I decided to cut 45 acres a little earlier than the prime time because I am eager to replant. I will not live forever and I want to have a reasonable chance of seeing my trees mature at least a little. I am looking forward to watching the forest grow. We have about 90 acres of 28 year old pine. Usually, we would let them grow another five years or so. But I cut half for the reasons above. I will let the other 45 acres grow another five years.
In September we are going to plant red clover to cover the ground and provide some nitrogen and biomass. I thought of doing sweet clover, but that can get five feet high in its second year and I don’t want it to top out my little trees. Red clover only gets a couple feet tall. I have never done this before, so I figure there will be some mistakes.
I have more or less settled (after some internal debate) to plant around ten acres in longleaf and the rest with good genetic quality loblolly. I plan to plant the loblolly far apart and count on natural regeneration to fill in the blanks.
I also put my land on the list for biosolids. It will probably be a few years before I get any. My pictures show the harvest in process. We have had a lot of rain too. That turtle is NOT in a pond. He is swimming in my road. The last picture shows my sycamore grove. I just like those trees.
The bottom line is energy consumption. If something consumes more energy to recycle, it is better not to do it. We can add the permutation of toxic materials. We should recycle things that may cause damage.
However, recycling sometimes makes no sense. For example, recycling of office paper is worse than a waste of time. It takes more energy to recycle than to make fresh paper, and since most paper is made from pulp thinned from sustainably grown trees, paper production HELPS forest health.
Glass is inert, like sand. It causes no trouble to the environment. If it takes more energy to recycle glass than it does to dump it, we should dump it.
Recycling as become a kind of act of religious faith. It is past time we figured out when it is a plus for the environment and when it is a liability.
BTW – the biggest sin in recycling is when municipal sewage waste is put into landfill instead of being recycled into fields and forests. Strangely, this elicits almost no protests. In fact, many fight the deposition of biosolids. This is ignorant.
My first farm is still my favorite. I have had the pleasure of watching the progress. The plantation trees, about 110 acres, were planted in 2003. They were the loblolly super trees of 2003. New varieties have since been developed, but these are good. There were also some management benefits. We did pre-commercial thinning and applied biosolids back in 2008. I thought that this was good timing. There is enough fertility in the soil for the first five years because the young forest is living off the decaying brush from the cut. The biosolids gave the boost when needed in the fifth year. We can probably do the first thinning early.
2014 was a good year. It was an unusually cool and wet summer. I was surprised this morning when I went out and actually wanted to wear a light jacket in the early morning. This is August in Virginia. It is supposed to be hotter than this.
The trees have gone through a phase transition this year. They have now mostly closed the canopy, i.e. they are shading out the lower branches. You can see the difference now because you can see into the woods.
About a third of the land – 68 acres out of 178 – is contained in stream management zones or other non-commercial uses. This part changes less.
One thing I have noticed is that there is generally less water in the intermittent streams. I think this is because the pine trees have grown. Their branches are intercepting more of the rain and their roots are soaking more of it up. Nevertheless, it was been wet and you can see the evidence of lots of water. There is mud and sand pretty far up the hills and even on the little stream, you can see that the water flowed over and around the usual beds.
My top picture shows the trees from one of the food plots, now a bit overgrown. Right below is the plot when it was first established with clover in 2008. Below that is Genito Creek. It has a muddy-sand bottom and flows back and forth, undercutting each bank in turn and meandering across a fairly wide area. Next is my road. You can see the way the water made ripples with the pine needles. Below are the sycamores along the path. The path is now covered with vegetation. Finally, the bottom picture shows how the water ran out of the stream bed and over the bank. This little stream stays where it because the lower bed is solid stone. This is one of my favorite places. The water makes beautiful music.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I could get a sheep to eat the grass. I would save time and money on gardening. It would be ecologically sound, as the animal consumes no fossil fuels and fertilizes its own pastures. Beyond that, sheep are picturesque. I thought it would be a biological version of one of those robotic vacuum cleaners that drives around on the floor, turning round when it bumps into something, but generally working automatically. The trouble is that I didn’t know much about sheep.
I thought they were like big dogs that ate grass, i.e. I thought they would be like a pet and behave like a dog. They don’t. Dogs do dumb things, but compared to sheep they are Einsteins. Sheep, I learned to my sorrow, really are just as incredibly stupid as you have heard. The only thing my sheep did, besides eat and shit (see below) was look in the window and baa. They are a lot louder than you suppose. My sheep generally slept when it got dark, but it did not sleep the whole night, occasionally waking up to remind everyone that it was still out there. It kind of warms up, sometime with a low ummm, which sometimes crescendos to a very loud ummmBAA-AAA. I am not sure why it did that. I think it may have seen its own reflection and thought was another sheep.
