Tree Service in Mountain Home, AR

What does a tree service in this part of the Ozarks actually do?

A tree service takes down trees that have to go, cuts back limbs that are causing trouble, grinds out stumps, and cleans up after storms. That's the short list. Around here the job gets shaped by three things you can see from almost any back porch: steep ground, rock just under the topsoil, and a lot of very old oaks growing right next to houses built in the 1970s and 80s.

Most lots in town were carved out of oak-hickory woods. The builders kept the shade trees, which was a nice idea forty years ago. Now those white oaks, post oaks and black oaks are 70 to 120 years old, and many of them are standing over roofs, decks and septic fields. Our work is mostly about dealing with that safely.

Why do so many big oaks in Mountain Home start dying from the top?

Ask anyone who has lived here since the 90s and they'll tell you about the red oaks going bad. Foresters call it oak decline. A long dry spell stresses the tree, the red oak borer moves in, and the crown dies back a few limbs a year. Black oak and scarlet oak on thin, rocky ridge soil get hit the hardest.

The ground is the root of the problem, literally. Much of Baxter County sits on cherty silt loam, a soil full of flint-like rock fragments, laid over dolomite. Water drains through fast and roots can't go deep. In a wet spring the tree looks fine. In an August with no rain it's starving.

A tree that's dying from the top down is not going to recover by itself. Dead red oak wood also gets brittle fast, so the longer you wait, the more of it we have to take down in pieces instead of in big, cheaper sections.

What happens when ice or wind hits trees around here?

North Arkansas gets ice. The January 2009 storm is still the one people measure against, when limbs snapped all night and power was out for weeks in some parts of the county. Spring brings the other threat: thunderstorms with straight-line winds that push saturated trees over, root plate and all.

Shallow roots in rocky soil mean trees here often tip over instead of snapping. A tipped tree can still be hung up on a second tree or resting on a roof with a lot of stored tension in it. That's work for a trained crew with rigging, not a chainsaw and a pickup. Our storm damage cleanup page explains how we handle it.

How do steep lots and lake property change the job?

A lot of homes in the area sit on slopes running down toward the water or a hollow. You can't drop a tree downhill on a hillside lot and hope it stops where you want. We rope and lower pieces instead, which takes longer but keeps logs from rolling into a neighbor's boat dock or through a fence.

If your land touches Corps of Engineers shoreline, there's another rule: you generally need a permit from the Corps before cutting or clearing trees on government land along the lake. We'll tell you where your property line appears to stop and won't cut past it without the paperwork in hand.

Tip: If you're not sure where the Corps boundary runs, look for the small metal markers or painted trees along the shoreline. Those mark government land.

How do we price a job?

We walk the property, look at the tree and everything around it, and give you one written price. That price includes cutting, hauling and cleanup. It doesn't change once we start unless you add work.

The things that move a price up or down are simple: how tall the tree is, how close it is to the house or power lines, whether a bucket truck can reach it or someone has to climb, and how much wood has to be hauled out. A pine in an open yard is a quick job. A dead black oak hanging over a lake cabin roof on a slope is not.

What does cleanup look like when we leave?

We chip brush on site, haul the logs unless you want firewood, and rake and blow the yard and driveway. If you heat with wood, tell us and we'll cut oak and hickory to stove length and stack it where you want it. We sweep up before we leave, every job.