Spent the day preparing for our visits to congress tomorrow. Our job is to talk about forestry and conservation issue with Congressional staff. I have done this three times before.
I know it is unfashionable to say so, but most members of Congress want to do the right thing. We may disagree with their policies, but most of them are good people. We did our preparation at Key Bridge Marriott and then had a reception at “Tony and Joe’s” in Georgetown. My first two pictures are from that area of Georgetown harbor. Next is Georgetown University from across the river. Last is just part of our presentation. I figured I should have something from that, even if it was not a very exciting photo.
I went to look over the Diamond Grove place. Flooding has knocked down bridges. My road was closed off, thankfully the block was just past the gate to our farms.
It rained a lot and moved a lot of mud. It looks like there is a foot of new mud and sand on my first creek. Not sure where it came from. I cannot find any big areas of erosion on my land, but I suppose each square foot contributes its little part and it ends up big. We have set up rocks and brush to slow the water and encourage it to drop the sediment and that seems to have worked. When we got the place in 2005, there was a lot of steep and eroded banks. That is mostly fixed now.
The storm snapped off the top of a very big tree in one of the other SMZs. It will be interesting to watch developments. We had a big tree uprooted by wind and rain in 2006. It made a big opening and changed the course of one of the streams. It was interesting to watch the fill in. Nature is resilient.
I am very fond of my big beech trees. I expect that sooner or later one or more of them will blow down. One of my favorites is mostly hollow and on a stream bank. There are plenty of little trees waiting to take the place, but I like the old ones.
My first picture shows the snapped tree. It is much bigger than the picture shows. The new green leaves this time of the year filters the light and makes everything seem green, even things that are not really green. Next is the “new” land near my bald cypress. I expect it will gradually move. It must have been one really big storm. I have never seen so much moved dirt, and the bridges have never been undermined like that.
Next is my beech wood. It is a kind of old world look. There are more leaves on the ground now than at other times of the year. Beech trees hold onto many of their leaves all winter. They are pushed off by the new leave in spring, i.e. now. The penultimate picture shows my closed road and last is the path through the 15-year old loblolly. I think we will thin after this growing season.
When you think cactus, you rarely think Virginia, but the prickly pear is native to southeastern piney forests and part of the longleaf ecology. Trees are more than wood and forests are more than trees is well illustrated by a longleaf forest, since much of its diversity rests on the plants on the ground.
I long wanted a prickly pear addition to my longleaf, but they are harder to find than you would guess. The ones you find usually are desert varieties, meant as house plants here, that do not do well in Virginia’s climate.
Chrissy found one for me, along with another interesting native plant, the rattlesnake master. It almost sound like a couple of comic book heroes, “Prickly Pear and the Rattlesnake Master.”
Anyway, I planted them today. This is more like gardening than forestry, but I hope they spread.
When Mike Raney, Scott Powell and others in the hunt club notice, don’t be surprised at the cactus in Virginia.
My first picture is prickly pear and the rattlesnake master. Next is one of the bald cypress I planted a couple months ago. I planted 200. The criteria was that if my feet were dry, I planted longleaf, but if my feet were wet, I went with bald cypress.
Speaking of wet, the next picture is a “vernal pond,” AKA a persistent mud puddle. Vernal ponds are very important for amphibian reproduction. The water must persist long enough for the amphibian life cycle but not long enough that it becomes permanent enough to have fish that eat the amphibian eggs or tadpoles.
Penultimate picture is part of the stream management zone. I took my folding chair down there and had a beer today, between hard work, of course.
Last is a downed longleaf. I have had a problem with them just falling down. Not all, or even a big number, but enough that I notice. The loblolly do not do that on the same piece of ground. Anybody have explanations?
This was one of the rainiest years ever in Virginia. Our stream management zones were carrying more water than usual. You see in the first picture how high the water was by looking at the sand and mud that the high water deposited. Interesting thing happens with that mud and sand deposits. They form natural levies. When they flood over the levies, as happens in very rainy times, the water is trapped on the far side and encourages a wet forest.
Other two are SMZs that did not flood so much. Last picture is bare ground that was used as logging deck. I planted some wildflowers in the foreground and crimson clover farther in. I expect it will be verdant and beautiful in a couple months.
I attended a talk about the need for white oak for bourbon barrels and decided to do my part for the 2050 class of bourbon drinkers by planting one of my patches with white oak. So I ordered some from Virginia Department of Forestry. My trees came a little early, but I wanted to plant them quick as possible, so I went down to the farms.