But that was not the big problem. I could get used to that; maybe even appreciate the bucolic beauty of it all. On the plus side, it did eat grass, and seemed to like the taller grass better, so it was trimming exactly as I had hoped it would. The other end of the process was not so agreeable.
I was prepared for the fertilizer aspect of the sheep. In fact, I considered that a net benefit, as it would make my plants grow better. I have no problem with manure and happily use biosolids on the tree farms. But I assumed that the fertilizer would be mostly deposited on the grass, where it would do some good. No. My sheep evidently walks around on and eats the grass, but holds most of the shit for when it is standing around on the veranda under the roof. Worse, it seems to want to shit as close as possible to the house and most prefers to go right near the doors or windows. And it shits a lot. I soon found my pre-work period would be devoted to shoveling and washing down the patio; I got a similar task when I got back from work. Despite my shoveling and hosing, it was really starting to stink.
I was going to give the sheep a little more time, but the odor was starting to get pretty strong. I planned to be away for a week and a half. The guy who sold me the sheep told me that it would be okay. Independence was a big advantage of sheep. I travel a lot. If the sheep has shelter from the rain, it can be left along. It just stays out and eats grass. I had to make sure it had water, but probably not even that, since the rainy season grass was very wet. The guy told me that it would get enough water from the moist grass it ate. So, I COULD have left it alone, but I figured that if I left it for a week and half, the shit would be knee high when I got back and the smell would knock the proverbial buzzard off the proverbial shit wagon. My plane was leaving that night. I depend on sweet serendipity and a solution presented itself.
The cleaning woman comes by every two weeks and Wednesday was her day. When she showed up around 7:15, she was surprised to see a sheep in the front yard, but not much bothered. Her rural childhood included lots of sheep & goats. She knew what I was just discovering and seemed to find my dilemma very amusing. Courtesy and the fact that I pay her kept her from laughing out loud, but I am sure my story will engender mirth back in the village. It will also provide a sheep. I asked her if she wanted the sheep; she had some relatives with a pickup truck & when I got home after work, my problem was gone, almost. I am not sure where it went, but I don’t really care. I like to think that my erstwhile lawn mowing manure machine is off romping with others of its kind, stinking up somebody else’s yard for an indefinite period, maybe gracing somebody’s table for a somewhat shorter time. No matter. It seemed lonely by itself. After all, sheep are naturally gregarious. The essence of the animal will persist for a while around my house. But I cleaned off the patio and I expect that the strong rains we get around here will do the rest.
My advice, which I allow applies to few people but that I will give nevertheless, is to avoid buying sheep unless you have a way to keep them far from the house. They stink on ice even just standing around and they seem to enjoy crapping where they sleep, not like a dog. If you must get sheep, you probably want a border collie to “herd” them. Just get the collie. Border collies are the smartest of the dogs, they may at least seem to be happy to see you when you come home and don’t crap all over the place.
I was figuring out the rotation on 107 acres of twenty-eight year-old loblolly pine we just got. We will clear cut in five years, let it idle for a year or two, maybe put a few goats on it, and then apply biosolids and replant. You have to plan ahead. As I was thinking about it, however, I realized that my chances of seeing this cycle through are small and if I am still around, I probably will be unable to take part in the operation. I will be compost before this next generation of trees matures on that tract.
The funny thing is that older guys plant the most trees. Of course that might just be because only older guys can buy or inherit forest land. I got the land from a guy in his eighties. He planted (actually directed they be planted) the trees when he was about my age. He gave me a good deal on the land and it seems to me that one reason is that he wanted to give the land to someone who would take care of it. His kids evidently are not much interested in forestry. Sometimes people ask why I plant trees when I am reasonably certain that I will not see them mature. I am not sure. It is just what I do, a kind of habit. Some people say that you plant trees for the next generation. I don’t know if it’s all that true. The little trees are a joy for today too. How does the song go? “A promise for the future and a blessing for today.”
Forestry can be a good investment, provided you have the time. In the long run, reasonably managed pine forestry produces bigger returns than the average stock portfolio. But you have to love it too. I imagine that land management could be an unpleasant chore for some people.
One of the things I like best about forestry is the “diplomacy.” I get to work with local farmers, hunters, foresters, loggers and paper and pulp firms. I find that a lot of people want to use my land and many are willing to help. Local hunters have been very helpful in establishing quail habitat and native warm season grasses. Our interests coincide. They want a healthy wildlife habitat to produce animals they can hunt. I am happy to have my land kept in a healthy state. A guy from a local paper mill helped me get locally grown longleaf pine and bald cypress. We have established an area of “Virginia heritage forest.” Of course this is another forest I will never see mature, but I can picture it in my mind.
