About Us

Pun intended, trees have always had deep roots pushed in my life, even if I did not know it at the time. While I did not always know I was going to be an owner of a tree service, the trees were always pulling me in funny ways, guiding me to this end path. I think every kid growing up wants to be just like their dad, but as you grow older, you find other things to try. I was always an outdoorsman, which is something my grandparents instilled in me from a young age. On my grandfather‘s property in South Dakota, where he planted groves of red pine, we would walk through the woods, looking for squirrels to shoot and pheasants to harvest. Another grandfather had an amazing northern Minnesota property, white pine shadowing in the forest floor, leaving the perfect place for us kids to build forts and throw pinecones at each other, surrounded by magnificent trees. My father probably would not consider himself an outdoorsman but more of an adventurer. He would take us camping, out to Yellowstone to see the animals and back into the Black Hills, camping in a pop-up underneath magnificent Ponderosa Pines, the woods, smelling like sweet butter scotch. Dad was also a Boy Scout and encouraged me to join. While less interested in the merit badges, Boy Scouts brought me a love of camping and the love of the woods. One of the few merit badges I earned was a outdoor survival badge where we spent the night in the shelters created just from what we could find on the forest floor. We spent many nights camping out underneath God’s glorious sky, soaking in the wonders that the trees provided. As I reached college-age, looking for something different to do then what my dad did I pursued a career in automotive technologies and high-performance fabrication. While I thought I was getting out of the outdoor space, that career path brought me to Bemidji Minnesota, where I learned and discovered the state and federal land that surrounds the area. Never before have I experienced such freedom as being out in the woods surrounded by thousands of acres of untouched state and federal land. And even in school, the trees continued to pull on my heart. The tech college I was at also had a program for forestry and arboriculture, and I remember talking to a few of the students in that course about how they spent the day in the woods, running chainsaws, surveying land, and talking about trees. I always thought that was such a cool career path, but loved the automotive and motorsport space that I was currently in. Even motorsports somehow pulled me into the trees. In school I was into race cars, especially the ones that went fast in a straight line. There are not many drag strips around, and after a long season, they’re closed, so I slowly found my way into fabricating off-road vehicles for the purpose of conquering the outdoors. Even that passion slowly changed and morphed from more of a desire to conquer the hardest obstacles down to wanting a vehicle that could carry me into the woods for a week at a time unsupported. These experience led to what would eventually become the premiere tree services Willmar MN has to offer.

My girlfriend, and now wife, was always supportive of my constant changing of passions, mostly, because I think she always saw the end result, bringing me back to those fond woodland memories of my childhood. She was supportive of my move to Colorado, and while the mountains were calling I further deepened my love and appreciation of trees. There’s something about being 12,000 feet above sea level on a snowmobile looking around at the harsh conditions that these trees are hanging onto that make you think more and more about them. Maybe it’s more the fact that I crashed into so many trees that made me really think about their existence on a harsh train. Coming back to Minnesota and with the tall alpine trees still weighing on my heart my wife and I began our search for a wedding venue. We ended up being married underneath two monsters cottonwood trees in June. It just so happens on the day of our wedding the cottonwood fuzz starts to fly. Blizzard like conditions and fluffy snow covering upon the grass imprinted itself on both our memories and our wedding photos. We settled down in Maynard, Minnesota on a couple acres of land where another tree started pulling me in the direction that I am in. On our property stands the sixth largest tree in Minnesota, a Cottonwood with a trunk 30 feet around and scars showing hundreds of years of growth and development, truly a monument to time. The stories this tree could tell! We live close to the Minnesota river, and I always attribute that river to the reason we never moved back out to Colorado. Just 10 short minutes from our house it is otherworldly, bringing you deep in the forest of silver maples, elms and cottonwoods making it feel almost like the mountains of the east. As we explored the river valley and the surrounding areas we became more and more fond of this place as our home. If you are looking for the best tree services Willmar MN has to offer, then Big Bark Tree Taming is the choice for you.