Author: JohnMatel

I practice social distancing w/o staying at home. Forestry invented social distance. Anyway, I talked to nobody all day, but got to go out.  

Mostly I was checking out what we did recently. It is good news. The logger are mostly done on Diamond Grove. I have not done much on Diamond Grove for the last couple years, since I anticipated this harvest and anything I did would be overtaken by events, like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Now there will be a lot of work, however.   Not sure what to do about the landing zones. My options would be just to do pollinator habitat or replant with longleaf pine. We can have the pollinator habitat under those. I asked the loggers to clear cut around 5 acres that is too wet for loblolly and was getting clogged up with invasive multiflora rose. I want to replant with bald cypress, swamp tupelo and swamp white oak, and consign that whole area to SMZ addition. I have a picture of the clear cut. I will recruit the boys to pile those sticks into windrows and we can burn before we plant next spring.   Brodnax is looking good. I used my new disc harrow to make grooves and planted Southeast wildflower mix. Some are already coming up. Should be very nice.   I had been a little depressed about the longleaf I planted in winter 2018. I thought we fried them in the last fire, but even the really burned ones seem not to have died. I included a picture. All the needles are burned but it is now sending up new green.  

Other pictures show the redbud trees along among my pines. The European version of this tree is called a Judas tree. The story goes that this was the tree where Judas hung himself after betraying Jesus. The tree was so embarrassed that it blushed red. Actually it is more purple despite the name. The tree is very pretty in springtime. It is kind of a nuisance in the pine forest, but I am unwilling to do the things I need to get rid to them, so I might as well enjoy.   I checked out the last group of pines I planted on Freeman. Looks good. It is fun to drive around on the ATV. Makes life a lot easier.

Community is important, even if we have to “social distance.”  

I didn’t properly secure my trailer and it came loose. I stopped on the little road on the way to the Freeman place & soon a hunt club member stopped by to help. This was great, since the trailer weighs a lot. We got it attached right and I continued on the the farm. A little while later Mike Raney drove up. Evidently word traveled fast. Mike used to build trailers and he wanted to be sure I was okay. Very nice of him. I am pretty sure that the mishap was human error, i.e. mine. I probably did not batten it down right. It is less than two miles from where I keep the four-wheeler to our Freeman place. Complacency. Mike could find nothing wrong and there was no trouble on the return trip. As I wrote yesterday, I got 385 longleaf seedlings that Dept of Forestry had surplus because Arbor Day activities were canceled. I had a few patches I missed, so was glad to fill in. The ATV is making life a lot easier. The places I needed to plant are not near the road. Absent the ATV, I would have had to carry everything on my back, probably make a few trips. Now I can just load it on the ATV.   My first picture shows my new equipment – trailer and ATV. Next is the fire break. I planted it in clover. I think it just looks good, the strip of green. I planted in my pre-ATV days. It was hard. The bag of clover was 50lbs. Although it go lighter as I progressed, I had to carry it by hand and then spread the seeds. Below is a video of a little stream in an SMZ. Flowing water is just beautiful and it is cool the way the moss and vegetation has grown first. After that are my Dibble sticks. The one is set up for the plugs and the other is a blade. I needed both. The plug is better for what I want to do, but sometimes I need the other to cut through roots and hard dirt. Unfortunately, I lost my bladed stick. I put it down in the woods and could not find it. I am sure it will turn up. I leaned it on the tree, but it no doubt fell down and it is hard to see.  

Everybody wants to be a farmer at 5pm, but nobody wants it at 5am. That is the saying. I don’t work nearly as hard as most farmers, and I did not get up that early, but it was a hard day of planting. I also planted pollinator habitat. My last picture is lunchtime rest. Chrissy made a little pavilion area with a nice recline folding chair. That is my selfie.

You cannot get much more socially distant than when you are out planting trees with nobody for acres. Dept of Forestry had an extra box of longleaf, since they cancelled Arbor Day plantings. I have some blank spaces for trees, so I was happy to get them. It is a little late to plant longleaf, but I expect most will do okay. It is supposed to rain tonight and then next week.

Forestry has been declared an essential industry (where do you think all that toilet paper and disposal masks are supposed to come from?) You cannot work from home. Virtual trees don’t really grow. Of course, what I am doing is for 20 years from now. Presumably, people will want toilet paper in those days too.

