Category: Virginia forestry

Forest Stewardship Plan for
John Matel and Christine Johnson, Freeman Tract
Introduction
This Forest Stewardship Management Plan covers the examination of approximately 103 acres of forestland in Brunswick Country, near Freeman. The tract map is included.
The tract is mostly flat. It includes approximately 65 acres of pine plantation, 25 acres of steam management zones dividing the property roughly in thirds. A power line right of way goes down the middle of the property and covers around 8 acres.  The land was likely cleared for agriculture at one time, but has been forest for at least 70 years, as evidenced by old loblolly pines planted in rows that remain in some of the SMZs.
Overall wildlife habitat and forest health are being maintained and improved by thinning, burning and planting feed and pollinator habitat in patches in the woods and along the powerlines, and maintaining soft edges.

No endangered species of plants or animals were noted on the tract.

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Forest Stewardship Management Plan
Landowners: John Matel & Christine Johnson
Forested acres: 95
Total acres: 103
Location: Freeman Virginia
Prepared by: John Matel
This Forest Stewardship Management Plan was designed to help guide the management activities of the natural resources on the property for the next ten years. The plan is based on our goals in harmony with the environment around you. Project recommendations are for your consideration.
The Goals for Managing the Property:

1. Innovations in forest management to restore longleaf ecosystem
2. Soil and Water Conservation.
3. Improvement of wildlife habitat.

 
DESCRIPTIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS OF PARCELS:
PARCEL Z
Acres: 58.1
Forest Type: loblolly and longleaf pine
Species Present: Loblolly & longleaf pine, ailanthus, American sycamore, sweet gum, yellow poplar, eastern red cedar, hackberry, shortleaf pine, Virginia pine, mockernut hickory, white oak, chestnut oak, black oak, green ash, mulberry, sassafras, black cherry, persimmon, holly, black locust, blackgum, and red maple.
Age: loblolly planted in 1996. Longleaf interplanted 2018/19
Size: loblolly are chip and saw and some saw timber
Quality: excellent
Trees/acre: Adequately stocked for our management objectives, i.e. thinned to 50 BA to allow greater wildlife habitat including grasses and forbs.
Growth Rate: excellent.
Recommendations:
The vegetative nature of this parcel provides benefits to wildlife due to the diversity of ground covers and understories.  We plan to

• Do understory burns every 2-4 years

• Create field borders on this parcel
• Maintain and enhance diverse and native ground covers

PARCEL Z1
Acres: 4
Forest Type: longleaf pine planted in 2012
Species Present: Longleaf & loblolly pine, sumac, some oak and bald cypress
Age: Planted in 2012
Size:  Tallest around 15 feet high in 2018
Quality: Excellent
Trees/acre: Adequately stocked.  Trees are widely spaced on purpose to allow wildlife and understory growth
Growth Rate: Excellent
Recommendations:
Parcel will be burned every 2-4 years in order to maintain longleaf pine and early successional habitat under them.
PARCEL Z 2
Acres: 7
Forest Type: Loblolly & longleaf pine.
Species Present: Loblolly and longleaf pine, some bald cypress
Age: Loblolly planted 1996. Longleaf pine planted 2018/19
Size: chip and saw to sawtimber, loblolly; longleaf are seedlings
Quality:  excellent
Trees/acre: Adequately stocked
Growth Rate: Excellent
Recommendations:
Half of the parcel was clearcut in 2018 and rest heavily thinned.  The clearcut will be planted with longleaf pine 10×10 of a little tighter and interplanted with loblolly on the rest.
PARCEL SMZ
Acres: 25
Forest Type: Mixed hardwoods and pine.
Species Present: Loblolly pine, ailanthus, American beech, American sycamore, sweet gum, yellow poplar, eastern red cedar, hackberry, shortleaf pine, Virginia pine, mockernut hickory, white oak, chestnut oak, black oak, green ash, mulberry, sassafras, black cherry, persimmon, holly, black locust, blackgum, and red maple.
Age: 40 to 80 years
Size: Various sizes including significant saw timber.  (10 to 18 inches in diameter)
Quality: Good to excellent
Trees/acre: Adequately stocked
Growth Rate: Good to excellent
Recommendations:
This parcel is in place to protect water quality and to provide wildlife corridors.  We will periodically examine the SMZs for invasive species and treat as appropriate.  Beyond that, this area will be generally left to natural processes, with interventions only in the case of some sort of disaster, such as fire or particularly violent storms.
Non-Forest Border
About 8 acres of the property is under power lines.  This is managed as a long border area.  It is planted with native grasses and forbs and will be managed to maintain early succession habitat by the use of fire and mowing.
 
