Category: Virginia forestry

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Virginia Tree Farm Foundation

Attended my last Virginia Tree Farm Committee in Richmond today. The Committee is no more, but it is not gone. Rather it has evolved into the Virginia Tree Farm Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) entity able to raise money and possessing a wider panoply of advocacy tools. I am now a charter member of the board. We currently have only six members, seven when you count the ex-officio member from the Virginia Department of Forestry. We need to organize ourselves and get others involved.

My tasks will mostly involve outreach and fundraising, as well as participating in public events. It sounds a lot like my public affairs work in my previous incarnation. I guess there is a pattern to every life and we try to do what we do well.

This is a real blue sky proposition. The board must define its role and I can define my own within very broad parameters. Ecology is my passion and I am delighted to have a vocation to go with it. I do not underestimate the challenge. I know that if I do nothing, nothing will happen, i.e. I cannot wait for somebody to tell me what to do.

The general goal is to improve the state of forestry in Virginia, to grow forest products profitably while maintaining and improving the quality of the soil and water, habitat for wildlife and places of beauty and tranquility for humans. We build on a very good base and we have lots of allies. This is good.

To move forward on this, I envision my part as network building and connecting. Lots of people are involved with tree farming and we share the common aspirations discussed above. We can help each other systemically in a kind of human ecology. The connections change the nature of the reality and the combination is greater than the sum of the parts.
I always make grandiose plans and I never achieve all my goals. I understand that it is easy to make fun of my enthusiasm. This makes me sad, but not for long. I think we need to think big even if we achieve small. We get farther that way and a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, after all.

My advantage is that I am unaffiliated. As a gentleman of leisure, I answer to nobody, expect nothing can do things w/o conflict of interest, real, imaginary or implied. But within our network, we have lots of affiliated people who can help make the connections and supply the expertise we need. I think this is an auspicious combination.

I am now reading, rereading, thinking and rethinking about aspirational networking. What are we part of and how can we work with others to produce something really worthwhile?

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Planting longleaf on the precise, exact edge of the natural range

The natural range for the longleaf pine starts in Texas and Florida and goes to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, but it ends in the north and west in Brunswick County, Virginia. I have been studying the map and it looks like the natural range of longleaf ends precisely in the middle of my property in Freeman, where we planted longleaf pine.

Therefore, I believe, or at least will assert, that my land forms the northwest terminus of the natural longleaf range. Next time I go to the farm, I will paint a bright line to mark the border. Perhaps it will become a minor tourist attraction, one of those things worth seeing but not going to see.

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Favorite pine landscapes

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I had planned to aggressively thin 80 acres of 1996 loblolly and under plant with longleaf, but the talks I listened to today were not encouraging. The main problem seems to be that loblolly are prolific seed producers and in what essentially remains a loblolly forest, the longleaf cannot compete. I have managed to keep my five acres of longleaf reasonably clear of loblolly by whacking literally hundreds of loblolly, but I will be unable to do that on 80 acres. It is hard enough to keep up with the five.

Another of the talks was about using herbicides to help establish longleaf. Herbicides have evolved and now some can be used very precisely to affect only particular plants. When you cannot burn regularly, herbicides can provide a serviceable alternative.

You need be careful, however. The beauty of the longleaf ecology is in the TOTAL system, not only the trees. It is important to maintain and enhance the herbaceous plants, grasses, wildflowers and forbs. There is a little trade-off. The ecosystem approach will produce slightly less wood, so profit margins are a bit lower. Beyond that, it takes more work and greater care to ensure diversity. It is easier just to knock out everything except the trees but that is just not right. I alluded to that in my earlier post about raking pine straw. If you are going to manage a forest, you want to manage a forest in all its diversity and not just a bunch of sticks and needles.

The diverse forest also supports lots of wildlife, game and non-game species.

It has become fashionable to discuss “ecological services.” This puts an estimate of the dollar value of an ecosystem. For example. a forest protects soil and water resources and provides recreation. All these things would cost money to duplicate. In the case of water, those costs would be very high indeed. I use the “ecological services” argument and consider it valid. But it is not the end. In the final analysis, there is no final analysis. A diverse, sustainable and thriving ecology is an end in itself. It has its own value and it not merely a means of creating value in other things.