It was just right time to plant the trees but a little early to see springtime. However, some things are starting to grow. Some of the longleaf have begun to “candle”, i.e. send up new growth. Some of the seedlings the kids planted are also showing the little buttons of new growth. It seems a miracle each spring, but it happens every year.
First picture shows a 2 years old longleaf candling. Next is a seedling starting out. Picture #3 is the open woods we burned last May. #4 is an odd “laying” longleaf. Look closely and you see that the tree has fallen to the ground and started to grow up from there. Last picture is the loblolly planted in 2016. You can see the trees well with the brown grass. Soon, the grass will be green and the trees will blend in.
You need not eat the whole egg to know it is rotten. Like many Virginia landowners, I get unsolicited offers from firms wanting to exploit my land for solar farms. I throw them in the garbage. I don’t care what they offer. I don’t want it. It’s not my place to tell other forest landowners what to do but let me explain why I feel strongly that we should not do it.
Let me be clear. I support solar on rooftops, powering remote installations & shading sunny parking lots. Our urban areas are full of sunbaked roofs & parking lots. Just don’t take down forests or cover fields with solar panels. This is not clean energy.
Trees are more than wood and forests are more than trees Responsible private landowners protect the health of the biotic communities – the living soil, water, air and wildlife – that depend on our land. We still use and profit from the land, but we do it wisely and we also must look beyond our own land to the greater ecosystem and the greater society. We should think in terms of the triple bottom line – a decision reasonable for ecology, economy and society?
Considering the big picture, we might argue that devoting our forest land to solar meets the triple bottom line criteria. Here is why it does not. If we harvest a tract, it does not stop being a forest. It becomes a forest in transition, as the next generation begins. It stops being a forest if we convert to other uses, pave it over or cover it in solar panels. But isn’t the energy produced by these panels worth the cost of the local forests? Well … no.
Today’s solution is tomorrow’s problem No matter what they tell you, these panels will not last decades. How long do ordinary shingles last on your roof? They will be ruined by weather, made obsolete by advancing technology or just neglected. During their short lifetime, it is likely that they will never make up for the ecological value of the trees they replaced, nor the biotic communities that would have grown.
We can tell they are a bad deal because they are not self-supporting. Solar farms are essentially farming tax breaks and subsidies. They get this up front, while you rely on the uncertain long-term payback.
Before you let these guys have your land, ask a few practical questions. How long and how much? How often will they be on your land? What happens when they remove the panels? Is the firm reliable AND are they likely to stay in business for the life of the contract? Who is liable if something goes wrong?
Ask if this fits your land ethic I could think of more, but maybe save time by asking an enabling question. Does this use of land fit my land ethic? My answer is “no,” so I stop right there. You need not eat the whole egg to know it’s rotten.
Forestry is the 3rd largest industry in Virginia (Agriculture is #1 followed by tourism). Brunswick County is Virginia’s leading timber producer and has been for the last decade. My forest lands are in Brunswick County, so I was delighted to go to the Brunswick County Agriculture and Timber Conference on February 20.
Brunswick County depends on agriculture & forestry Brunswick County officials were there to show their appreciation and concern for the County’s biggest industries. They seemed sincerely interested in how to make the place more forestry-friendly. Everything could be better, but Brunswick is already a pretty good place for forestry. That is why I chose to buy land there. Much of that is not easily within the immediate control of local officials, however.
Human ecology Favorable human and business ecology are the main reasons Brunswick is good for forestry. An ecological paradigm applies to human relations. We have enough loggers, mills nearby, decent infrastructure for moving timber and a supportive local culture, i.e. people are comfortable with the odd things that we do to manage and harvest trees. There are challenge with all these things that I will address later, but compared to most other places, we are doing well.
Forestry a big deal for Virginia Bettina Ring, Virginia Secretary of Forestry and Agriculture, was the keynote speaker. Ms. Ring was Virginia State Forester before becoming Secretary and was involved with Tree Farm and sustainable forestry before that. She reiterated that agriculture & forestry are Virginia’s biggest industry. Together they produce $91 billion of annual value for the Commonwealth and directly support 450,000 jobs, and many more indirectly. Forestry and agriculture also contribute mightily to tourism, our second biggest industry. Besides contributing to natural beauty, I was interested in some of the ways Virginians are using the production of the earth. We have 300+ wineries and cideries, 250+ brewers & 70+ makers of spirits, all of these attract tourist and support tourism. Who doesn’t want to have a nice drink in a beautiful setting?
