Category: Conservation & Environment

Referenced article http://thelens.news/2016/06/14/more-logging-in-washington-state-could-help-restore-forest-health-say-experts
There has not been a “natural” landscape in North America since the end of the last ice age, at least if we define natural as unaffected by humans. We need to abandon the artificial idea of human-free “natural” and the pernicious idea that human intervention in nature is damaging.
Our activities should be mindful and iteratively adaptive in systemic ways that lead to sustainability. This is a higher-duty than the mere hands-off approach. There are many situations where we will indeed keep hands off, but we recognize this as a choice. We re looking for the elegant option, the one that works with natural processes.

Final set of pictures from yesterday’s woodland visit. As I wrote, there are too many acres for me to tend personally, so I have adopted a few particular areas of special attention. They are kind of like the gardens. I planted the bald cypress near a creek (in back of where my seat is now) I just like it. Virginia is the northern limit of bald cypress natural range. A little global warming will bring it into the fold and we will be ready.

On the other side, I planted twenty-five bur oak. The bur oak is the classic Wisconsin “oak opening” species. Their natural range includes Virginia, but I have never seen any in Brunswick County, except for mine now.

Besides the trials and tribulations I wrote about before on the tree farm, there were some more pleasant little things. For example, I moved my chair to look at one of the creeks. You can see the better view and I put on video so that you can hear the music of the water.

Thinning pine forests is an important management tool for healthy forests. Look at the two pictures. The stands are opposite each other and planted in 1996. The difference is that the first one was thinned in 2011. We removed 2/3 of the trees. We left the other stand as a comparison. Already you can see it is less robust.
The trees thinned went to Kapstone in Roanoke Rapids, NC, where they were turned into cardboard. You do NOT save trees when you save paper. They just grow too thickly and in the end you are left with less paper and fewer trees.

It is the end of a long day. I chose yesterday to go to the farms because the day was predicted to be the nicest day of the year, low humidity, sunny high about 80 degrees. And it was the best day – weather-wise. Otherwise, not so much.

Started off great. Got up early and headed south. Got to the first place at around 9 am and worked on my longleaf pine. But then I wanted to load up a couple rocks to take home. The big one you see in the picture hurt my back. I am getting too old for this crap. But that was not the end.

I went the other farm. My task was to cut some of the vines growing into my loblolly pines. The vines are a nuisance for several reasons. We have invasive Japanese honeysuckle and wisteria. Very beautiful flowers, but they just climb to the top of the trees and the wisteria wraps around the trunks and chokes them. My other concern is fire. Fire would not destroy my pines if it stayed on the ground. Southern pines are fire adapted, as I have explained on many occasions. BUT the vines form a kind of net that catches the needles and dead branches. It provides a ladder to the crowns. The chances of fire are slim, but not zero.

Anyway, I did not get to much work. First, I got a blowout on the way up, as you can see from my picture. It took me a long time to change the tire, since my back hurt. I did a little vine cutting after, but – not to get monotonous – my back hurt. And then I had to get back to town to get a new tire.
I went to Rick’s garage in Brodnax. They did a quick job and I got a new tire. My old one was ripped up and could not be plugged. While there, I started to feel sick to my stomach.
I drove the short distance to the Brodnax farm to check into my new plantation. We planted forty-six acres: fifteen acres of longleaf and the rest loblolly. I was worried about them because of the dry April, but from what I could see the wet May has redeemed them. You can see in my picture that a lot of brush has grown to cover the land. I will have to deal with that in September. I saw healthy trees in the areas I examined but did not examine much because I started to throw up and feel really tired. This is uncommon for me and I do not know the cause. It was unpleasant and made walking around difficult. So I went back to the truck and rested for a while in anticipation of the three-hour drive back.
The drive was too much, however. My back hurt and I still felt sick and very tired. I made it only as far as Petersburg. I didn’t think it was safe to keep driving and decided that discretion was the better part of valor, so I checked into the local Holiday Inn Express. I showered off the ticks and then went right to sleep. It was a fitful sleep, but I got some rest. I woke up about 230 am. The choice, as I saw it, was to get a few more hours of that fitful sleep or take off toward home. The advantage of leaving sooner was to avoid the gridlock traffic. So I went. It was an easy drive. There is not much traffic in the early morning, although I did still hit some traffic when I got to Washington about 430 am.
It was a long day because it kind of feels like today is still part of yesterday. My back still hurts but feels better. The stomach problem was evidently only a short-term deal.
I will have to go after those vines another time.
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A problem at the farms is that I have no place to sit. It just is not comfortable to sit on rocks or on the ground, not to mention that when you sit on the ground you get closer to the ticks. So I brought an old bench, where I can sit, eat lunch, listen to the water flow. It is a nice shady place to be. Of course, I suppose it will discourage actual work.

