Tag: the farms

Alex and I went down to the farms to look around and see what might need be done. We were a couple of weeks too early. The trees have mostly leafed out, but the pine trees have not started growing yet. Still, everything looks green and healthy. There has been a lot of rain this year, so the streams are full and there is mud on the roads.

We are looking to harvest around 45 acres of loblolly on the new farm. Alex is going to get three bids on the logging. I would like to have it done by end of summer so that we can get new trees in the ground in November-December. I want to try some of those new hybrid trees. They are expensive, so I figure that we can plant them much farther apart and let the natural regeneration fill in between them. We can spray to suppress the brush and let the pines survive. They are supposed to grow 25 feet in five years. If they really grow so much faster, it will be evident in a few years. If not, the natural regeneration will be okay. That is my plan anyway. I think it will be a good experiment.

We will doing some kind of harvest each year for the next years. We will harvest 45 acres of the new place this year and probably get the next 45 in 2016. In 2017, we will do the second thinning on the Freeman property and then the first thinning on CP in 2018. I would like to burn under the trees in Freeman in 2019. Then we get a little rest.

The Freeman property is looking good. The hunt club built their headquarters on six-acres that I sold them for that purpose. It is very attractive building, suitable for parties and meetings.

My longleaf pines are looking good. I did a little bit of work with my scythe knocking down brambles near them and – sadly – taking out a few volunteer loblolly. There are only five acres of these, so my slashing makes a difference. You can see my picture with one of the longleaf pines.  I will get a picture again for comparison each year. The big ones are about six feet high; others are still in the grass stage. They are odd trees. They spend a couple years looking like grass and then they shoot up.

The longleaf were planted in 2012.  You can read about the site preparation here.

Chrissy wanted some rocks to shore up the side of her garden. The local garden shops sell rocks and they cost a lot. On the other hand, they are just kind of lying around on the farm. So I brought some back, saving hundreds of dollars.

The farms are looking good. The picture that I am taking with the truck as comparison is getting harder to do as the trees grow bigger.   I have to get farther back. Above is my recent picture, below is 2009.  We are getting to canopy close, a phase transition.  The farm seems smaller now.  You can’t see long distances.  On the other hand, you can now see into the forest as the lower branches are brush as dying back.

I have to say that it was an act of faith.  I am not sure I ever believed the trees would really grow.  The picture below is near the same place in 2007.  Didn’t have a truck back then, so you can see the boys for comparison.

Besides picking up rocks, I didn’t do much work. I chopped out some brush to protect my bald cypress. This is kind of my pet tree. I figure it will be magnificent someday as long as I keep down to competition, mostly box elders. I have nothing against box elders in general. They remind me of Milwaukee.  Lots of them grew near the railroad tracks where we used to play. But they are weedy and will overwhelm my cypress.  I also pulled out some vines climbing my pines.  We have Japanese honeysuckle.  These are beautiful vines with nice smelling flowers, but they are invasive and can cover trees in short order if left alone. I know that my efforts are only a piss in the ocean, but it gives me an excuse to do something with my trees.  I cut brush and pulled weeds for more than six hours. It was enough exercise to make me very sore the next day.

Coming up from North Carolina, we arrived today at the tree farms. It has been a cool and rainy year in Brunswick County and the trees have done very well.  They are clearly bigger.  The trees on the CP property have reached the stage where the canopy is closing.  Above is the property now and below is the same view nine years ago.

The road is overgrown.  I like it.  The surface is still hard underneath and you can drive on it w/o any trouble, but the vegetation is holding the dirt down a little better.  I expect that it will get worn down during hunting season, when the road gets more traffic from the hunters’ trucks.

Speaking of hunting, the local guys think it will be a good year for deer.  And several members of the hunt club are going after bear.  We saw bear tracks on the farm for the first time.  They have seen a big bear near the farm and one of the guys in the club got a picture of four bears with his wildlife camera.  Bears were gone for 100 years. They are making a big comeback.  I am not fond of them.  I don’t like anything in my woods that could beat me in a fair fight.  They say that the bear is more afraid of me than I am of the bear.   I don’t think that is true.

One of the hunt club guys killed a bear with a crossbow last year.  It took five shots to finish it off and it was still trying the chase the guy up a tree after the fourth shot.
Chrissy insisted that we buy a can of bear spray when we were out west. We didn’t see any bear, but I still have the spray.  Maybe I will start taking it with me.

