Chrissy came along to our socially isolated farms, so I have pictures that are not selfies to give perspective to my trees.
Rocket stage First is a longleaf from the generation planted 2016, which means it is going into its fourth growing season. This one is through the grass stage and I think will do the rocket stage this year. My guess is that it will be a bit taller than I am before the end of August. My picture shows my estimate. I will be back to see how it did.
Trees die; the forest abides. Next picture is from our beechwood SMZ on Diamond Grove. I am very fond of the beech trees, even if they have no commercial value. Those two trees are mostly hollow. They were damaged by a fire probably about twenty-five years ago. It burned off the bark on the uphill side. The wounds mostly healed, but they let in the decay. Hollow trees can be good for wildlife. I think these trees will probably outlive me. If one or more of them blows down before then, I will be sad, but there are plenty of successor trees ready to take their places.
Whiskey and oaks I did not take a picture, but I found dozens of young-mature white oak on Brodnax. This is very encouraging, since I have devoted about twenty-five acres to oak regen. I was inspired by the “White Oak Initiative” that seeks to grow the next generation of white oak. All bourbon barrels must by law be made from new white oak. When you taste your favorite bourbon, remember that all of the color and most of the taste comes from the good oak. Fifty years from now, maybe some bourbon drinker will be tasting the flavor of the forests we are growing today.
Longleaf pine of the Virginia piedmont Last picture is my 2012 generation longleaf. These trees are going into their eight growing season and they look like they are doing fine. We burned under these trees last season and in 2017 (February). We also burned for site preparation, so you can say this was burned two or three times, depending on how you want to count.
We lost some longleaf to brambles. Lesson learned is that you have to control brambles if you want longleaf. Brambles are NOT well controlled by fire, at least not in my experience. You have to go after them with cutters and/or trample them down. The bottom line is that a bramble patch will kill grass stage and bottle brush longleaf. Don’t let them. Brambles are no longer threats to these trees. I still am cutting some brambles so that I can get into the woods. I do not like brambles, but I recognize that bobwhite quail do, so leave some brambles, but not where you want longleaf.
I think most old people worry about losing their mental capacity. I know I do (BTW, I have long since given up on that physical capacity worry). I seem to have a good memory for things that happened decades ago, but worry that I am not learning new ones.
My forestry enterprise gives me hope. I take constant joy in just doing it, but there is more. I have learned a lot about forest ecology in the last years that I am sure I did not know before. In other words, my old brain has assimilated new knowledge and practice significantly different from what I was doing for the last 30-40 years.
When I learn something new, my mind defaults into two assumptions. First is that everybody knows it and second that I always knew it before. Both these assumptions are wrong. The first actually has a name. They call it the curse of knowledge. It makes it hard to understand why other people just do not understand as you do. The second is just a syndrome that confuses.
One way to adapt to this human tendency to think you knew more than you did is to keep a journal and to look back over it. Facebook memory section helps by reminding what we doing years back.
At this time in 2016 I was learning about longleaf pine. This is not surprising. What is surprising is what I evidently did not know before then. My notes are below. When I talk about southern pine ecology, all these facts come easily to me. They are all mine and I feel like they are things I always knew. But I did not. The old dog still can learn a few new tricks.
Finished the longleaf pine seminar in Franklin, Virginia From April 6, 2016 Longleaf used to be the dominant ecosystem in much of the tidewater south and even into the piedmont. It was an extremely diverse and rich ecosystem, combining a forest and a grassland. Longleaf pine cannot compete well with other woody plants or even with lots of herbaceous plants. The seeds will germinate only on mineral soils and the seedlings are easily overtopped. However, they have one big and decisive advantage. Longleaf pine is as close to fireproof as a tree can be. Fire passes over the seedlings and the thick bark of the bigger ones protects them. That nature range of longleaf corresponds very closely to areas with regular small burns.
Longleaf went into decline because of overcutting (they are great timber trees), because of hogs and more than anything else because of fire suppression. The overcutting is obvious, and I will explain more about the fire, but what about the hogs? Hogs were semi-feral in Virginia. People let their hogs roam and they had big hog roundups. The hogs ate almost anything, but they were especially fond of longleaf pine seedling, which are especially rich in carbohydrates. They ate the seedling and rooted around to wreck those they did not eat. The hogs did damage but longleaf did not return after the hogs were mostly gone because fire was also mostly gone. Longleaf pine seeds germinate in fall, which is odd for a pine and they will germinate only on mineral soil, which requires a disturbance like fire to get rid of the duff. Longleaf is one of the few pine species that can grow in the shade, at least for a while, so longleaf forests could be uneven aged, with new pines growing in gaps caused by fires or other natural disturbances.
