Pine Hill’s library is dense with service and use. The library is operating as a food pantry while providing vital educational, social, and civic resources to a rural area. We immediately noticed the looming dead ash trees encircling the library. The ash collapse was more than present in the forest—it posed a direct threat to the library! We wondered whether our work might take care of the practical need to fell those trees before they damaged the already strained building.

Inspired by the creative utilization of the library’s limited space, and utterly charmed by Gisi, we knew that Pine Hill was a place we wanted to work.

In January 2025, we were given the opportunity to pitch our project to the Ulster County Library Association. We reconnected with Gisi on that call, who enthusiastically invited us back to Pine Hill.

On our following visit, we gifted Gisi a spoon carved from a coppiced ash. Together, we took a walk around the library’s perimeter and marked out the most concerning trees. Gisi agreed that it would be amazing to use that wood for a Processing Collapse project at Morton. Our next step was to find someone with the skill and capacity to safely take the trees down from their precarious positions surrounding the building.

Ben Kobrinsky of Heartwood Designs became our consulting arborist for this project. In early May, he spent a full day felling the most problematic trees around the library. He rigged two so that they could be felled from the ground, and climbed the third, taking it down in sections.

We returned a week later to break down the felled ash trees. This wood will become the material for our project in Pine Hill, and possibly other central Catskills libraries. We broke up smaller sections from the trees and stacked them to be used as firewood by the community. Within three days, the entire stack disappeared!