Forestry is a good example of cooperation between individuals, government, business and NGOs. The State of Virginia sent a wildlife biologist who gave us advice on which types of vegetation to establish to encourage wildlife and protect soil and water resources. The state gives us training in things like fire management and we get advice on forest health from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).
Virginia Tech holds all sorts of seminars on things like timber management and biosolids. We get advice from the Tree Farm System, America’s oldest sustainable forestry NGO. Dominion Power paid us to manage our land that lies under their power lines. We keep the land in grass and forbs. Wildlife loves it and it doesn’t bother their transmission lines. A local paper mill helped me write a management plan for one of my tracts. We are thinning to different densities. They want to show clients how different management regimes produce different results. The Boy Scouts came down to cut trails and build bridges. The local hunt club maintains the roads and shoots the local varmints. Their presence discourages vandalism and dumping. It is a pretty good system, an integrated social web.
I try to take the kids along when I go to visit the farms. They comment about how happy and friendly everybody seems. That has also been my experience. I don’t really know why that is, but I have a theory, actually it is two-fold. I think forestry generally attracts people with a long term perspective and forestry teaches a long term perspective. It has a calming effect that brings joy in many things. You know your place and can be both active and passive. Forestry is subject to natural laws that cannot be rushed, but if you think ahead, understand the limits and work with the natural systems you can have remarkable achievements. Trying to rush the process produces no good and often a lot of bad, but a little leverage properly informed and a lot of time can make produce big results.
You just won’t live to see most of them. In the long run we are all dead. Once you understand that, you are free to be happy with the life you have.
Alex & I went down to the farms today. It may be my last time in a long time. There was not much I needed to do. I cut down some of the brush that was shading my bald cypress. We are just a little north & east of the natural range of the bald cypress. I figure if we have climate change, we will be right in the middle. Since a cypress can live a couple hundred years, it will spend most of its life in that future. Above are a row of volunteer sycamore trees. I trimmed out the extra ones as well as the box elder that were among them. Below is my bald cypress, which is across the little road from those sycamores. This area is not productive from the forestry point of view, but I am making it aesthetically more what I like.
The meadows are overgrown with yarrow & the white flowering plants are towering over and displacing my clover. Yarrow is supposed to be a medicinal herb and is supposed to cure toothaches and be a disinfectant for cuts. I don’t dislike the yarrow, but I liked my clover better. It has been a little dry lately, which seems to favor the yarrow. Larry Walker and the hunt club planted some wildlife mixture on the top plot. It seems to have a variety of things, including at least some corn, sunflower and soy. Below is the corn-sunflower-soy plot and below that is my overgrown yarrow plow and at the end is the same plot last year about this time. You can see the whole posting at this link.
We established the plots in 2007. There was still a lot of clover last year. Actually, there is still a lot of clover now, but it is under the other stuff. In any case, what we have is better than what we had. The wildlife plots are on the old loading decks, used for the harvests. The soil was compressed and very unattractive. The meadows now are fairly self-sustaining, although not always in clover. I still have a little trouble with the tree of heaven. I am a little worried that the invasive plants will invade while I am in Brazil. They are always waiting their chance.
There have been many changes on the farm. The canopies are closing and as it gets shadier, we have a more open forest. Above is my beech forest, one of my favorite places on the farm. Below is the creek bed. The creek moved a little in the recent rains.
The Freeman tract is doing well. Undergrowth is already starting to grow. The trees were very close together before the harvest-thinning, so most things were shaded out before. Beyond that, my soils are not really good. This part of Virginia has very old soils. They did not benefit from the recent glaciation that improved some of the soils in the Midwest. And they were made worse by the cultivation of tobacco & cotton when people didn’t really understand principles of crop rotation. That means much of the land is not very good for crops, which is why it is under pine trees today. I am trying to improve my soils with the clover and biosolids, but there is a long way to go. Below is the newly thinned pines, planted in 1996, with Alex under them for a size comparison. They grow fast. Now that they are thinned, they will grow even faster.
The boys and I went down to the farms to talk to the hunt clubs and take a look at the forest. There has been a lot of rain recently, so everything was growing well. The McAden Hunt club replanted one of the food plots. Corn and sunflowers are coming up. The sunflowers will be very pretty in a couple of months. I asked Alex to go down and take a picture for me.
The deer plots are becoming more important to maintain a healthy herd. The deer population had burgeoned and there were too many, but the resurgence of local bear populations & the arrival of coyotes have checked the growth. The coyotes, especially, are hard on the fawns. These things are very dynamic and you never get a permanent solution.