A longleaf pine stays in the grass stage (you can see in my picture) for at least a couple years and maybe more than seven. In that time, it does not grow up but it sets down a root system at least six feet deep. At this stage, it is immune to most fires that will kill hardwoods or loblolly. This is the secret to its success and lack of fire the explanation of its failure. The only time the longleaf is vulnerable to fire is when it is three to six feet high. It has grown beyond the safe and compact size, but still not tall enough to put its terminal buds are beyond the flame reach.
Once it gets to a decent size, longleaf can compete well, but fire is still needed to keep the rest of its ecology healthy and allow for the next generations, so a burn every 2-5 years works well. A good rotation is to burn after two growing seasons. Do it in the winter, so it is a cooler fire. After that, burn when they are more than six feet high and then every couple of years. A quicker fire is better, so a header fire is better than a backing fire.
Loblolly grows much faster in the first two years and will out-compete longleaf absent fire. A loblolly is not fire resistant until it is around eight years old. Studies show that longleaf catch up with loblolly at about age seventeen and are a little bigger by age twenty-eight. Longleaf live longer and have a longer rotation. The oldest longleaf on record was 468 years old. Loblolly live only half as long and many are in decline even a little more than thirty years. Nevertheless, loblolly is better if you are interested only in timber income. The short rotations will usually make more money. Even though longleaf timber is better, mills are unwilling to pay a premium in most cases.
Observers used to think that longleaf pine preferred sandy and dry soils because that is where they found them. In fact, they can grow on a variety of soils. The reason they were found on the poor and sandy sites is because those were the places left after settlers and farmers cleared the better land for agriculture. Beyond that, longleaf CAN live on poor sites where others cannot do as well.
My first picture shows a burned over area planted with longleaf seedlings. You cannot see the seedlings, but this is the environment they need. The next picture is four years later. This is a bit of a problem. They missed the burning after two growing seasons and the competition has gotten out of hand. They cannot burn now because the longleaf are in the vulnerable stage. It can still be salvaged, but it is not good.
The third picture shows South Quay Sandhills Natural Area and one of the only remnant stands of indigenous Virginia longleaf. This is where the seeds come from for longleaf planting in Virginia. Virginia does not grow the seeds. They are sent down to North Carolina. They do it for Virginia, since they currently have more experience. The last picture shows the cones of the longleaf (big) and loblolly. It also shows the sands and weak soil. The reason the longleaf are still here is that the soils do not support agriculture or competitors. The trees in picture #3 are about eighty years old. They are so small because of those soil conditions, but they may be the progenitors of trees all over Virginia. Sometimes it is lucky to be poor.
I really did not have urgent work to do. I am kind of between projects. I planted all the seeds and trees I have. It will be useful for me to use my cutter to clean up brambles near my young longleaf, but there is not much sense in doing that now, since they are just now coming up and will grow back the day after I am done if I cut them now.
I am stiffer today than usual, despite not much work done. I think I may be in danger of overdoing because I get much less exercise in my daily life, now with gyms closed and social distancing making keeping me at home, sitting around.
My real reason for going down to the farms was just to be there. I am very socially isolated on the farms, so I can feel virtuous for distancing. Of course, no doubt I take a big risk with self-service gas
It is a long drive, but I have audio books. I finished “Extreme Economics,” a very good book and started another “The Narrow Corridor.” It is a lot easier to drive now, since there is much less traffic and gas is a lot cheaper. I can usually just do cruise control the whole way. The only bad part, and maybe it is just my perception, is that trucks are driving faster and more like they always do on I-81. Maybe the lack other traffic enables and emboldens them.
My first picture is me “working”. I have a nice lounge chair there these days. The cycle of life is interesting. Babies & old me look pretty much alike. Of course, most babies do not have beards. Next picture is the view from the chair. The other two pictures are from my cypress area. These were planted in 2012. I think this corridor is very pretty. They remind me of tamaracks back in Wisconsin. You have to wear muck boots, but besides that is is easy. going.
