-Farm News photo by Lori Berglund
Jim Gatewood of Jim’s Tree Service has been swamped with tree work as the result of recent storms.

What is it about a tree?

We plant them to commemorate births, deaths, marriages. We hang swings from them and take in the fresh air of springtime. We spread blankets beneath them and nap on summer afternoons.

From them, we harvest cherries and apples, walnuts, and even boughs to decorate our homes, each in its own season. In their branches, they give homes, nests to birds that delight us with their song. And what would Christmas be without a lighted evergreen in the yard?

We even navigate by them, telling visitors to “turn at the old oak tree.” One Iowa photographer once spent an entire year taking a picture of the same tree every day. And the book was a hit.

Trees warms us in the winter by blocking the harshest winds, and cool us in the summer with their blessed shade.

-Farm News photo by Lori Berglund
This large tree was entirely uprooted at the Monica Nilles farm in Hamilton County.

Until finally, a June hailstorm, or an August derecho, or even a Dec. 15, 2021, flurry of wind, possibly tornadoes, and yet another derecho, take them from us in a matter of minutes or even seconds.

And I, for one, shed a tear at their loss. Life is better for us on this earth because of the gift of trees.

Growing up on a farm in Hamilton County, I coaxed my dad into helping me plant a tree or flowering bush just about every spring. And every year it was the same, “Something more to mow around,” he would grumble, ever so slightly. But I remember a twinkle in his eye, as well, as he plunged the shovel into the soil and we set the tree in place. Over the years, we planted apple and cherry trees, fragrant lilac and red hawthorn bushes, and many more.

To the north of the house we had a grove that was thinned considerably by Dutch elm disease in the 1970s. To the south, there was an orchard that simply aged with time. In between, right next to the lane, was a walnut that never failed to carpet the lawn and lane with its harvest each fall.

This homeplace of my growing up years is now home to my brother and his family. It’s a shared farmstead, with my mom’s house on one side of the lane and the new home my brother and his wife built on the other side. It was hard hit in the December storm. Gone are the apple tree, the walnut tree, the evergreen, the mulberry, and so many, many other trees. And we won’t even mention the roof, the siding, let alone the machine shed.

-Farm News photo by Lori Berglund
The yard at the Monica Nilles farm in Hamilton Couny was littered with downed trees in the December storm.

This is a story about trees. And it’s a story that has unfolded on countless farmsteads across Iowa in the last few years. Jim Gatewood, owner of Jim’s Tree Service in Webster City, has seen more than his share of the damage.

“The last two years, especially, we’ve been just swamped,” Gatewood said.

The storms have created a caseload for tree services that have kept most of them busy, even on the harshest days of winter.

“We probably didn’t miss even four or five days all winter,” Gatewood said. “We worked on days that were so cold that I don’t know how many pairs of gloves I went through, using the exhaust of my chainsaw to warm my fingers. When it’s 10 to 15 below with the windchill, and you’re up 60 feet in the air, and there’s wind, that’s cold.”

A Webster City native and Air Force veteran, Gatewood has been in the tree business since the early 1990s, but literally grew up working outside. Now with a professional tree service of his own, he meets people who simply want to get rid of troublesome trees, and those who want to save them if at all possible.

“It goes both ways, some people say just ‘cut them down,’ and others say, ‘My goodness, be careful, I don’t want to lose that tree,'” he said.

Gatewood hears lots of stories about how and when a tree was planted and particularly enjoys chatting with older folks and learning from them.

“I’ve always liked older people,” he said. “They always kind of impressed me. You can learn a lot from them.”

In one case, he recalled an older gentleman who told him about the old cottonwood trees on his farm and how they had been a favorite in barn building.

“They worked great for a long beam going across a barn,” he said.

While many of the trees in the recent storms were damaged beyond repair, or even uprooted entirely, the challenge of saving trees and pruning them as needed is one of the rewards of Gatewood’s work. People can get very nervous seeing a treasured tree trimmed, but Gatewood has developed an eye to know how the pruning should unfold.

“I pretty much know how that tree is going to shape out,” he said. “Some people want it trimmed so that they can see what it looks like when it’s done, but they always grow back out so we have to shape them visually according to how the limbs are going to grow.”

Much of it is judgment, as to location and how much sun the tree receives, whether it’s a fast or slow grower, and how much competition it has from neighboring trees.

When it comes to replacing trees that were a total loss in the storms of the last few years, Gatewood said many of the same considerations come into play. Sunlight, the type and number of neighboring trees, and your own family goals for the tree are all factors to weigh. For example, do you want to enjoy a tree that will grow quickly to fill a space, or a slow grower that only future generations may have time to enjoy?

While the temptation may be to replace in the same area, that’s not always the best choice, according to Gatewood.

“A lot of times when you take a tree out there may be some root fungus, mushrooms, and decaying roots,” he said. “You can treat the area, but it may be best to move it away a little bit.”

Yep, a tree is something that requires care, and a little extra time to “mow around,” but hold our memories for a lifetime.

As I ran my fingers over what was left of the giant mulberry on the homeplace, I couldn’t begin to count the rings. Oh, if I could only count back to 1988, the drought year that devastated so much of Iowa. It had to be one of the skinniest rings on that massive tree. Or what about 1936, with its wicked winter and blistering summer that my dad told stories of his entire life. He was 12 years old in 1936 and no year ever compared for the rest of his 73 years.

Trees truly do document history, and some of them live forever in our hearts.