Tag: the farms

Burning Doubt
I will never beat the feeling of dread when I see my scorched trees after a fire. They are not burned, but the heat plumes rose more than thirty feet. Science and experience tell me that things will be okay and that the fire is a necessary and useful part of southern pine ecology, but I can know all that and still not feel it. I am happy to report that – again and as expected – my fears were overblown. The trees on the most recently burned patch are greening out with new needles, as you can see in my first picture. The burned are in the distance. I have closer pictures but I liked the panorama. The longleaf that we burned last year are looking great, as you can see in the next picture. A forest is more than just the trees, but the trees are the first thing you see and the one that sets your mood when looking to the forest.

My management strategy for all our tree farms is atypical for Brunswick County and I am not exactly sure how it will work out. Let me rephrase – I have an idea what I want and a bit vaguer idea of how to get there, but I have lots of doubts about conditions on the ground and what will happen when I make changes.

Don’t Copy Nature; Do Try to Understand Natural Principles
A diverse ecosystem that respects and uses natural principles but does not merely mimic nature, that is what I want on my land and what I hope to learn from my land. When talking to people generally, I often use words like “restore.” People like the idea of restoration. I do too, but I know restoration is not an option. We have too many changes in Virginia, too many invasive plants and too much human interaction ever to restore what was once here. Beyond that, there would be no way to know what you should restore. Even with precise (and impossible to obtain) information about what was here and how everything was connected, in what year was everything exactly the way it should be?

The answer is never. Nature is never finished. Virginia of 1608 is different from but not better than the Virginia of 2018 or how it was during the last ice age or when dinosaurs roamed Our beloved longleaf pine ecosystem began its development on coastal plain exposed by much lower sea levels during the last ice age and “invaded” this land as its home range disappeared under the rising seas.

All we can do is move forward using the principles in an iterative way, trying something, learning something and then trying again with the profound understanding that this too is passing, and knowing that much you get from being in nature is being in nature.

You Can Never Walk Twice in the Same Forest
When I fell in love with nature, it was the feeling of the eternal that attracted me. In nature, I saw permanence, belonging and balance. Sure, we foolish humans often upset the balance. I blamed ignorance and greed. It was an easy morality tale. But I expected that if we left it alone long enough, nature would come back “as it should.” I thought my opinions were science-based, but they were not. Today what I love about nature is the impermanence. Each moment is unique to be appreciated for what it is. A small alteration may grow into a great change that everybody sees or maybe you won’t perceive it at all, but (paraphrasing Heraclitus) you cannot walk twice into the same forest. That is what I love now.

… And Know the Place for the First Time
It is a shame that the term “know your place” carries with it so many pejorative connotations, but I am going to use it here in a positive, maybe even a transcendent way. Looking back over my life, I think that I have spent it trying to know my place in human society and in the greater nature. Before I get anybody excited about the meaning of life, let me say that I have not found it and I know that I never will. This is not a despondent thought. No, it is a glorious one to know that you cannot know, and feel your own impermanence. It means you can enjoy all the steps on the journey. I have brief glimpses, epiphanies sometimes when I am in the flow, almost always when I am engaged with natural systems. It is a mystical feeling that I can report but not properly describe, when I feel part of all that was, all that is now and all that will become. I know others have had similar. The moments do not last long, but the memory sustains.

I don’t know what I would do if I was deprived of contact with nature. I don’t think I am strong in that way. I think I would crumple at being removed. My place is as an interacting part. Pull it out and there is nothing more.

What’s Happening Down on the Brunswick Farms
Lots of interesting developments at the farms. The thinning looks good. I walked all over the place and came up with hundreds of things I want to do. Now I have to narrow it down to a couple I can accomplish. You see the thinned pines in picture # 3. I took that picture through the wildflowers in front of them. Speaking of restoration, you know that lots of those beautiful flowers are not native. This is not a picture you could have taken in 1607, or more correctly painted. But the changing landscape conforms to natural principles. Queens Ann’s Lace, a beautiful flower in the carrot family, had been in North America for more than 300 years. It has earned its place.