Wildlife Recommendations
Field Borders
Field borders are established along woodland edges and major drainages. Field borders create vegetative transition zones between cover types. Such zones are much more attractive to wildlife than the abrupt change that often occurs, for example, between field and forest. 
 
Daylighting consists of cutting most, of not all, trees in a specified area to encourage and accelerate the growing and non-shade tolerant plants. Existing shrubs, vines and herbaceous (non-woody) plants should be left undisturbed to the extent possible. Woodland edges should be daylighted to a depth of 40 feet, recognizing that remaining trees will quickly reach out to shade the opening. Field borders established by daylighting have the advantage of taking no acreage from existing open land.
Where the loss of open land is not a major concern, a natural border can also be created by allowing woody plants to invade and encroach into existing open edges. “Encroachment” borders, like those daylighted, should be wide, at least 30 feet. Where grass is well established, this should be destroyed by plowing or by the use of a herbicide. This will speed up the invasion of the more desirable “border plants.” The establishment of field borders using this practice requires the least expense and labor.

If natural borders seem undesirable (perhaps from an aesthetic standpoint); the planting of shrubs is an option frequently used. Additionally, with the use of these, the results are more reliable and, in the long run, maintenance will be less (natural borders will be invaded with trees that should be cut back periodically). The transition from field to tree line should be gradual in height. Here, shrub plantings also have an advantage. By proper selection and arrangement of shrub varieties, the border can be a stair step from field to treetop. Taller growing shrubs, such as Mountain Ash should be placed next to the woods. Lower growing varieties, such as the shrub dogwoods or bi-color (VA-70) lespedeza should be placed against the taller varieties. The total depth of a shrub border should be at least 20 feet.
The final touch to any border is the establishment of a herbaceous strip along the open side. These may not be necessary, if the border joins an annually tilled or recently fallowed field. If not, a strip 10 to 20 feet wide parallel to and adjoining the border should be plowed or disked. This can remain fallow for up to two or three years, allowing annual native plants to grow back many of which provide excellent wildlife food and cover. Or, if desired, these strips can be seeded using one of the warm-season grasses, white clover, Korean or Kobe lespedeza, or one of the locally well suited agricultural grains.
Borders need not completely rim every field or fringe every wood line. Yet, they should be employed to the greatest extent possible. Good field borders provide food, cover, and security. Perhaps equally important, they provide a most favorable “edge,” a critical component in the habitat chosen by most wildlife.
Open Fields
Probably the best practice to enhance open fields for wildlife is the establishment of field borders. These have been described.
Thinning
Parcel Z
This area was thinned in 2018 to 50 BA, with clearings of approximately ¼ acre in each acre. Thinning will increase their ecological value to wildlife. Thinning allows sunlight to reach the forest floor which stimulates the growth of forbs, legumes, and other herbaceous material. Tree tops left on the forest floor provide temporary cover and nesting places. Thinning can also increase mast production of healthy oaks and hickories.
Snags
All Parcels except the grassland:
Snags, dead or deteriorating trees, are an important habitat component in forests for wildlife. The availability of snags on forest lands affects the abundance, diversity and species richness of cavity nesting birds and mammals. Two to four snags per acre should be maintained in the forest. Such trees provide forage, cover, perches, and nesting sites for wildlife species such as raccoons, bats, flying squirrels, snakes, owls, woodpeckers, bluebirds (near open areas), and wrens, to name but a few. When snags are lacking in a forest, they can be created by girdling trees of poor quality or health.
Forest Openings
Parcels Z
This area benefits from the development of forest openings to encourage the development of low growing plants. Approximately twenty ¼ acre openings were created by cutting all the trees in these areas. The area will be planted with longleaf pine and burned every 2-4 years to maintain the longleaf and maintain early successional habitat under them.
Power Line Right-Of-Way
The power line right of way is planted with native grasses and forbs and maintained in early successional habitat by fire and mowing.
Prescribed Burning
Periodic burning is a tool used. Please see above.
Logging Roads
Soil erosion can be prevented through the careful location and maintenance of logging roads. Dominion Power maintains an access road along the power lines.  This is the only regular road on the land.
Broad base dips and drainage ditches should be placed 20 feet apart on steep slopes and 50 feet apart on medium slopes. Loading areas should be seeded in game food after harvest. When logging is complete, ruts and gullies should be filled and the road should be out-sloped slightly. Closing of roads to unauthorized traffic will prevent damage to newly sown grass or wildlife food. More information is available in the enclosed brochure.
Skid trails, haul roads, and log decks should be seeded with a mix of orchard grass and ladino clover.
Prepared by: _John Matel____________________________
Suggested Schedule of Management Activities

