Gray Tree Trimming

About Gray Tree Trimming

A freezing rain out on the Russell County farmsteads can coat every branch of a windbreak in glass, and it's on mornings like that Gray Tree Trimming gets called out before the sun's even up, to look over the ice-heavy limbs before anyone drives underneath them. That same practiced eye for how a tree carries a winter load turns naturally to snow — reading where a drift will settle heaviest against a hedgerow, clearing driveways and lots around town while the ice still glitters on every twig overhead. Russell's farm country runs flat enough that a single line of Osage orange or cedar can be the only windbreak for a mile, so those old rows matter more here than they might elsewhere. There's a plain kind of pride in getting a driveway scraped clean under trees still sheathed in ice, the whole yard catching a hard, bright shine once the sun comes up. Winter here tests both the trees and the roads, and this crew tends to both.