Next is (right above) one of the pollinator habitat plots. I want to thank NRCS for helping with this. We got a grant to help defray the costs of seeds. I have more, but I include only one, since they are just starting. We got them in late because the seeds were hard to get. You can see the sunflowers coming up if you look closely. They will provide quick cover and the perennial warm season grasses and forbs will come in after. Sunflowers are “native” to North America, but this variety is not from around Virginia. Again, what does native or restoration really mean anyway?

Above are some bald cypress I “discovered”. I knew that my friend Eric Goodman had planted them in 2012, but I never could find them and thought they died out. The recent harvest next to them revealed them and is now giving them the sun they need. They are in a wet rill (pictured below) and should do well with the more sun. They are doing okay now. I found a couple dozen.

Below shows both sides of the fire line. We are burning 1/3 of this track each year, creating patches of early succession landscape.

Below shows our 2012 plantings from the area under the power lines. Some people hate power lines and they detract from use of land, but on the plus side they provide long narrow acreage of early succession habitat.

Went down to the farms to look at the thinning and burning.  Besides just being in my forests and checking on those things, my goal was to try to get rid of some of the ailanthus.  It is an endless struggle. I wish that other – useful – trees were so resilient.  I have trouble telling ailanthus from sumac at a distance and sometimes even close.  I don’t doubt that I have been knocking off sumac too.  Sumac, I like so I am not happy about that.  Sumac does well with fire, at least that is what I observed.  I see a lot of it sprouting from the roots after the burns.

I still worry that the Brodnax fire was a bit too hot.  The heat plumes scorched the needles. Some of the local guys who know fire told me that scorch does not kill southern pine, and that they would come back.  I looked carefully today (see picture).  Most of the trees have some green again.  They will probably make it. Still, I think in future I will want only dormant season burns, and certainly not after they have candled.  The anxiety is too much.  You can see the picture of what the trees on the other side of the fire line looks like.  The fire top killed the hardwoods.  On this land, we are doing patch burns, one-third each year, so we will go after the far section next year and the adjacent one year after that.  That will give us a chance to see the variation and maybe start over again.

Longleaf are doing well on the Freeman place. I went after a few ailanthus among them and knocked out some sweet gum and yellow poplar for good measure.  None of them were big problems.  I think the fire does a good job on them.  Still not sure if we will burn this next year.  I keep going back and forth about it.  Not even sure if I will burn the thinned acreage. The cutter, Kirk McAden, did a really good job and made easy to use fire lanes.  We are going to plant a couple thousand longleaf before Christmas this year.  We have around five acres of that we clear cut. The trees were twenty-two years old and the tract had not been thinned. I feared that if we thinned they would be too likely to be damaged by ice or wind storms.  They had been growing so tight that they did not develop strong enough roots or branches.

I am going to replant myself and get he kids to help.  That may be a good reason to burn, to clear up some of the crap so that they will have an easier time.  Next year (2019), we will plant a lot more into the openings (we created ¼ acre openings on every acre, i.e. 80 acres x ¼ acre or 20 acres total.   Along with some trees under to loblolly, that will be around 10,000 trees.  I think I will need to hire a crew to do that.  It is a bit too much for the kids and me.

Loblolly are just easier to grow than longleaf.  I was looking at the Brodnax place where we planted about 30 acres of loblolly and a little more than 15 of longleaf in 2016. The loblolly now come up to my waist and they are competing well with the vegetation, see the picture below. The longleaf are still in the grass stage and I am not sure the ones in the vegetation are even alive.  We burned last year. This top killed the hardwood brush by the other vegetation came up like mad.  You really don’t need to plant loblolly at all.  They come up whether you want them or not. There are probably twice as many loblolly now growing than we planted.  In theory, the planted ones are better genetically and will grow faster.  We will see in a couple years if the rows are much better than the random.  I bet that there are more natural regenerated loblolly on the longleaf plots than there are longleaf.
Anyway, thinking about how the forests are growing is a great joy.  I have an idea of what I want and I guess about how it will play out, but it is always a surprise.

