Tag: the farms

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Some pictures from my tree farm visits – May 4, 2016. My new plantation is scary. We planted 46 acres: 15 longleaf & the rest loblolly. It is hard to find the little trees. But I remember how hard it was with the first forests in 2005. They are there (I hope). I found some. I also took some pictures of the 2012 longleaf and the loblolly plantations.

The first picture shows new growth on the 2012 longleaf. Next shows loblolly that will be twenty-years old this year. They were thinned in 2010/11 & we will thin again in 2017/18. Third picture is our new cut-over with loblolly in background. There are little trees in there, but they are hard to see. Finally is a picture of a loblolly among the longleaf. I cut it back a few months ago (I have to clip out the loblolly, since they will crowd out the longleaf.) Loblolly is one of the few pines that will sprout from stumps.

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A few more pictures from the May 4, 2016 tree farm visit. The first is a picture of the beech-wood from the stream management zone (SMZ) We protect the water by not cutting near streams and wetlands. Since these places are uncut & generally moist, after a while you get beech-maple forests.

Beech will Not reproduce in full sunlight, so they only show up after trees have been on the land for a long time.

This is contrast to pine, which will not reproduce in their own shade. This you can see in my second picture. Notice the pines in the overstory and none in the understory.

Oaks are in between. They do not like to grow in the shade like the beech, but they also do not need or want full sun like the pines. Growing oaks requires “openings” of at least a few acres. Also oaks can stand some fire. Beech have thin bark and most fires will kills them. Southern pine are actually fire dependent in nature.
So you need to have a different strategy for each ecosystem sustainability. If you want beech-maples, cut a few trees or none. If you want oaks, clear a patchworks and maybe allow some fire. If you want pine, you need to clear cut and burn. Each is appropriate in its own way.

Oaks enjoyed a much better environment a couple centuries ago, when land was cleared and sometimes forests filled in along property lines. It was sunny, but not too much. Ironically both preservation and exploitation are bad for oaks.

However, I planted a few among my longleaf. They can stand some burning and I think it will be a nice complementary landscape. I got twenty-five bur oak and interspersed them. They are the type of oaks Aldo Leopold talks about in the fire-dependent oak-opening ecosystems. The last picture is my crimson clover. I just think it is pretty.

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Finally – the first picture is a little ravine near one of the roads. The road was going to wash into it, so I got 20 tons of rip-rap and made the boys put it in by hand. They still remember that day’s work with great fondness.

The next picture is our wires. Dominion Power in its generosity has an easement of eight acres of my land. We cannot grow trees but the hunt club plants wildlife plots. It is good for the animals.

The third picture is a lonely longleaf seedling that I could find, since there was nothing else growing near it. Hope it survives. I think it will. It has the advantage of being in a place of its own. It will stay in that “grass stage” for a couple years and then (we hope) shoot up like the ones you saw in the previous posts and in the final photo, which is my longleaf panorama. You can see they are taller than the grass now. The danger to them now is ice storms. Their long needles weight them down. This will be a hazard for the next five years. The really terrible ice storms are uncommon. We trust in the goodness of the Lord and the principles of probability to keep them safe.

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Went to the farms to see the new trees planted last week. Alex’s friend Colin came along to help. There are approximately 6525 longleaf pine seedlings and 13,050 loblolly. Although it is hard to see them now, as you (cannot) see in the pictures. The clover we planted last fall is coming up well. You also cannot see that on the big picture, but I expect all will be evident soon. If you look at the closeups, you can see the baby longleaf pine and the new clover.

Longleaf at this stage look like tufts of grass. They stay in the grass stage for a couple years, while their tap roots develop, and then they shoot up. It rained today, which will help secure the future.

It will look nicer in a few weeks and very much nice in a few years. e also went to visit the older farms. There was a big flood a couple weeks ago. It must have been very high water, since it left sand way up on the banks of the creek, as you see in my last picture.

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I am very fond of my small longleaf plantation. I think they will be very beautiful shortly. They are beautiful now. They will be magnificent later. My pictures are from today. I took it from the area of short grass so that the little pines are evident and this time of the year the grass is brown, so you can see even better.

As I wrote elsewhere, I cut out scores of volunteer loblolly and I have been trying to keep down the other competition. These trees were planted in 2012. They are now passed their grass stage and will soon be relatively safe. I have to apply controlled fire soon. Longleaf are fire-dependent. I am both thrilled and terrified. Who doesn’t like to start fires?  But I am afraid it could get out of hand. I will have to make sure I have good help.

Longleaf pines are native to southern Virginia. This is the northern edge of their natural range, but I figure with a little global warming by the time they are big the range will have moved. The biggest threat is ice storms. The long needles pick up ice and may cause the trees to bend.

I have been reading books about longleaf ecology. It is a savanna tree and a mature forest has lots of grass and forbs, making it a very rich ecosystem.

The first two pictures show the longleaf. The last two are the loblolly planted in 1996 and thinned 2010-11. They are doing very well too.

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More on my February forest visits. I checked out the the new cut over and the thought about what to do next. I took advantage of the frozen ground and expected snow to frost plant a little more clover on the verges. We got a fair response from the clover the boys planted last fall, but the deer ate a lot of it. I think it will come back, but I tossed a bit more just case. I planted crimson clover and a hybrid called balanca.

I explored the area around the new gas pipeline. They claim that they are going to plant wildlife mix. If properly managed, they will have a long, narrow meadow, good for wildlife.

My main picture show how the loblolly quickly fill in to any open area. There are lots of little trees in the opening but notice that within the woods there are none at all. They will not grow in the shade of their own parents. The second picture are big loblolly. They will be ready for harvest in about five years. The third picture is the new gas pipeline. When the vegetation grows in, it will be nice and productive grass and forest edge. The last picture is a new cut-over. We will replant within the next couple weeks: 30 acres loblolly, 15 acres longleaf and an acre of bald cypress.