Year	Parcel	Activity
2018	Z	Thinning to 50 BA
2018	Z, Z1, & Z2 & power line	Prescribed burning
2018	Z 2	Plant longleaf and bald cypress
2019	Z	Plant longleaf (December)
2021	Z & Power line	Prescribed burning
2022	Z1 & Z2 & power line	Prescribed burning
2023	SMZ	Remove invasive species
2024	Z & power line	Prescribed burning
2025	Z1 & Z2 & power line	Prescribed burning
2026	SMZ	Remove invasive species
2028	Z	Harvest loblolly sawtimber

This schedule may need to be adjusted depending on financial needs, timber markets, timing of actual harvest, and availability of contractors.

Fire & Water
Some of my forest is flooded. I have never seen the water this high. Of course it is worse in North Carolina, but our farms are less than 20 miles from North Carolina.

I did not see much storm damage. That flood won’t hurt the trees. I was a little worried that the rushing water would undercut some of the riparian areas, but that seems not ot have happened.Parts of my road are a little rutted, but that comes and goes.

A little less happy news from the area we burned in May. The fire got a little too hot in patches. I was worried that some of the trees were killed and it looks like about a dozen of them won’t be coming back.

Fire is complex. You can estimate its behavior, but it can always surprise you. I suppose I will under plant the dead trees with longleaf in December. The other option is to let the loblolly fill in by themselves. Probably both will happen. I feel bad about my trees, but it is part of the way the pine ecology works.

The thinned pines in Freeman are looking good. The open forest is more like the “original” Virginia and it is very good for wildlife. I saw deer and spooked two covey of bobwhite quail, at least a dozen quail. Hawks and buzzards are flying around. Bees are buzzing, butterflies floating. The cut over has bloomed with wild flowers.

Longleaf are looking good. They are candling out for the last time of this year.
Some of the paths are drowning in bog. My boots got soaked and I finally just stopped trying to avoid the water. I should have brought some extra socks. Pictures show the pollinator habitat. I included one of the power-line right-of-way. We have eight acres under those lines and it could seem like a waste, but I kinda like them. It is essentially a long narrow strip of permanent pasture. You can see that it is full of grass and forbs, and the power company helps maintain the access road. The last picture is a clear cut in the foreground. This was – believe it or not – clear cut in May, i.e. only three months ago. See how fast it comes back. We will plant longleaf this winter.

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It did not rain all day, so my trip to the farms and the landowner dinner went well.
We got around forty people for the landowner dinner, a good turnout. Mike Santucci gave a much shortened version of his Generation NEXT program, tips on how to pass your forest land intact to the next generation. About 2/3 of Virginia is forest covered and that percentage has not changed very much in recent decades. But ownership is fragmenting. As forest units become smaller, they become less economically and ecologically viable. Generation NEXT does not tell you what to do, but it gives you tools to decide.