Picture up top shows the loblolly among the ground cover on Brodnax.  The first one below is the longleaf on Brodnax. You can see the difference Bu.t they CAN grow similarly.  The next picture shows a longleaf and a loblolly on Freeman.  Both were planted in 2012 and they are just about the same size. Below that are pictures of the un-burned and the burned one next to it.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I dislike how it looks right after a harvest and I should probably avoid it for a little while, but I must look. I know this is a necessary step and it will be better soon. On the plus side, I think it is looking like the widely spaced ponderosa pine I like so much in the west and I know it will be great wildlife habitat in as little as weeks. I want it to have an herbaceous, grassy ground cover like is developing under the longleaf shown in picture.

In the next couple weeks my friend Scott Powell will plant pollinator habitat on loading decks. For the record, this is the list of the types of plants in “pollinator habitat” plantings in Virginia, in case somebody else wants to plant such things – Little bluestem, splitbeard bluestem, purple top (NC or VA ecotype), bearded beggartick, lanceleaf corepsisis, Indian blanket, partridge pea, evening primrose, black eyed Susan, narrow sunflower, purple coneflower & eastern showy aster. The seeds will spread into the woods.

To remind about the overall plan – We thinned 80 acres of 22-year-old loblolly pine to 50 basal area. We also made clearings of around a quarter acre in each acre, i.e. twenty of them. We will plant longleaf into these clearings. They will grow into what foresters who work on longleaf call “domes” because the trees in the middle grow faster than those near the edges, where they get less sun.
Reference on ecological forestry

• 

• 

Went down to the farms to see the harvest. We are thinning around 80 acres to 50 basal area (trees very far apart). We are also clearing 1/4 acre on every acre and clearing about four acres that were overstocked.

My plan is to plant longleaf on the 1/4 acre clearings and on the four acres, as well as some under the remaining loblolly. The idea is that we will do a final harvest of the loblolly in about ten years and the longleaf will be established.

In the meantime, the thinned acreage will be wonderful wildlife habitat. We will burn and plant pollinator habitat, which will also make the diverse habitat even better.

My pictures show the harvesting. Clear cuts look like hell,but they are wonderful habitat in the year after, especially for bobwhite quail. The early succession habitat provided food and the brambles that inevitably grow provide cover.

First picture shows the machine doing the thinning. The machine grabs and cuts the trees. Next shows a cutter and a chipper. After that is a log truck arriving. Last is video of the thinning. It is a little hard to see the machine.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Went down to the farms. Still not much action. Spring is a little late this year. An interesting thing is in my second picture. I am calling these Lazarus trees. They sure looked dead, but if you look close you see that they have new growth. It is not much yet, but seeing any is odd.
I did a few hours of vine pulling and clearing at the Brodnax place. I have kinda given up doing this on Diamond Grove. My logic is that Diamond Grove is bigger (110 acres), so it is impossible to get at all of them, and it will be thinned in couple of years. That will knock down many of the vines.The Brodnax place has a stand from 2007 that is only 24 acres, so maybe manageable, and these trees are younger and so are the vines climbing them. If I get at them sooner, they will not cause so much damage and not be able to seed.

Funny thing happened today, however. I like to push through in a straight line, pulling and cutting maybe ten feet in each direction. I worked for about 3 hours when I noticed a dirt road ahead. I was a little surprised, but I sometimes find new things on land, things I missed. When I got to the road, however, I saw it was the same one I had come in, about a hundred yards down. I know that you tend to go in circles when you are lost, but this was a really graphic example. In my defense, I was not trying to pay close attention, but I do recognize my limitations.