Went down U.S. 29 to see Simple Soil Solutions, a farm near Gladstone, VA where they are rebuilding soils through progressive grazing and then stopped at Madison, VA for a meeting with local tree farmers.
I always enjoy the drive down U.S. 29. It is very pretty with the Blue Ridge on one side and rolling hills on the other. There is usually not too much traffic. I used to drive that way regularly when Mariza Matel went to UVA (I am very proud that she graduated from Thomas Jefferson’s university) but now I have less cause to do it.

There are lots of charming little towns, wineries, apple orchards, as well as historical places like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Madison’s Montpelier. It is very green and the temperature is a little cooler than in Washington.
My first picture shows Madison, Virginia. It has the usual Civil War monument in front of the public red-brick public buildings.
Next is a road sign I noticed describing the destruction caused by the remains of Hurricane Camile in 1969. They got more than 25 inches of rain in a few hours. 125 people were killed in Virginia when those rains flooded mountain streams and rivers. Note the the Hurricane hit Louisiana and Mississippi with the highest hurricane winds ever recorded to hit American land and was still powerful enough to cause havoc in Virginia.
The other two pictures are from the Simple Soil Solutions farm.

John Matel Information about the Simple Soil Solutions farm. http://simplesoilsolutions.com/

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You cannot be a true tree farmer on an acreage small enough that you can just take care of it yourself using hand tools. On the other hand, it is profoundly gratifying to work with your trees on small acreages, where your efforts make a difference. I have developed a compromise. Most of my trees are out of my hands. I will manage the land, but do little in the way of personal work. But I have a few areas special to me. They are small enough that my muscles and primitive tools and diminishing muscle can be effective, but big enough to be significant.

My pictures show one of my areas of special interest. This about five acres. It is mostly longleaf pine but there is some loblolly. I want to make this an open woodland of the sort once common in the south. The longleaf pine ecosystem is one of the most diverse in the world, since it includes an over-story of widely spaced trees and a ground level that is essentially a type of prairie. Mine will not be that way for a while. In fact, it will happen only after I am myself compost or too old to know I am not. But I am present at the creation and working toward a goal.

The first picture show the longleaf. They were planted in 2012 after the land was burned. It is a nice plantation. My work consists currently of whacking down hardwood and loblolly competition. It is a little sad for me. Anywhere else, even very close, I would welcome these volunteers. I have personally knocked down scores, maybe hundreds, and still they come. Notice the woods in back. Those are loblolly and they do proliferate.

The next picture shows the longleaf and the loblolly we planted. They are the same age, but notice how much taller the loblolly of the left. Loblolly grows faster for the first 20 years. At around 20, the longleaf and loblolly are about the same size. After that, the longleaf are bigger. But the longleaf cannot compete well in the first few years and would be eliminated absent fire or somebody like me wielding a machete. We will burn underneath the trees probably next year.
Next is the grass and wildflowers. The red flower is a butterfly weed, important to pollinators.
The last picture is inside the forest you see in the background. This is a stream management zone. We want to protect the water and so we do not cut. It is a well-evolved ecosystem. Notice the large tree near the right of the picture. That is a loblolly pine probably around fifty years old. It grew when this was open. Since then, the forest floor has become shaded (notice the shade-loving ferns) and pines will not grow there anymore. That tree may live another 100 years, but unless there is some natural or man-made disaster, none of its offspring will grow anywhere nearby. The new trees are mostly maple. Maple seed fly in the wind and can reach far. I did not see any beech. They will establish only later.