There are advantages to cold weather on the tree farms. An obvious advantage that you can walk on cold ground that would be impassible mud on most other occasions. February is the least attractive time on the farms, but it is useful because you can see the “bones” of the land.

I spent the morning pulling vines off trees and trying to figure out how to shore up my vulnerable stream banks near the roads. I spent the afternoon hacking down non-longleaf trees in my longleaf acres. It is mostly volunteer loblolly. I feel conflicted whacking loblolly that would be very desirable a short distance away. I must have done several hundred. I spent three hours on only five acres. I would have done more and will do more tomorrow, but the sun was going down and I was afraid I would not proper find my way out in the dark. Access is hard in some places because of brambles. You would think I could cut through them with my machete but you would be wrong. They seem to fight back because they are long and flexible. They are likely to wrap around and hit you in the back of your head. But I have worked out what I think is an ingenious solution, but I accept that others might call it a joke. I avoid brier patches when I can. When I cannot, I have a long piece of cardboard. I put the cardboard against the brambles and just walk them down. It is kind of like bridge. Once down, they stay down for a while.

My pictures show the frozen ground that I could walk across, plus one of my nice running streams. Virginia is still the south. Even in cold weather, streams rarely freeze solid.

My last set of February 2016 forestry notes. These are from one of the stream management zones. We do not cut timber in the stream management zones in order to protect the waters of the Commonwealth. And they are just pleasant places to be. I like the big beech trees and they like it in the ravines near the streams.

(BTW – “My” water flows from springs to Genito Creek. From there is goes into the Meherrin River and then into the Chowan River in North Carolina, which flows into Albemarle Sound and eventually washes up near Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers flew. So it is important to keep it clean.) Beech trees have an interesting ecology. They can grow in deep shade and they like the moist soils. The loblolly are the pioneer tree that comes first; they won’t grow in the shade. The beech trees are the established tree that comes last; they won’t grow in the sun. The understory in Virginia has lots of holly. It is the only green leaves this time of year. I suppose that is why they are used in Christmas decorations.

When you see big beech, you know that the place has not been disturbed very much for at least fifty years and usually more. Beech have thin bark and usually will not survive a hot fire. If you look closely at the two trees in the first photo, you will see mostly healed over fire scars on one side. A fire got to the edge of the moist area maybe forty years ago and burned some of the bark before going out. It was not a hot fire and the trees survived that one.

The next photo shows some of the root system. Beech dominate about five acres with some red maples and red and white oaks. Farther down the hill, the beech give way to yellow poplars and sycamore. Up the hill features smaller rockier streams. In the flatter places you get more sun an sycamore.

My penultimate picture show my attempt a water management. I built a little pool with rocks. But water has a way of not working according to plan. It seems to be going its own way, unvexed by my plans for it. The tree in the foreground is a sycamore.
My last picture is the canopy close. The trees have been in the ground for twelve growing seasons and now are thick enough to shade out competition. Some of the less successful trees are already dead or dying. We will thin them in 2018.

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I took Mariza down to the farms to show her around and have a look at the longleaf plantation. The longleaf are doing extraordinarily well. The one I am standing near is one of the bigger ones, but most are well along. I am 6’1”, so you can see the comparison. These trees were planted in 2012. Not bad.

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More from the farms. Mariza and I also looked at the recent cut over. Not much of my clover has come up near the roads, but I was surprised how much had grown since the cut only a few months ago. Lots of the plants are from plants whose seeds blow easily in the wind; others are from roots long shaded int eh old forest or dormant seeds. We will plant 30 acres of loblolly, 15 acres of longleaf and an acre of cypress early next spring. I also have included a photo of the bald cypress I planted a few years ago along one of the streams It is one of my “pet” trees and I take special care of it.        

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We went down to the farms to plant clover on the new cut over, especially on near the trails, where there is more bare dirt. I was surprised how much had grown up by itself since the land was cut in July. Some is hardwoods sprouted from roots, but other plants are coming up from long-dormant seeds. The clover will hold the soil, provide nitrogen and be good wildlife forage. We will plant new trees in spring, about 400 per acre, thirty acres loblolly and fifteen longleaf and one acre of bald cypress. Loblolly will also seed in from the neighboring trees. In fact, left to their own devices, the loblolly would fill in by itself. It would take a little longer and we would not have the same quality trees, however.

Espen, Alex and Colin helped throw the seed. We did it by hand mostly as a form of performance art. I wanted them to be a part of the regeneration. Probably by the next time we do it, drones will handle much of the job.

I also did some work on our longleaf pine experimental plot. We have about five acres planted in 2012. The trees are doing okay. They have moved out of the grass stage (longleaf look like tufts of grass sometimes for a couple years before the bolt out) and some are now around eight feet high. They did a very good job o site preparation, so there is not too much competing hardwood. I did have to take down a couple dozen volunteer loblolly, however. It is kind of sad for me. If those same trees were growing a little distance away I would be delighted to have them.

It is hard work and I am getting a little too old and weak. The next day there were few places on my body that didn’t hurt. I still do the work with hand tools. I suppose I could succumb to modernity and get tools powered by something other than my aging and now aching muscles.

The first picture shows the little longleaf, now in their third year on site. Next is the new clear cut, 46 acres that we will plant next spring. After that are 19-year-old loblolly across from the longleaf. They were thinned in winter 2010-2011 and I think we will do a second thinning in 2017. The first thinning did them a lot of good and the forest is very robust. The last picture is our place on SR 623. The wildlife meadow has quail. Those tree are 11-years-old loblolly. When we got the place, it looks a lot like that clear cut. You can see the forest evolution in the pictures.