I am also planting pollinator habitat. There were lots of bubble bees flying around, no doubt looking for flowers. My flowers will not be of any immediate help to these guys, but they will come on line in a couple months.

Anyway, glad to be down on the farms.

I listened to “Man’s Search for Meaning” audio book while planting trees. It is by a guy called Viktor Frankl. He was a Jewish psychiatrist, who ended up in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The book talks about that in some detail, but his main point is overcoming hardship, even the most extreme sort that he experienced.

Frankl explains that you cannot control what happens to you, but you have a choice of response. He reject the idea that people are determined. He says that people need to have meaning in their lives, but each person needs to search for it. If you search for happiness you will never find it. Happiness is a side effect of the search for meaning, the desire to do the right thing and then doing it.

It was well worth listening. I read the book back in the 1990s, while preparing for my posting to Krakow. I sure did not enjoy the tales of the camps, but I cannot but admire this man’s morality and resilience. His lessons are valuable. We have choices. We should take our search for meaning seriously, but most other little problems in life do not much matter.
He made a good point re collective guilt. He did not believe in it. Individuals can be guilty. They do not get it from group membership. Frankl gave an example of a woman who asked him how he could write in German after what he had been through. He asked her if she had knives in her kitchen. When she answered in the affirmative, he asked her how she could use knives when so many people had been killed by knives. She got the point.

My first picture is me out standing in my field, planting trees. Next is one of the little longleaf growing after the fire. I worried about them, but almost all seem to have survived. Last picture is a tree-eye view of me planting. I was actually trying to take the picture of the burned pine in picture #2, but the phone was still on selfie mode. I thought this was a good picture to balance. Two pictures do not look good on Facebook. Three is a better balance.

What I want to emphasize here is that crystal clear water in the video. This is the stream down the hill from our harvest, shown in the other pictures. Loggers in Virginia protect the waters of the Commonwealth and my stream management zones make sure of that.

Other photos show my thinned trees. The Diamond Grove place is the first one. We bought it in 2005. You could not see the little trees, since they were dominated by the grass and brambles. Now it is their first thinning.

I take a lot of satisfaction in this harvest. My “hobby” makes some money, supports some jobs and goes into useful products.

And I just love my forests.

Owning the land and being responsible for deciding what to do has changed how I look at the woods. I used to see what was there in front of me, i.e. trees as they were. Now my mind’s-eye view has grown to encompass past, present and future forests, i.e. I remember it was and think of what will be.

Trees are more than wood and forests are more than trees, so I also think about the animals, plants besides trees, flowing waters and living soil – the alpha and omega.
Our forests in Virginia are sustainable, but that is not good enough. We are working toward regeneration, making our forest ecosystems healthier year-by-year, decade-by-decade.
Other pictures show Chrissy on the ATV. She enjoyed riding around. Last two pictures are the harvesting being done by Kirk McAden’s company. Chrissy asked me how I know what to do with our forests. I told her that I don’t know, but I trust people, like Kirk, who do.
That is another thing about being a forest owner. You become intensely interested in the biotic communities on your land AND the human communities that use it too.

I used my new machines to disc and then I planted pollinator mix on Brodnax & Freeman. The Brodnax situation is special. I planted the pollinator mix where the HS kids will plant trees this upcoming Saturday. This used to be a deer plot, which is why it is so flat and clear. I am making two assumptions. The first is that the trees (they are planting loblolly) will not be significantly harmed by the grass and forbs and second that it will be 6-8 years before the new canopy closes. By that time, we will likely have harvested the trees around this place and the seed bank will have spread there.  

My first picture is my area I plowed and planted. The HS kids will also plant under those trees we burned too hot. Next picture is a big white oak. We got poor survival of the 2016 longleaf right next to that tree. I was going to replant, but decided to let around ten acres become an oak-pine forest. I have planted some oak trees, but I am also going to allow natural regeneration from trees like that one. Picture #3 is from the Brodnax SMZ. I just think it is pretty. The penultimate picture is my new Coke holder on my ATV. Last is Loves at Exit 104. I didn’t get a good picture. Too dark. I wanted to take the picture because of the very rapid gas price decline. Gas cost $1.95 at Exit 104. It was only $1.85 in Petersburg.