Wonderful good news for our North American forests. The American Forest Foundation (AFF) & the Nature Conservancy (TNC) are partnering to facilitate better conservation practices on private land, and Amazon has signed up with a $10 million grant to help fund the project starting in Vermont and Pennsylvania, an investment that will help remove over 18 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – equivalent to 46 billion miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.
Family forests Families and individuals in the eastern USA own more forests land than government or big firms. I do not think most people are aware of this. It means that most conservation is done on private forest lands, like mine that I write about so often.
Conservation, however, costs money, both in actual outlays of cash and in money lost by not taking the most cash you can get from your land. This is a tradeoff that most forest landowners are willing to make. Sustainability requires we balance the economic, ecological and social factors in any enterprise. Besides forest products, well-cared-for forest land produces clean water, wildlife habitat and natural beauty. Everybody enjoys the ecological and societal benefits, but the economic costs fall on the landowners. It is like all of us enjoying a fine meal and a stranger picking up the check, nice but we probably cannot count on a free ride forever, not because he does not want to but rather because he cannot afford to keep it up.
Funds for conservation TNC and AFF are addressing this issue by making funds available to family landowners to carry on the conservation they want to do, and we all want them to do. Incentives for conservation practices are not new and their history has not always been exemplary. Let me tell you about why I think this time is better, based some on my own role. I am president of the Virginia Tree Farm Foundation (VTFF), the Virginia affiliate of the American Tree Farm Foundation in turn affiliated with the AFF, discussed above working with TNC. Sorry for the long provenance, but I needed to make the connection. Land management plans – looking at big ecology
In Virginia, the VTFF foundation encourages conservation on family forest lands and certifies forest land. We are essentially the only practical way a small holder can get his land certified. Small landowners (and we are not always talking very small >500 acres are big for a city boy like me, small when it comes to timber) have often been unable to use conservation programs because of administrative costs. If you own a small place, the cost of registering and reporting may well exceed any revenue you get for being a good steward. Most of us still do it, mind you, but we can do less. I have been able to do institute a regime of patch burning, for example, because I got an NRCS grant. It is something I wanted to do, something great for wildlife and the environment, but not something I could justify spending thousands of dollars of my family’s money on something they could never recover. I was eager to do the needed work and did not mind spending some money, but absent the grant, I could not have done it. Lots of conservation is like that.
A land bank, Virginia and beyond The AFF/TNC plan would work regionally. Landowners could enroll their land and get resources to do needed conservation, with the upfront and admin costs defrayed by AFF/TNC. Even better, the land is aggregated in an ecological region. The best analogy for this is a bank deposit. Banks make loans to a family that want to buy a house. No individual bank depositor would have the resources, expertise or time to make the loan, but when the deposits are aggregated, it works. Similarly a family that enrolls their land may be unable to keep it locked up for decades, but they can “deposit” their land and allow firms, like Amazon, to “buy” conservation from the group, knowing that individuals may enter or leave.
We are doing right now doing a land management plan in Virginia east of the Blue Ridge, soon to be expanded to the whole of the Old Dominion. This will take into account Virginia’s ecological regions and allow certified landowners to commit their land to conservation w/o losing control over it. It is a win for them, for the firms involved for the environment and generally. Virginia’s plan will be ready by the end of this year. I am 100% behind this and my small part in making this happen is one of my life’s legacies.
Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness Our efforts will not solve the climate problem or make conservation work always and everywhere, but it is a big step forward, at least in each of our states. I am much enamored with the process. It is persuasive not coercive, which mean that those who participate will be partners, not subordinates. We will get the benefit not only of their work, but also of their innovation, expertise and local knowledge and passion for their land. They will not do what we plan; they will do better.
These are the first steps on a path whose end we cannot know, and a journey will never complete. That means we will never lack for something useful to do. I like that.
Forestry folk invented social distancing, so it is easier for us to adapt to the steps needed to address the Covid-19 crisis. I am not an extrovert, but I miss the routine social interaction, having a beer with friends of just the serendipity of talking to strangers I meet. This has made my tree farms even more important and I have been using work on them as a form of therapy during social distancing. And with the solitude, I have had more time to think about what I mean when I say I am “working on the farm.”