We do have the perpetual challenge of land transfer. Much of the Commonwealth’s land is held by old people like me. In fact, I am a little on the young side. We will not live forever and what happens to the land when we shuffle off this mortal coil? We must recruit a new generation of active landowners who want to keep their land in trees or crops. I am concerned when I see the fingers of the cities reaching into rural land but selling often makes sense to landowners. I have no plans to sell my land, ever. I hope my kids learn to love the forests, but who can say? On the plus side, this challenge is perpetual, as I note above. Forest landowners are usually older than average, for the simple reason that you must be old enough to inherit land or to have saved enough to buy it. I have owned my land for almost fifteen years, and I was 50 when I got it, already not a young man. Virginia has a special designation of “Century Forest,” a forest that has been in the same family for at least 100 years. My great grandchildren could apply for this in 2105, but there is a lot that can happen between now & then.
The triple bottom line Finally, she got into the triple bottom line, although she did not use that term. For a project to be truly sustainable it must be worthy from the ecological, economic and social/cultural perspectives. If it fails on any of these factors, it fails generally. There is a challenge in meeting all three, since there are inevitably tradeoffs. But it is a challenge that can be met and is being met in most of Virginia forestry.
When thinking about the triple bottom line, I do not like the idea of compromise among the factors. Compromise implies a zero-sum game, where one loses to the extent that the other wins. I believe in synergies. Applying intelligence and accumulated practical wisdom, we can do better in all the factors, where one does not take away from others but rather each grows with the other.
Virginia ports and railroads Daniel LeGrande, talked about Virginia ports. He explained something I wondered about, but never really followed. How is it that Virginia has a “port” at Front Royal, hundreds of miles from the sea and not on a navigable river. Virginia’s inland port is a hub for rail and roads. Virginia’s ports at Hampton Roads is the third largest and deepest on the East Coast and is well served by rail and road. Ships can also go up the river as far as Richmond. Agriculture and forestry serve this by filling empty containers going out. All this logistics is fascinating for me, but well above my competence. I am glad somebody got it figured out.
Forestry panel We broke into separate forestry and agriculture groups. The forestry group featured Virginia’s State Forester Rob Farrell, as well as local forestry business leaders including Owen Strickler, Thomas Evelyn, Frank Meyers & Vance Wright. It was a very congenial group, guys who have known each other for many years and know their business.
More wood than ever in Virginia Rob started off with good new and bad news about forestry in the Commonwealth. We are harvesting more wood in Virginia than ever, but we are growing those trees on fewer acres and more wood is growing each year than is being harvested. Why is that good and bad news? Harvests are good. That more wood is coming off fewer acres may be good, but it probably means that we are growing more intensively. That is good, right? Not sure. I know this is only my opinion and it is based on the luxury I have of an income not only from forestry, but I like a little LESS efficiency. My farms are a little lazy. The trees are too far apart for maximum production, but they are the right spacing for wildlife, for example. I am not sure the longleaf experiment ever will pay off. Intensive loblolly would be better. I cannot scoff at better results, however. Well … I can but I recognize that mine is a curmudgeon opinion. I am not offended knowing that many people would think I was just nuts.
The more wood factor is more clearly economic. Prices for timber are low and the fact that more wood is growing every year than is being harvested implies that they will not improve. On the other hand, it does show that we have a practically limitless supply of southern pine. No worries about a wood famine for at least a generation.
Virginia forestry is green, good and growing Unambiguous good news is that Virginia forestry is doing a great job of protecting the environment. Department of Forestry inspects every harvest and they do a sample for deeper study. In this years sample 95% of the sampled met 100% of their Best Management Goals (BMP), and 100% of the samples found no significant sediment leaving the tract. You cannot do better than perfect. Virginia’s BMPs are more stringent than those imposed by EPA.
My experience fits with what the State Forester told us. In May of 2018, I went along for tree farm inspections on 20 randomly selected Virginia Tree Farms. The inspector found zero violations of standards of sustainability. We harvested on Freeman this year. I am very particular about how it is done. I inspected the harvest in every way I could. I found a few things I did not like, but absolutely nothing that I could reasonably complain about. The loggers left the site clean and beautiful. The only things I did not like was that the ground was compressed where they had assembled the logs. This was unavoidable. I can, and I am addressing this by making them into pollinator habitat.
Solar farms growing but not green Thomas Evelyn spoke about rural economic development in New Kent County. The thing I took away from his presentation was the danger of solar farms destroying forest ecosystems. I have noticed these monstrosities popping up like a rash in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The following is what I was inspired to think about, but as I read it, I see that it is a bit of a rand and I will not saddle Mr. Evelyn with it.