I agreed to sell six acres of land to the Reedy Creek Hunt Club. They want to build a clubhouse, skinning shed & dog training places. I am never enthusiastic about giving up land for any reason, but I think the relationship with the club trumps six acres out of 300. RCHC seems like they want to keep the rural character of the place and I want to encourage the local hunting culture, so it is a good thing.
There was no particularly urgent work to be done. We need to plant our longleaf pines this fall or next spring and I want to do an understory burn followed by biosolids applications in 2012 or 2013. I cut down a couple of box-elders that were infringing on my cypress, but that is only a kind of a hobby action.
Of course, I will not be able to get to my woods very often with my Brazil assignment over the next three years. That is why I took the boys down. I want them to do the routine consultations.
It was a kind of hazy-humid day, so my pictures seem a little washed out. The top photo shows the boys walking up the road in our recently thinned pines. Espen was trying to skip stones. I told him that it worked better on water. The second picture shows our clearcut that will be planted with longleaf next to the completely uncut pines that are providing the control plot. Below that is our clover field, now getting overgrown. Next is the new field planted with a variety of plant for wildlife, including soy, corn and sunflowers. Just above this paragraph is Genito Creek that runs through our land. It looks like chocolate milk because of recent heavy rains. It will clear out in a couple days. The silt forms natural levies along the banks. The trees arching over it are river birch, the southern member of the birch family. Below is the bend in my road. There is something attractive about a road bending into a forest. I liked it when I first saw this place, when the trees were knee high and each year it gets better.
One of the great services provided by the State of Virginia is ongoing landowner education. The courses I like are usually hosted by Virginia Tech and I prefer to go to the Southern Piedmont Research Station near Blackstone, VA because that is close to my forest land. Forestry is very localized in terms of soils and climates. I prefer to share the experience with people who work with my kind of tree in similar climates and soil types.
Below is a discussion of precommercial thinning. The Dept of Forestry recommends it to keep the forests healthy. I already did mine.
I attended a field day that included talks on forest road maintenance, carbon credits & pond management, as well as a tour of a local saw mill.
The instructors and my fellow landowners are always very nice to me, but I am strange to them with my northern accent and unusual background. Most of the other landowners are old south & rural and I feel always in the presence of Andy Griffith or Billy-Bob Thorton. They inherited their land, which has often been in their families for many generations.
As the older generation dies off, farms and timberlands are left to kids who have moved away to the cities. They often divide it up among the heirs and sell it off. This leads to fragmentation of the forests. 100 acres in one parcel is not the same as 100 acres divided in to ten or twenty fragments. You really cannot practice forestry on land less than forty acres. We also talked about conservation easements, which might reduce this trend. A conservation easement lowers taxes in return for a contract never to develop the land. It stays in forest or farm. This can be a good thing.
I also went down to my forest to check on the biosolids application. The workers had just finished. There is a little smell to the biosolids, but not that much. The bigger effect is that the heavy machinery crushes down the vegetation, including some of my trees. It would be better to apply biosolids first and then do pre-commercial thinning. There is not that much damage really. The rows are far apart and unless the trees are actually run over by the tires there is a good chance they will recover.
My forest is looking very good in terms of spacing and tree health. There is a debate re how close the trees should be. The closer spacing provides more wood at first, but lower quality. The closely spaced trees are also more stressed and in more danger from insects. Wildlife also does better with more widely spaced trees. Anyway, my choice is more spacing. I am interested to see how much fertilization does for the trees. Most forest owners do not fertilize at this stage and I am one of the first in the area to use biosolids at this stage of the lifecycle. Virginia Tech has studied the applications of biosolids in Southside Virginia. I went to their seminar last year and I trust them, so I am doing what they recommend. We did 132 acres of the 2004 generation. I probably should have left a control plot for comparison.
Below are what the biosolids look like. These particular pellets produced by anaerobic digestion. Some are lime stabilized and in more liquid form. Biosolids are a great circle of life thing – from flush to farm. Wastes are applied to land to produce more growth and life. Virginia Tech has found no significant amount gets into the water supply, even when applied massively beyond what we usually do. People complain about the smell, but I walked all over the place and hardly noticed them. It is a mild fertilizer smell that will go away in a couple of weeks. BTW – this was the place where they piled them for spreading. The actual spread is much thinner.
One side benefit of the application was the paths the machines made through the brambles. I was able to get to places on the land where I never set foot before. In fact, I was so beguiled by the new paths that I stayed too long and almost didn’t get back home in time.
Below is a sweet gum in its fall colors. They are pretty trees, but sort of like big weeds if you are trying to grow pine. This one is near the stream management zone and it is a natural part of the Virginia landscape, so we will let it to grow to old age and I will enjoy its color next fall too. It will be prettier each year.