I enjoy the work although not ever minute doing it. Tree planting is a good example. Pushing through the brambles and the briars, carrying the seedlings, and just poking that dibble stick into the ground thousands of time is an experienced better remembered than lived. And it seems like the best way to make it rain is to go out and plant trees. Much of the work on tree farms is like that. When I am out doing it, I cannot wait to get done; when I am done, I cannot wait to get out doing it again.
The joy of planting trees comes not from the tedious repetition. The joy is in our minds when we contemplate the past and imagine the future. Tapping into the majestic flow of nature helps with insights for us short-lived mortals about the unknown past to the unknowable future. It is a spiritual type of practical activity.
The American Tree Farm System was created in 1941 to help ensure the future wood supply, an important, practical and prosaic goal that the America forest industry has achieved. Kudos forestry USA. The USA has more timber growing today than at any other time in more than a century.
I think we now need to move beyond this “tree crop” idea. Trees are more than wood and forests are more than trees. When I go to my tree farms, I am pleased to see so much timber. If not for income from selling timber, pulp, and pellets, I could not afford to own my land, and I am glad that the products of my land support local jobs and contribute to the general welfare. But if income was my only goal, I sure would not own a tree farm. I am typical of a Virginia tree farmer in that our surveys show that most of us are looking for something more than money from our land.
For me that something is being part of a community. My land’s biotic communities are the basics, but I also enjoy being part of the greater local community and the forest community worldwide I love the trees and I love the wood in buildings. This is our community too. In this time of covid-19 isolation, I know that I am part of many communities, so I go alone into the woods and am reminded.
Doing the social isolation walks in Virginia’s beautiful spring weather. I have never seen so many people out walking. Everyone keeps their distance, but we still feel friendly. Most people smile and wave, as we yield the path to one another.
My picture is one of the big white oaks at Navy Federal grounds. There are maybe a dozen of them and they are at least 130 years old. I am reasonably sure of that estimate, since I counted the rings on the stump of one that they cut down in 2013 (although I think that the downed oak was a big red oak, not white, I figured the same generation.) I have included pictures from that sojourn seven years ago.
I like to come back to the same places to appreciate the changes. I recall that long walk back in 2013. I was still recovering from that peripheral artery problem and it hurt to walk. I am much better now. I stamp my memory on the land I walk on, even if only I know about it. It is a source of connections and joy for me. I have “relationships” with trees and landscape in Milwaukee that go back more than half a century.
Tomorrow I plan to socially isolate down on the farm, & I am going to camp out for the first time on my land. I don’t expect it to be comfortable, but I have been meaning to do it for a long time.
I do not like to camp. I used to do it a lot because I do like to be in nature. In those days, that was the only way for me. I had no car so was was not mobile nor could I afford a hotel. Both those things are changed now. I usually stay at Fairfield in about 20 miles from my land. But in this time of social isolation, I figured I might not. Anyway, I will be in the Internet shadow tomorrow. I may check from my phone, but if you don’t hear from me, I am in the woods.
Espen and I were down on the farms. I did some cutting around the new longleaf, but mostly I wanted to show the latest developments. He and his brother and sister have helped a lot, since they were little. Espen remembered when he first walked on Diamond Grove. The trees you see in the picture #3 were so small that you could not be sure they were there, covered as they were by grass and brambles. He is getting a better perception of flowing time. Good.
The trees I love today take decades to mature; the ecosystems they help regenerate take even longer to develop. I hope to live a few more healthy years, but realistically we are talking a couple decades, tops.
I will never finish of what I started. It is important to me that Espen, Alex and Mariza carry on a multi-generational endeavor. I find beauty and great meaning in being part of what I cannot finish, to find my path and take it as long as I can. I want the kids tol carry on theirs, to develop theirs. This I cannot do for them, but I can make available the ingredients. It is a gift that I can give.
My first picture is social isolation. Next is Espen doing same. Picture #3 is our recently thinned trees on Diamond Grove with me as height comparison. Last is gas at Pilot at Exit 104. Gas is only $1.39. It has been a long time since gas was so cheap.
Practicing social distance down in the woods. Everything is starting to grow. I planted some wildflowers, but I busted my buster. Well, I only sheared off the bolt. Easy to fix, but I did not have a bolt, so that part of my work was done for the day I didn’t have too much other urgent work, so I had time to look around.