IF you think that using energy from solar farms is “green” you are badly mistaken. Solar power from solar farms is obscenely destructive. Solar farms are more like strip mining than they are like regenerative. They tear town existing forests and cover the land with solar arrays. Nothing grows there. The soil underneath erodes. The land underneath dies. And then consider the aftermath. You have to dispose of these solar panels when they are done. Solar panels require lots of toxic materials to make and disposing of them creates a toxic waste situation.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is worried about this. Lawmakers want to require solar purveyors to come up with a plan to dispose of the panels when they are done and restore the soils, the flora and fauna – just as they would have to do with strip mining. Virginia has an estimated 200,000 acres of land easily suitable for solar farms. One of my worst nightmares is that solar is put on these acres.
I have received unsolicited offers to lease my land to solar firms. I tear them to pieces & throw them away. There is no way I would EVER do this to my living forests. I would consider it immoral to ruin the environment like this. I love my land too much. Yesterday’s solution is often today’s problem, and solar farms are going to to be a big problem, maybe not today but soon. The irony is that we are paying taxpayer money to finance and subsidize this future ecological disaster.
Solar energy can be, often is, good. Like most things, however, it depends on where, when, how and how much. The race to appear green is sometimes harmful to being green. Don’t fall for that green electricity canard. If you demand 100% renewable energy currently, YOU are part of the problem, not the solution.
Questions about Virginia forestry Frank Meyers gave a great talk. (I have a semi-disclaimer here. Frank introduced me to the guy who sold me the land in Brodnax. I have been pleased with the purchase and grateful to Frank for the opportunity.) He did not answer so many questions, but he posed lot to think about. Some of the things I think that I have thought about, but I am not sure. Frank worried about merging of mills. We have a lot of mills in the near Brunswick, but maybe not the competition that will give landowners the best prices. Frank praised the reforestation tax. Loggers pay it and the Commonwealth matches it. The proceeds go into reforestation of pine. Frank wonders if we may not have done too good a job. Maybe we need to go into hardwoods. We worried about a shortage of pine. Maybe not.
Frank also was concerned about solar farms. He mentioned them in Fluvanna County. Solar farms do NOT respect stream management zones or BMPs. The rain that falls on solar farms washes sediment into streams. Will forest owners need to pick up the slack? Will we get blamed for the silting of streams and estuaries from the sediment of those solar farms?
What about Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs are like REITS but for timber land). TIMOs own or control a lot of forests land these days. Their goals are investment more than forestry. What if they find better returns for their shareholders? Finally, Frank talked about something I never even thought about. Evidently loggers have to pay taxes on their equipment, while farm equipment is exempt. This is making it hard for loggers. They have a fixed tax unrelated to their income.
Vance Wright pointed out that forestry is Virginia’s first green industry. He also took a swipe at the solar farms. He said that there are just two ways that we humans can get anything. We can dig it out of the ground, or we can grow it from the earth. Forestry grows from the earth. Solar panels are made from materials dug from the ground. Make your own judgement.
Owen Strickler said that we need another pine saw mill east of I-95. There is lots of supply. Virginia is exporting raw logs. This is okay, but it is better to add value with Virginia jobs. He made an interesting point that just had never occurred to me. He talked about how a pine saw mill could ease a shortage of hardwood logs. Some of the best oak and popular comes as a collateral harvest to mature pines.
What is happening in the state legislature After the panel and after lunch we had a few presentations. The one I recall best was by lobbyist Ben Row. He talked about several of the bills in the legislature. Two of special interest, IMO. One related to timber theft. Many landowners sell timber only once in a lifetime. They are not sophisticated about the sales and can get ripped off. One scam is for a crooked logger to sign a contract paying 50% of up front and the other 50% when the job is done. Sounds fair, but what the crooks do is pay the 50% and then harvest up to 90%. Then they stop. They never finish the job and so never pay the rest of the bill. Another bill related to those hated solar farms. It would allow localities to require owners to present a plan to decommission the solar farm when it is finished. The danger is that solar owners will leave the mess of panels, denuded soils and toxic waste.
I greatly enjoyed the conference. I attend lots of such events. Usually they are good, but this one was so very well targeted to my local issues. I hope they do it again and remember to invite me back.
People who know me know why we burn and what we are doing, but maybe some people who saw the post about our Brodnax burn don’t know me, so let me explain. Fire is an important factor in southern pine ecology. Too often, we have excluded fire with negative effects. We are burning on our lands in Virginia to restore the balance. It will encourage the growth of understory plants, including habitat for pollinators and wildlife like quail and deer.
We have also thinned our forest, so that the trees are spaced widely enough to allow sunlight to hit the forest floor to allow that growth mentioned above.
You have seen pine forests that are so thick that almost nothing grows on the ground under the trees. This is an efficient way to grow pulp and timber, but produces a mono-culture that does not share the environment.This is not what we prefer.