Sarah Kammer and Jen Gagnon gave presentations on why and how to be a certified tree farmer. This was more to thank existing tree farmers, who made up a majority of attendees, but also to get them to talk to friends about the program. We current have a little more than 1000 certified tree farmers in Virginia. There is a lot of room for growth. I have written about the value of sustainability on many occasions. Suffice it to say that sustainable forestry is a wonderful goal and tree farm can help sustain sustainability.

Adam Smith and Ed Zimmer from DoF recognized a Brunswick County Century Forest. A Century Forest, as the name implies, has been in the family for 100+ years and has been at least partly forest all that time. This one has been in the family of the recipient for 147 years (if I correctly recall). People like the recognition. It many ways it is an adjunct to genealogy. If everything goes according to plan, our Freeman place can be a Century Forest in only 90 years.

The governor and the Virginia state forester sign the Century Forest award. Mike Santucci jokes that having a Century Forest is big incentive to keep the forest intact. Who wants to be the one to drop the baton in the generational relay.

After the great pulled pork dinner provided by the Reedy Creek Hunt Club, I gave a short tour of our Freeman tree farm. I explained the recent thinning and talked about our plans to restore longleaf and the diverse ecosystem that goes with it.

Bobwhite quail were voicing their distinct call during the talk and on the walk there and back. I could not have planned for a better soundtrack. Bobwhite are one of the iconic birds of the longleaf pine ecosystem. They used to be common in Virginia but now are much less so. Their proliferation on our land helps me think that we are on the right track.
My first picture shows Adam Smith & Ed Zimmer with the Century Forest award. You can also see the really nice place that the Reedy Creek Hunt Club has. Kudos to Mike Raney & Scott Powell.

The other pictures are from the same day but not the same place. They are SMZ on our Diamond Grove place. With all the rain, I thought the creeks would be rising, but they were not. In fact, parts of ephemeral streams were empty. This is a big change in the last decade. When we got the place in 2005, the streams were never empty, even in dry times. I think it is because the trees around had been harvested. Rainwater ran off into the streams. As the forest cover came back, the needles intercepted some of the rain and when it dripped it dripped down slower. The ground is also now covered in leaves and needles that absorb & soften the raindrops. And then the tree roots grab onto the water as is sinks in. This is all to the good. The creek in the pictures is interesting because it always flows but not always above ground. There is a big rock, as you can see in one of the pictures, that evidently goes fairly far down. The water follows the creek sometimes over and always under the sand, When it hits the rock, it comes out as a “spring. Never have I seen the creek on the rock go dry.

I am very fond of this SMZ. I especially love those big beech trees.

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It has been raining for days. It is raining now and it is supposed to be raining this afternoon. Still, I am going down to the farms today. We have a landowner dinner on the Freeman place. I am suppose to talk about the plans on the farm and lead a field tour. If it is raining like it has been, it will not be pleasant.

In any other case,  the rain would keep me at home. There is little joy in working on the farms in heavy rain and there are real hazards of getting stuck in the mud. The one advantage I can think of is that I can observe the watercourses. I can see the evidence of high water, but I have never actually seen the flow. I really love to watch the living water. Of course, I need to be careful not to get too close.

My streams are so familiar that I have come to think of them in almost anthropomorphic terms, as friends, but the evidence of high water flows indicates that they could be very dangerous. As much as I love my landscape, I do not want to become part of it.

I have one “stupid water story”. I have probably enhance it in my memory, but what I remember is that I wanted to cross Genito Creek and figured that I could balance on a fallen long to make the crossing. I was mistaken. I fell into the stream and the current pushed me under the log. I got out of it quickly and w/o incident, although my memory is trying hard to make it a more dramatic escape. I did ruin my phone and was uncomfortably soaked walking back to the car. It did make me think about worst case scenarios, however.
As I said, I have become very comfortable with my landscape. When I first got the place, I used to be circumspect and careful. That was probably a good idea. Hanging around in the woods and using sharp tools to pull down heavy trees and rocks is not as safe as writing about it on the computer.

Of course, if you have to go anyway, I suppose it is good to go out in a way that creates an interesting story.