The thing I love about forests is their complexity. I know that I can never understand more than only a little and that my brief moment of stewardship is the proverbial dust in the wind. I appreciate it precisely because it is complex and impossible to control in detail.
My trees will still be there, I hope at least, long after I am gone. And the ecological system that they nurture will be there long after they are gone. It is really very wonderful and goes well beyond the ecological services it supplies today and tomorrow.

My first picture is an old one that I have used before. I took it in 2009. It shows the kind of open woods attractive to lots of wildlife and specifically bobwhite quail. Next are ponderosa pines I saw in New Mexico and finally pines in the Sand Hills in Carolina. You can see the kind of thing I am looking encourage. Pine savannas are very pleasant and productive ecology.

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Virginia longleaf

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Looking through some old photos, I found the one on top from spring 2012. You can see the little longleaf pines. Most of the bigger green clumps are not trees, just other plants. The second photos is a close-up of one of the pines. The last two photos are familiar, since I posted them a couple weeks ago. They show the same places last month. So they have been in the ground a little more than four years, but five growing seasons.

Longleaf have not been common in Brunswick County for many years, so our trees are sort of a test. My trees are northern variety, but not Virginia native longleaf. It would be nice to have “real” Virginia trees, but being “native” is overrated. The environment is similar on both sides of the border. USDA hardiness zone 7b encompasses Southside Virginia and North Carolina more or less to the Neuse River. Trees grown from seed sourced from that part of NC are indistinguishable from Virginia natives. Anyway, if they grow well the next generation will be Virginia native.

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Routine forestry

Went down to the farms on the way back from Georgia. I spend a few morning hours hacking down anything in the longleaf patch that was not longleaf. I was reminded of the Aldo Leopold essay, “With Axe in hand,” where he wrote about the need to take responsibility for what is on your land. A conservationist is the one who thinks about what he is doing.

I do not use an axe, as a matter of fact. I have a kind of machete called “woodman’s friend,” but it does the same work. I have to cut down the loblolly and the hardwoods to let the longleaf become established and it is a value choice. My photos show a particular instance. It looks like a single tree at first, but a close looks shows a loblolly growing inches from a longleaf. Generally, I love the loblolly, but in this case I had to cut it down. You can see the choice int the first and second photo.

My third photo shows the official dividing line at the end of the longleaf natural range. As I wrote in previous note, since nobody has done it yet, I am declaring that my property is the edge. You can see it clearly in the last two photos. One one side is clearly longleaf and the other side not, so it must be true.

My last photo is a bald cypress I planted ten years ago. This tree is well outside its natural range, maybe the edge of the new range.

Inspected the place we clear cut last year. It is now fall, so I can see what is coming under. We planted 21,000 seedlings in March and April, almost 500 per acre. It looks like there will be a lot more. The lobolly have seeded in. The reason we planted, as opposed to natural regeneration, is that I think that the new seedlings will be genetically faster and better. I guess this will be a good test case. Presumably, I will be able to tell in five years.

My first photo shows the lobolly that have grown in the last few months. Next shows how much they have filled in in the landing zone. Picture #3 is some of the older loblolly, maybe the seed sources. The last two photos are shortleaf pine. These are also beautiful trees. They grow slower than lobolly and in many ways behave more like a hardwood species. They are the most widespread of all southern pine species, but are always associated and never dominant.

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Putting fire in the woods

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Putting fire into pine woods is important to maintain the ecological balance among the fire dependent species, but lots of landowners are afraid to use it and/or lack the tools. So the SC authorities have created a rolling supply room. It has the things you need to conduct a prescribed fire. Non-professionals can rent it for only $50 a day.

An interesting adaptation is to us cat litter in the containers that might have flammable materials. It absorbs leaks as it would cat pee.
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Drones

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Drones will change how we do forestry, or at least how we see (literally) our forests. We saw a demonstration of a drone today. It was smaller than I thought (they do come in bigger sizes) and quieter. It sounded like a bunch of bees when it was close; you could not hear much at all when it got higher up.

I will wait a little while before getting one. I figure the prices will come down as technology improves. As I get older, it will be useful way to keep up with the land. If I also get one of those little all wheel drive vehicles, I will have it made.