Trees are more than just wood and a forest is more than just trees. A more complex and complete ecology is a thing of sublime beauty, that has value beyond its “use” to us. On our Freeman unit, we have thinned about 80 acres of 22-year-old loblolly to 50 basal area (trees are far apart). We are establishing pollinator habitat and restoring longleaf pine. Longleaf pine ecology is the most diverse in non-tropical North America. Of course that ecology includes more than just the trees, as discussed above. We also planted some bald cypress in the damp rills.
Our Diamond Grove unit is 178 acres, of which 110 acres are in loblolly pine planted in 2003. The balance is stream management zones, mostly hardwood – a lot of beech,maples & tulip trees. We will thin the pines in 2020. I think will go with 80 basal area, not so thin, but still with some light hitting the ground. I will clear 5 acres near Genito Creek and plant that with bald cypress.
This fire is on our Brodnax property. We are patch burning 45 acres: 15 +/- acres each year in rotation. This provides diverse wildlife habitat.
First picture shows the Brodnax burned section. The loblolly there are about 30 years old. Next is thinned Freeman. Those trees are 22 years old. We will burn in December or early next year. We are planting openings with longleaf. Picture #3 shows newly planted lobolly. There were planted in 2016. They are genetically better trees and have grown very fast. Last two are videos from Freeman. It is not so much what they show but the sounds of the peepers in the first and the running water in the second.
Great fire today. Seems the perfect fire. The rule is that black (char) is good. White (ash) is okay. Red (burned to the clay) is bad. My inspections found all black. And when I kicked under the duff, I found that the dirt under was still moist in most places. We had moderate winds &moderate temperatures, but the big factor was that we had damp and cool soil and dry grass and brush. Perfect. Of course, I will know that for sure only when I see what grows in the spring.
Adam Smith from DoF did the planning and honchoed the operation. I got the easy assignment of laying the fire lines along the roads, while the DoF guys did strips inside the forest. Alex’s friend Colin Michał came down and got to lay a fire line along the stream.
Pictures show Adam, Colin and me. Others are various fire photos.
I planted more than 400 tree today: 50+ bald cypress & 350 longleaf pine. I understand the professionals are much faster, but it is a lot of me. I also planted in smaller batches and with more thought. For example, I plant the bald cypress in sunny but wet places, not just in straight lines, and I am planting the longleaf in patches.
It was a nice day, sunny & around 50 degrees. It is nice to be out and doing something. I like to imagine what the trees will look like when they candle this spring and maybe decades from now.
I was listening to relevant audio programs. I finished one on evolution and one on dynamism in nature, which is some of the same thing.
The audio book was called “Inheritors of the Earth.” I actually listened to it about a year ago, but I wanted to revisit. The theme is that nature is dynamic. The author talks about deep time. When you look at it this way, being native doesn’t matter. Very few things are where they developed.
Longleaf have their own “native” story. It is likely that something like the longleaf ecology has been around for tens of thousands of years, however it was not where it is now. Longleaf ecosystems, or maybe proto-longleaf ecosystems, likely developed on the coastal plain of Norht America, but at a time of much lower sea levels. So the longleaf coastal plain is now underwater, the continental shelf.
I like to think that we are restoring longleaf in Virginia, but what does that mean? They were “native” to our state in 1607, but so what? We often take first European settlement as the base-line for “natural” America, but is was no more natural then than it is now. We really are not restoring as building an ecosystem with the natural principle of the longleaf ecology.
Anyway, I have confidence that it is good.
My picture is the end of the day. I just barely got the last trees in the ground before dark. Days are short this time of year.
Spent the day planting bald cypress in some wet spots on the farm. I listened to the Great Courses while at it. It seemed appropriate to hear about evolution when in nature.
Evolution explains lots of things, but it I can see why some folks don’t like it. Of course, the reason often given is religion, but I don’t think that is a real issue. You can still have faith in transcendence even if you recognize the mechanism of evolution. I think the greater reason why people dislike the idea is that they dislike the idea of emergence. Emergence takes away not only the idea of a plan that we can figure out, but it also removes heroes and villains, and people like to have heroes and villains.
The audio program is what Darwin didn’t know, as you see in the attached. Mostly they are talking about advances in genetics. Darwin postulated the idea of evolution, but he had no idea of the mechanism. Mendel and genetics were still in the future.
What Darwin actually got wrong is that he thought that evolution always went very slowly and that everything was gradual. In fact, evolution sometimes moves very quickly. Nature is resilient. I say that often. And nature is resilient because of the process of evolution. Everything changes and adapts to changing circumstances.
