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Labor Day wind storm takes down locust trees

Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Peter Beck surveys some of the damage at the Locusts following Monday's wind storm. The tree across the driveway and bear fence was one of the 23 200-year-old black locusts that lend their name to the property.

For seven years, Peter Beck has tried every day to improve his property in some way.

Beck is only the third owner of the Locusts — the nationally listed historic home on Route 62 in Pine Grove Township.

He has a 185-year-old home, 23 stately, 200-year-old black locust trees, and thousands of other trees — hundreds of black locusts planted in the 1950s and 1960s, a Chinese dawn redwood, a 320-year-old oak called ‘Mother’, and a giant black walnut.

On Monday, his efforts, and the trees, were set back.

A Labor Day wind storm that struck all over the county, downing trees and power lines, and resulting in hundreds of households still being without power Wednesday afternoon, swept right through the 14 acres at the Locusts.

Beck was there. He sat on his back porch through “45 minutes of sheer hell … listening to them crack and fall,” relatively safe as the winds were out of the south.

The wind direction didn’t provide him complete comfort.

“The first one was terrifying,” he said. “I stood right up. I knew it was coming.”

See Wednesday’s edition of the Times Observer for complete coverage.

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