The first three pictures show the drone. The last one is a pine savanna. It is mostly loblolly and not longleaf, but has many of the same characteristics. They created it from a thickly planted plantation and now maintain it with fire and herbicides.

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October farms visit

Went down to the farms today and took a few photos, probably that last of this growing season. Alex came along. We spent a lot of time cutting vines.

My first photo shows a couple of my bigger longleaf pines. They were planted in 2012. I am 6’1”, so these look to be around 15 feet high. One reason why some people prefer lobolly to longleaf is that loblolly are more consistent. You can see in my next picture that longleaf is variable. Some are fifteen feet tall and others are still less than a foot tall. Most are around 6-9 feet high.

Photo #3 shows the loblolly planted in 1996. The little figure in the front is me, for comparison. Picture # 4 shows some of the vines, makes it look like a ghost forest. We have been cutting them. Most of the trees are not as affected as those in the photos. Those are 2003 loblolly. The last photo shows that fall in coming. This is from the Brodnax place, looking over the place that was clearcut last year. The little trees we planted this year are there, but they are hard to see.

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My quarterly contribution to "Virginia Forests" magazine

My quarterly contribution to “Virginia Forests” magazine.
Forests are changing and so is who owns them
If it seems like forest land ownership is dominated by people at or near retirement, that is because it is. While most Virginia landowners are 45-65 years old and only about a third of are over sixty-five, the older group owns around half of all forest land. This creates anxiety. That is why you find articles related to estate and succession planning in this “Virginia Forests “magazine. I am not here to tell you that this is not important, because truly it is. We are planting for the next generation; we need to plan for them too.
The advancing age of so many forest owners, however, is not surprising. Some owners inherit land. Others buy it as a long-term investment and from passion for forestry. At what stage of life is this most likely? Forest owner are often older individuals the same way HS seniors are usually around eighteen-years-old.
Forest are always becoming. This is true of what is growing on the land and who owns it. It is not profound wisdom to say that the future will differ from the past and that it is hard to predict. We can, however, predict with confidence a big trend already in process. Forest ownership is becoming more fragmented, with more owners and smaller acreage.
Remember I said that the over sixty-five age group makes up a third of forest owners but owns half of the forest land? Newer owners own less acreage on average. Most (84%) have purchased their land, i.e. did not get it through inheritance or gift. They are the future. The smaller the parcel the less likely owners are able to practice forestry consistently. Less managements can be done on ten acres than 100, for example, and it is often hard even to find someone willing to harvest small tracts. Implications for forestry and forests are significant. Forest fragmentation continues. We need to develop strategies to address what we cannot avoid. Possible actions include things like encouraging groups of landowners to cooperate in forest management and making information more readily available to a mass-market of owners.
Tree Farm’s strength has been personal contact to understand landowner specific conditions and needs and provide customized advice. This worked for seventy-five years, but is not practical when the number of forest owners goes up as acreage goes down. Tree Farm protected water, soil and wildlife. More trees are growing in Virginia today. But we need to engage a wider range of people. We may lose the personal boots-on-the-ground truth, but smaller-acreage tree farmers can still be deeply engaged, maybe sharing knowledge laterally within the tree farm community. Many bought land because with passion for forests and desire to be part of sustainable forestry. We share aspirations. Together can achieve great things – IF we make and sustain community.
Sustainability does not mean unchanging. It is beneficial change that nourishes the health of the land and the biotic and human communities on it. Tree Farm has done a great job of helping sustain communities and can do it into the future.
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Visiting clear cut in Brunswick County

Inspected the place we clear cut last year. It is now fall, so I can see what is coming under. We planted 21,000 seedlings in March and April, almost 500 per acre. It looks like there will be a lot more. The loblolly have seeded in. The reason we planted, as opposed to natural regeneration, is that I think that the new seedlings will be genetically faster and better. I guess this will be a good test case. Presumably, I will be able to tell in five years.

My first photo shows the loblolly that have grown in the last few months. Next shows how much they have filled in in the landing zone. Picture #3 is some of the older loblolly, maybe the seed sources. The last two photos are shortleaf pine. These are also beautiful trees. They grow slower than lobolly and in many ways behave more like a hardwood species. They are the most widespread of all southern pine species, but are always associated and never dominant.