Burning Doubt
I will never beat the feeling of dread when I see my scorched trees after a fire. They are not burned, but the heat plumes rose more than thirty feet. Science and experience tell me that things will be okay and that the fire is a necessary and useful part of southern pine ecology, but I can know all that and still not feel it. I am happy to report that – again and as expected – my fears were overblown. The trees on the most recently burned patch are greening out with new needles, as you can see in my first picture. The burned are in the distance. I have closer pictures but I liked the panorama. The longleaf that we burned last year are looking great, as you can see in the next picture. A forest is more than just the trees, but the trees are the first thing you see and the one that sets your mood when looking to the forest.

My management strategy for all our tree farms is atypical for Brunswick County and I am not exactly sure how it will work out. Let me rephrase – I have an idea what I want and a bit vaguer idea of how to get there, but I have lots of doubts about conditions on the ground and what will happen when I make changes.

Don’t Copy Nature; Do Try to Understand Natural Principles
A diverse ecosystem that respects and uses natural principles but does not merely mimic nature, that is what I want on my land and what I hope to learn from my land. When talking to people generally, I often use words like “restore.” People like the idea of restoration. I do too, but I know restoration is not an option. We have too many changes in Virginia, too many invasive plants and too much human interaction ever to restore what was once here. Beyond that, there would be no way to know what you should restore. Even with precise (and impossible to obtain) information about what was here and how everything was connected, in what year was everything exactly the way it should be?

The answer is never. Nature is never finished. Virginia of 1608 is different from but not better than the Virginia of 2018 or how it was during the last ice age or when dinosaurs roamed Our beloved longleaf pine ecosystem began its development on coastal plain exposed by much lower sea levels during the last ice age and “invaded” this land as its home range disappeared under the rising seas.

All we can do is move forward using the principles in an iterative way, trying something, learning something and then trying again with the profound understanding that this too is passing, and knowing that much you get from being in nature is being in nature.

You Can Never Walk Twice in the Same Forest
When I fell in love with nature, it was the feeling of the eternal that attracted me. In nature, I saw permanence, belonging and balance. Sure, we foolish humans often upset the balance. I blamed ignorance and greed. It was an easy morality tale. But I expected that if we left it alone long enough, nature would come back “as it should.” I thought my opinions were science-based, but they were not. Today what I love about nature is the impermanence. Each moment is unique to be appreciated for what it is. A small alteration may grow into a great change that everybody sees or maybe you won’t perceive it at all, but (paraphrasing Heraclitus) you cannot walk twice into the same forest. That is what I love now.

… And Know the Place for the First Time
It is a shame that the term “know your place” carries with it so many pejorative connotations, but I am going to use it here in a positive, maybe even a transcendent way. Looking back over my life, I think that I have spent it trying to know my place in human society and in the greater nature. Before I get anybody excited about the meaning of life, let me say that I have not found it and I know that I never will. This is not a despondent thought. No, it is a glorious one to know that you cannot know, and feel your own impermanence. It means you can enjoy all the steps on the journey. I have brief glimpses, epiphanies sometimes when I am in the flow, almost always when I am engaged with natural systems. It is a mystical feeling that I can report but not properly describe, when I feel part of all that was, all that is now and all that will become. I know others have had similar. The moments do not last long, but the memory sustains.

I don’t know what I would do if I was deprived of contact with nature. I don’t think I am strong in that way. I think I would crumple at being removed. My place is as an interacting part. Pull it out and there is nothing more.

What’s Happening Down on the Brunswick Farms
Lots of interesting developments at the farms. The thinning looks good. I walked all over the place and came up with hundreds of things I want to do. Now I have to narrow it down to a couple I can accomplish. You see the thinned pines in picture # 3. I took that picture through the wildflowers in front of them. Speaking of restoration, you know that lots of those beautiful flowers are not native. This is not a picture you could have taken in 1607, or more correctly painted. But the changing landscape conforms to natural principles. Queens Ann’s Lace, a beautiful flower in the carrot family, had been in North America for more than 300 years. It has earned its place.

Next is (right above) one of the pollinator habitat plots. I want to thank NRCS for helping with this. We got a grant to help defray the costs of seeds. I have more, but I include only one, since they are just starting. We got them in late because the seeds were hard to get. You can see the sunflowers coming up if you look closely. They will provide quick cover and the perennial warm season grasses and forbs will come in after. Sunflowers are “native” to North America, but this variety is not from around Virginia. Again, what does native or restoration really mean anyway?

