Stonewall, TX 4 Acre Dead Live Oak Removal and Mulching Project

Four acres outside Stonewall in Gillespie County, cleared of live oaks killed by the 2023 ice storm. One day on the ground with the Weiler M860A, taking out dead trees up to thirty inches through and leaving every oak that came through the storm alive.

Opened up under the surviving oaks, with the canopy trees left standing

What the ice storm left

The ice storm that came through the Hill Country at the end of January 2023 loaded live oak canopies until the limbs came apart. Live oaks carry their leaves through the winter, so they catch ice the way a sail catches wind, and across Gillespie County the damage showed up not that week but over the seasons after, as the worst hit trees failed to leaf back out.

This place near Stonewall had dozens of them. Large mature live oaks, dead standing, scattered through ground that was otherwise healthy. Dead standing oak does not quietly disappear. It drops limbs, it comes down across fences and drives in the next high wind, and on ground people walk it stops being a tree and becomes a hazard.

Thirty inch dead oak out, healthy oaks left standing

The largest of them measured close to thirty inches through. That is past what a mulching head takes off the stump, so the big stems came down first and were worked from the ground afterwards. Four acres, one day, with the Weiler M860A.

The judgement was in what stayed. Not every oak on the property was dead. Plenty came through the storm with damage they will grow out of, and those were left exactly where they stand. The brief was to clear the dead and open the ground back up without turning a stand of mature oaks into an empty field.

The ground around Stonewall

Stonewall sits on US 290 between Fredericksburg and Johnson City, on the Pedernales. This is Edwards Plateau country: limestone close to the surface, thin soil over the top of it, and ashe juniper moving into anything that is not actively managed. Live oak and cedar are the two trees that set the work here, and they behave nothing alike. Cedar comes back from seed and takes ground quickly. A mature live oak, once it is gone, is gone for a generation.

That is why storm work in this county is selective rather than wholesale. Stonewall, Hye and the rest of the 290 corridor sit inside the country we work out of Fredericksburg.

Before and after

Land clearing around Stonewall

We work the country around Stonewall regularly, across Gillespie County and the counties next to it.