Nothing slows the wind in eastern Iroquois County — it comes across the black-dirt sections toward Sheldon with nothing to lean on but the windbreaks somebody planted a long time before the current owners. V's Tree Service keeps those rows honest: trimming the maples and spruce that shelter a farmhouse, pruning out broken leaders, removing the ones that died standing and turned into a hazard on a gusty night. In town the work is closer and finer — oaks over sidewalks, a silver maple crowding the eaves, limbs lifted off the drive before the first hard freeze. When a line storm rakes the county and lays branches across a lane, the truck and chipper roll and the road opens again. A farm place with its trees squared away looks settled from the highway, and that look is the result worth chasing.