The local forestry business is good. Markets are good for wood and wood products.  A big help has been chips and pellets.  We are exporting pellets through the Port of Chesapeake.
I talked to a woman whose father buys white oak for Jack Daniels to use in its whiskey barrels.   I have white oak.  I don’t think I can make too much money from it, but I think it would be really cool to know that my wood was used for making whiskey barrels.  She gave me the contact and I will give him a call.

Went down to the forest farms. This is not the prettiest time to visit.  In fact, it tends to be the ugliest time of the year.  Lots of the plants are dead or brown. The pine trees are a little anemic; they will become much more brilliant green in a few months.

On the plus side, you can see better, since leaves and growing plants are not there to obscure. I was happy to see my longleaf pines are still there and doing okay. A few have really started to grow, as you see in the picture.  Most are still in the “grass” stage.

They are building a big new natural gas fired generator near the Freeman place. They are going to expand the transmission lines and lay gas pipelines.  It won’t affect my land directly, but I am not enthusiastic about any changes.  I like things to stay in forestry. But I recognize that development happens and it is probably a good thing for many people.  As I wrote in a earlier post, this part of Virginia is poor.  My forests create few jobs.  The gas generator will do better.

The top picture shows Chrissy on the CP forest road. Trees are getting bigger.  Notice on the side of the road are sycamore trees.  They grew by themselves, but I cut out the brush and thinned them into a nice colonnade. They are growing very rapidly.  I am mildly allergic to sycamore. When I do a lot of cutting, I have to cough a lot.

The middle picture shows one of the longleaf pine seedlings.  I doubt I will ever see this forest mature, but it will be magnificent.  Longleaf used to be very common in the south.  The State of Virginia is working on restoration. My five acres of longleaf are a drop in the bucket, but better than nothing.  Below is me in the new forest.  I think we will cut that this year or next and plant some genetically strong trees that will grow even faster and better. 

The State of Virginia is now also advocating shortleaf pine restoration. I don’t know much about them, but I will see what I can find out. I want to have more diversity in my forests in order to make them more robust and useful for wildlife.  I have to admit, however, that I really cannot identify a shortleaf pine.  I may have some and not know it.  I think they can hybridize with loblolly. 

These are the pictures from the other farms. Above is the boundary between the two regimes on our new forest.  When we harvest the bigger ones, they will essentially trade places. Below is a food plot in the new forest.

Below is the food plot on the Freeman place. 

Below is a longleaf pine.  We planted four acres of them. They are a little too far apart to produce a regular timber plantation, but they will be really nice trees.  I am happy to see many survived.  They are in the “grass stage.” What happens generally is that they take a little time to establish and then they shoot up. 

Below is tobacco growing near the Freeman farm. The Virginia economy used to be based on the horrible weed.  One reason land is relatively inexpensive in Brunswick County is that the tobacco industry collapsed a few years back.  Much of the farmland was replaced by trees like mine. 

We went down to the farms. Trees are looking good. I don’t have any real news beyond the pictures.  Above is the CP road view. That I take for reference.

Above is my reference picture from 2013 with me as reference.  Below is the same place in 2009 with the truck as reference.  The trees are getting too big for the pictures.

Below are the food plots cut for fall.  They are full of bobwhite quail. 

It is colder than I thought it would be, but I expect spring will come while I am still in Virginia.    

I counted the rings.As well as I can count, the tree was about chest high in 1900. It probably took a few years to get there, so it was an acorn maybe in 1890. Oak trees require some cover but a lot of sun.There are other big oaks nearby.My guess is that these oaks were on a property line, where there were other trees but cleared fields in both directions.Fairfax County has good soil for pasture and was an area of mixed dairy farms before it became urbanized.There is a good chance that was this, but I really don’t know.The big tree was actually two trees that grew together.It looks like there might have been a third tree in the middle. 

How different this place was when this tree started to grow. 

I felt bad when I saw the tree was gone, but I don’t want to make this a narrative of loss.  It is easy to fall into a narrative of loss when you really have loss, but we don’t think of the gains. The forest around is growing. Light that now gets to the formerly shaded ground will let other things grow faster and better. There really is no loss.  Back in 1890, a big tree may have fallen down to allow this big tree to grow.  The rings clearly show differences in the decades of growth. The likely cause is other trees crowding in and then being cleared. 

You can see the stump up to, rings next and some other trees growing together, maybe forming future big trees.  On the stump picture, you can see a dime, which gives some perspective.