Above are some bald cypress I “discovered”. I knew that my friend Eric Goodman had planted them in 2012, but I never could find them and thought they died out. The recent harvest next to them revealed them and is now giving them the sun they need. They are in a wet rill (pictured below) and should do well with the more sun. They are doing okay now. I found a couple dozen.

Below shows both sides of the fire line. We are burning 1/3 of this track each year, creating patches of early succession landscape.

Below shows our 2012 plantings from the area under the power lines. Some people hate power lines and they detract from use of land, but on the plus side they provide long narrow acreage of early succession habitat.

Went down to the farms to look at the thinning and burning.  Besides just being in my forests and checking on those things, my goal was to try to get rid of some of the ailanthus.  It is an endless struggle. I wish that other – useful – trees were so resilient.  I have trouble telling ailanthus from sumac at a distance and sometimes even close.  I don’t doubt that I have been knocking off sumac too.  Sumac, I like so I am not happy about that.  Sumac does well with fire, at least that is what I observed.  I see a lot of it sprouting from the roots after the burns.

I still worry that the Brodnax fire was a bit too hot.  The heat plumes scorched the needles. Some of the local guys who know fire told me that scorch does not kill southern pine, and that they would come back.  I looked carefully today (see picture).  Most of the trees have some green again.  They will probably make it. Still, I think in future I will want only dormant season burns, and certainly not after they have candled.  The anxiety is too much.  You can see the picture of what the trees on the other side of the fire line looks like.  The fire top killed the hardwoods.  On this land, we are doing patch burns, one-third each year, so we will go after the far section next year and the adjacent one year after that.  That will give us a chance to see the variation and maybe start over again.

Longleaf are doing well on the Freeman place. I went after a few ailanthus among them and knocked out some sweet gum and yellow poplar for good measure.  None of them were big problems.  I think the fire does a good job on them.  Still not sure if we will burn this next year.  I keep going back and forth about it.  Not even sure if I will burn the thinned acreage. The cutter, Kirk McAden, did a really good job and made easy to use fire lanes.  We are going to plant a couple thousand longleaf before Christmas this year.  We have around five acres of that we clear cut. The trees were twenty-two years old and the tract had not been thinned. I feared that if we thinned they would be too likely to be damaged by ice or wind storms.  They had been growing so tight that they did not develop strong enough roots or branches.

I am going to replant myself and get he kids to help.  That may be a good reason to burn, to clear up some of the crap so that they will have an easier time.  Next year (2019), we will plant a lot more into the openings (we created ¼ acre openings on every acre, i.e. 80 acres x ¼ acre or 20 acres total.   Along with some trees under to loblolly, that will be around 10,000 trees.  I think I will need to hire a crew to do that.  It is a bit too much for the kids and me.

Loblolly are just easier to grow than longleaf.  I was looking at the Brodnax place where we planted about 30 acres of loblolly and a little more than 15 of longleaf in 2016. The loblolly now come up to my waist and they are competing well with the vegetation, see the picture below. The longleaf are still in the grass stage and I am not sure the ones in the vegetation are even alive.  We burned last year. This top killed the hardwood brush by the other vegetation came up like mad.  You really don’t need to plant loblolly at all.  They come up whether you want them or not. There are probably twice as many loblolly now growing than we planted.  In theory, the planted ones are better genetically and will grow faster.  We will see in a couple years if the rows are much better than the random.  I bet that there are more natural regenerated loblolly on the longleaf plots than there are longleaf.
Anyway, thinking about how the forests are growing is a great joy.  I have an idea of what I want and I guess about how it will play out, but it is always a surprise.

Picture up top shows the loblolly among the ground cover on Brodnax.  The first one below is the longleaf on Brodnax. You can see the difference Bu.t they CAN grow similarly.  The next picture shows a longleaf and a loblolly on Freeman.  Both were planted in 2012 and they are just about the same size. Below that are pictures of the un-burned and the burned one next to it.

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