Day of “Resurrection” at the Kana Place

On May 28, 2021 we experienced a small tornado or twister in Holman. It happened to catch a portion of my farm on the North East side. It uprooted and twisted off a few large trees along the fence line of my neighbor’s. The only major large tree that was uprooted was next to my large barn. It was located about 50 feet from the barn and next to a cattle guard. This tree was an elm tree that I planted there in 1971 when we bought the farm. I actually rescued it from the bank of Williams Creek on my Dad’s farm. It was already leaning over the bank so I had no trouble digging it up. It grew up fast and became a favorite shade tree for the cattle. When it was about 20 feet high, a bolt of lighting struck the top of it and knocked of the top of it. This caused it to balloon outward and form an umbrella effect.

When I first spotted the tree lying flat on the ground with partial roots hanging in the air, I said to myself, “What a shame. There goes my favorite shade tree.” After I went around the farm and surveyed the rest of the damage, I figured I had a lot of chain saw work ahead of me.

This was at the beginning of summer. The rains were consistent and so was the humidity. I decided on cutting up the tree later when the days got cooler. Each day as I crossed that cattle guard and looked toward that tree lying flat on the ground, I noticed that the leaves on that tree were still as green as before. Even though the tree was uprooted, evidently there were some roots left under the ball of dirt. And since it rained so often, the showers kept the roots alive. My son, Rodney, who lives nearby also noticed that the tree was still fighting to stay alive.

Then I got an idea. Since I saved this tree by digging it up from a creek bed 50 years ago and transplanted it here; having it hit by lightning and been up rooted by a tornado, suppose we try to “resurrect it” one more time? We had nothing to lose because we had to do something with it one way or another.

So, on July 25 we got one of our winch trucks, loaded up a lots of chains and waited for the weekend to come around. In the meantime, my son got his buddy to come by one evening with his mini back hoe. He proceeded to dig a 3-foot hole by the foot of the trunk. This enabled the ball of dirt and roots to fall into the hole as the tree was pulled up by the A-frame winch truck.

Now this tree was about 30 feet tall and 16 inches at the trunk so we had to keep it upright and not let it fall sideways. We tied a chain to it and tied it to my John Deere tractor. On the other side we tied it to a fence post. When we tried to lift the tree, it would not budge and lifted the front wheels of my truck off the ground. So we had to park my dually pickup truck in front of the winch truck and tie the two bumpers together. After a little more grunting, the tree started to slowly “resurrect.” After filling the hole back with dirt and lots of water, we tied the trunk with 4 different ties. It’s been four weeks now and hopefully the cows can once again enjoy the shade of my “Resurrected Tree.”