Wisconsin arborist comes to help, finds his own promise land

Above, Mark Breitrick instructs an employee
-Rae Wagoner/Herald Ledger

He was looking for “the promise land,” and an ice storm led him to it.
At his home in Wisconsin, Mark Breitrick saw news reports that an ice storm had paralyzed western Kentucky. And from his experience in other emergencies such as hurricanes, he knew people here needed help.
So Breitrick hit the road with his Promise Land Tree Service. When he and his crew reach Lyon County they stopped, pulled out their chain saws and “instantly started cutting trees off of houses.”
He hadn’t been asked to come, he merely responded to the apparent need.
“We just came knowing you would need help,” he said.
He’s still here.
“I’m like everyone else who came, but then they left, and I stayed,” he said. “We just fell in love with the area, and the people have been great.
Breitrick’s decision to relocate began in Hatley, Wis., his hometown of about 1,000.
“I’m a country boy,” he said, adding that he was born and grew up baling hay and milking cows. “Everybody there is born with a chainsaw in their hands, so that’s what we did in the winter — we logged. That was just second nature.
“I joined the Army right out of high school, and my specialty was climbing telephone poles,” he said. “So that’s where I kind of went with the tree background and climbing telephone poles, everything kind of worked into the tree service.
Then on Jan. 26-28, Kentucky’s worst recorded ice storm struck.
“It was on the national news that you had had a disaster,” he said, noting that in the last five years his business had traveled around the country helping people in disaster situations. “It started with Hurricane Katrina, and pretty much everything you’ve heard about since, I’ve been there.”
Following Katrina, Promise Land went to New Orleans to work mainly on the cleanup.
“So much of the damage was not only flooding, but there was so much tree damage from the hurricane that it was just a natural fit for us to start helping with that,” he said. “It was an Army Corps of Engineers project, so everything had to be done by the International Society of Arborists (rules). They write the rule book on how to do tree trimming, how to do the climbing, how to do the cutting, how to do everything safely and properly.
“It was nice that right when we started in the tree business, we were taught the right way,” Breitrick said. “Just studying from then on in arborism, not just cutting trees and logging, I learned there’s an art to where you cut your limbs ... and how to do it and what time to do it.”
Breitrick’s business is named for his wife, Promis.
“There’s a little bit of religious meaning behind it, and being that and my wife’s name, we worked it together,” he said. “It’s been great; people remember it.”
When he came here, Breitrick’s wife and three children, 12-year-old Brodie, 2 1/2-year-old Bailey and 1 1/2-year-old Brenna, remained in Wisconsin.
“She was working in Wisconsin, taking care of the kids at home alone,” he said, adding that traveling so much with the business he had been “looking for a way to have the family together.”
“That’s real important to us, so seeing the damage that was here, I knew there would be steady work here for years,” he said. “So I thought what a great place to bring my family. When I saw the area and the lake and the rural part of it, I just fell in love with everything. It feels so much like home.”
The Breitricks had been hoping to find a way they could be together all the time.
“There’s work in Wisconsin, but not enough to live a comfortable lifestyle,” he said, noting that he told his wife there would be a great deal of work in Lyon County and that it was a great place to live. “I asked her if she wanted to come down and look at it, and she came down, I gave her the tour, and she said, ‘Yeah, it works for me.’”
Promis Breitick came down and together they looked at several places. With help from real estate agent Amy DeFew, they found the Wilford place on Ky. 373 near Eddyville, which they leased for a few months.
“Then we decided to buy, and we love it.”