The bald cypress have started to leaf out. My first picture shows some of them and the lacy pastels of April. The cypress were planted in 2012. They were suppressed by the loblolly, both by getting less light AND less water. We harvested the loblolly two years ago, and the cypress have responded. I expect a lot of growth this year. Next picture is my ATV loaded with rocks. I needed to armor a stream bank. Our neighbor is Vulcan Quarry, and they dug the quarry there for good reason. I have lots of rocks laying around on Freeman, but they are scattered. They would be too heavy to carry, but the ATV can do it. I had to make a few trips, but I got enough to get the job done.
Last three pictures are my 2012 longleaf pine. They are getting ready to grow. Some have already candled. The fire burned hotter in some places than it did in others and scorched some trees more, but I think that all the trees, or at least almost all have survived. Some have all the needles burned off, but they are sending out candles.
I feel virtuous & brag that I planted thousands of longleaf pines with my own hands, but if you really want to get something done you need institutional and enterprise support. This can translate those thousands into millions and regenerate whole ecosystems. This is why the partnership between Enviva & the Longleaf Alliance is so exciting. Read about it at this link.
Trees are more than wood and forests are more than trees Lack of trees is not the biggest reason that longleaf systems declined from something like 93 million acres to around 6 million today, and restoring longleaf ecology means more than planting longleaf pines. We need to restore a ecosystem, not just trees. This is a bigger and more interesting enterprise.
This project embraces the big solution. Restoration of longleaf requires logging and thinning and after that the reintroduction of routine fire.
Fire is a keystone predator Let me say a little about fire in a piney ecology. Think of fire like a keystone predator. (Reminds me of Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain.) Wolves and lions serve the healthy purpose of controlling overpopulation of herbivores; fire did that to brush. Fires in longleaf forest returned at short intervals. They did not burn hot and disastrously, since frequency prevented buildup of too much fuel. Fire shaped forests ecology for thousands of years. Plants and animals co-evolved with fire. And then regular fire was excluded. The result was a less diverse ecology and – paradoxically – bigger and more disastrous fires.
Preparing to bring back fire We cannot just bring fire back. Fire just destroys forests long building fuel in form of litter and duff. It is like top athlete who has grown fat and lazy. You are liable to hurt or even kill him if you sent him out to play football with the pros w/o first bringing him up to better condition.
Enviva makes biomass fuel. This uses smaller trees that would otherwise be uneconomical to harvest, but which need to be cleaned up before longleaf ecology can again benefit from regular fire.
I am very pleased by the plan. It will do a lot of good in our southern pine forests, an important step in regenerating our once and future forests.
I practice social distancing w/o staying at home. Forestry invented social distance. Anyway, I talked to nobody all day, but got to go out.
Mostly I was checking out what we did recently. It is good news. The logger are mostly done on Diamond Grove. I have not done much on Diamond Grove for the last couple years, since I anticipated this harvest and anything I did would be overtaken by events, like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Now there will be a lot of work, however. Not sure what to do about the landing zones. My options would be just to do pollinator habitat or replant with longleaf pine. We can have the pollinator habitat under those. I asked the loggers to clear cut around 5 acres that is too wet for loblolly and was getting clogged up with invasive multiflora rose. I want to replant with bald cypress, swamp tupelo and swamp white oak, and consign that whole area to SMZ addition. I have a picture of the clear cut. I will recruit the boys to pile those sticks into windrows and we can burn before we plant next spring. Brodnax is looking good. I used my new disc harrow to make grooves and planted Southeast wildflower mix. Some are already coming up. Should be very nice. I had been a little depressed about the longleaf I planted in winter 2018. I thought we fried them in the last fire, but even the really burned ones seem not to have died. I included a picture. All the needles are burned but it is now sending up new green.
Other pictures show the redbud trees along among my pines. The European version of this tree is called a Judas tree. The story goes that this was the tree where Judas hung himself after betraying Jesus. The tree was so embarrassed that it blushed red. Actually it is more purple despite the name. The tree is very pretty in springtime. It is kind of a nuisance in the pine forest, but I am unwilling to do the things I need to get rid to them, so I might as well enjoy. I checked out the last group of pines I planted on Freeman. Looks good. It is fun to drive around on the ATV. Makes life a lot easier.
