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It's a short post I'm sharing today, but I can't keep this picture all to myself. It's just too good. I'd come home from a job at the end of the day. It was about 5:00 and my wife and our three-year-old were outside playing, so I sat down on this bench and chatted with them for a bit. It was such a beautiful day and I was feeling kinda tired, so I couldn't help but kick my boots off and lie down. The amazing clouds in the sky immediately caught my attention! My little boy was amazed at the clouds as well, so up he climbed to admire the clouds himself. My wife got out her phone and took a panoramic photo and this is what we got. Isn't Missouri beautiful? I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

I recently found a couple of old pictures that my wife had stashed away. I know I've been doing tree work for about half of my life now, but when looking at these grainy old pictures, it kinda puts things in perspective. I was so young and clueless back then. Tree men have beards! That's just the way it is. In this first grainy picture, you'll find my young 29-year-old self getting out I don't know about the no-shirt man photo-bombing my photo shoot, but I'm sure he's living a good life wherever he is these days. Pardon my beardless face. I'll never make that mistake again. The second photo features a dinosaur-sized behemoth of a tree with yours truly perched confidently on a limb about halfway up. I don't remember the details of this job, but it looks like fun and not at all fear-inducing. Dated August 2011

I'm not only your friendly neighborhood red-headed tree man, but I'm a family man as well. My wife and our five children have lived together in north Springfield for almost 20 years and are proud to call Springfield, Missouri our home. We are a homeschooling family, though my wife takes the lead in that. The children keep us constantly busy but are our greatest blessing in life. When we are able to travel, our favorite place to go is always the beach. There aren't many of those in Springfield, but we make do with anywhere on the gulf coast. Last fall we went to Dauphin Island, Alabama and fell in love with the place. Although we love the beach, our family manages to have many adventures on our own land. We have a plot of land where we've kept horses, sheep, goats, chickens, and most recently, ducks. Just earlier this month one of our ducks hatched 8 ducklings! They are quite entertaining to watch splash in the water and follow their proud mama around the yard. Apart from my family, one of my greatest loves in life are horses. I've been lucky enough to own several throughout my life, and still find the time to go riding with my kids. It's fun to watch my children feel that sense of freedom and belonging with nature that can only be experienced from the back of a horse. My current horse is named "Doc" and we're been on many trails together. Some other hobbies that I've taken up over the years have been wood working, bee keeping, and most recently, creating things using a lathe. I made a vase for my wife for mother's day using wood from a tree I'd cut down myself, and then proceeded to do lathe work myself. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. It's a skill I'm going to keep working on. My experience with doing tree work dates all the way back to 2005. I worked for my father-in-law, helping him run his own tree business. I worked full-time for him for several years while I finished up my college degree in industrial maintenance. After graduating college, I found full-time employment at first Northstar Battery and later 3M where I worked for almost 10 years doing electrical and mechanical maintenance on the factory machines. I have always done tree work on the side while working these other jobs, but I'm now ready to make tree work a full-time business. What I like most about doing tree work is when I get to climb into the trees using ropes and a harness. It's a different view from up there and it never gets old.

This was a fun job! A Springfield local called me up with quite the predicament. She'd discovered a whole hive of bees living not only close to her house, but IN her walls! My brother and I worked well into the evening and night removing all the bees and saving as much honeycomb as we could. This was a massive colony with thousands of bees who were just minding their own BEEsiness. Not only did we manage to rehome the colony but the honey was delicious. We sampled some but saved the rest for the bees. I'm growing my bee colony collection quite nicely. More local honey will be available soon!

Have you ever wondered what happens to all those logs that get hauled away out of your yard? Most of it gets split into firewood which goes into my own fireplace, or is purchased by customers. Other logs are burned in the brush pile if they're rotten or unsplitable. Then there are the fun logs that get added to the log obstacle course on the property. Eventually these logs will be split into firewood or burned, but for now, they're pretty entertaining. Here's my son trying to outdo himself.