First two pictures are the longleaf fields. The second show the Lazarus tree. Next two are the cu-over. In real life, you can see some of the little trees. They do not show up well on the picture. Last trees are my thinned trees on the Brodnax place. We will plant pollinator habitat on the dirt in front in a couple weeks. Should be very nice. I like the look of the thinned trees. They remind me of ponderosa pines in the west.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Friday started off warm and balmy, but by the end of they day a cold wind began to blow. It was good for kites, as you see in my first picture.

Saturday morning I headed toward Southside. This is my usual Loves photo. Gas is $3.33. My mobile phone cannot seem to focus on the prices. They dance in the photo in ways they do not to the naked eye.

This has been a cool spring so far, so the trees and plants are a bit behind schedule. This is my least favorite time of the year, but in a couple of weeks it will be one of the best. Things are dull now, but there is a promise of better.

The last two pictures are from our Brodnax place. It looks barren now, but it will be verdant shortly. There is more to the picture than a latter day Andrew Wyeth Christina’s World. Look on both sides of the road. on the left are lobolly; to the right are longleaf. We burned that side in November last year. You can see this on the last picture. It was not a very hot fire, so a lot remains standing, but I think that it did the job. I am not finding enough little longleaf. We may need to plant a few more in November. I ordered 3,000 from Bodenhammer in NC. Looks bleak. Wait for it. In a couple of weeks it will be wonderful green and then full of flowers in June.

Middle picture is Walmart in South Hill. Say what you want about Walmart, you get lots of stuff at low prices. I usually stop there and get my staples – coke, beer and Cheerios for lunch.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Almost time
Almost time for the growth to burst out. My friends are getting ready to plant pollinator habitat in April and I have ordered longleaf to plant in November. Right now it is just waiting. We had a cool March and spring is a little behind average. That means it will burst forth with even more vigor.

My pictures show my longleaf. Last year they were a little farther along, but they will be online soon. Next is from the 2007 loblolly. I thought I should pay some attention to them. If I knock off the vines now, they will be better off a few years form now. My third picture shows a path a carved through the vines. That takes care of a few acres. A drop in the bucket, but something. After that is the outside of that stand. There are 24 acres of 2007 loblolly. Last picture in 1990 loblolly thinned last year. I expect big growth this year now that there is more light, water and nutrients. There are 45 acres of 1990 loblolly.
 

It was cold & windy today on the farms. I have said before but will say again that this is the least attractive time of the year on the farms, but one of the best times to look around, since it never is so open as now.

My longleaf are okay. The ones we burned a few months ago have buds, hard to see but there. The ones on last year’s burn also have buds. I could not see the top buds, since they were over my head, but I got a picture of a branch. Both are below.

I spent a lot of time pulling vines. It is good exercise & satisfying, but ineffective. I am not going to stop the vine pulling, but I think I will spray Diamond Grove at the end of this growing season for thinning in 2019-20. The spray will take out most of the vines and give the trees a year to put on extra weight. The benefits will continue after the thinning, as the remaining trees will get to take full advantage of the sunlight, space and water w/o vine competition.

The longleaf show up well now against the yellow grass and the generally dead stalks. There are a few empty places where we need to plant replacements. I am going to get the kids to help. I need to make paths so that they don’t get hung up on the brambles. I want to make the experience as pleasant as possible. It is hard work enough w/o hostile brambles. Best would be to burn, but I want to get them in the ground by November and I doubt it will be a good burning opportunity after growing season but before November. The stalks and brambles will not be dry enough.

The fire burned off the lower branches, which is as it should be. I think that when they get their growth this year, they will be spectacular.

My last picture is Diamond Grove Road. You can see my car at the end of the road for size comparison. I usually take the picture from the other direction. Because of the peculiarities of road construction in 1960, the road goes through our land instead of being the boundary. We own about 100 yards in on the east side of the picture, so we can keep it looking nice on both sides.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•