

ground beneath, stacking wood, gathering branches and feeding them into a wood

chipper.

"You'd be amazed at what we sometimes find inside these old trees," one

employee commented, describing a random selection of objects that he'd seen in

the course of cutting an old tree down. Foreign objects that were once

attached to the trunk or left at its base, allowing the tree over time to

simply grow over and around them.

After the bark engulfs such items as bricks, scissors, horse shoes and barbed

wire, they become buried deeper and deeper within the tree.

As it turned out, the old oak on Valley Field Road gave up its own share of

captured artifacts.

"They found two aluminum plates that had once been used to cover big holes,

perhaps to keep out bees," Mr Sadler said.

And a large iron stake was severed by a Tree Masters' chain saw.

"That spike must have been driven 50 or 60 years ago, because they found it a

good foot in," Mr Sadler said.

Before the trunk was taken down, Mr Sadler and a tree service workman measured

its circumference at the standard, state-tree measuring height, which is four

and a half feet off the ground.

The old white oak was 16 feet, 9 inches around and fully 5 feet thick.

A light snow was falling and the air was bitter cold but Mr Sadler stood

outside a good part of the day watching the tree come down.