Future Forest

We've had large tree plantings three times in various areas of our property or my late father's. One was on one acre at the lower end of a field, near bridge and a bend in the creek. Two years in a row our neighbor planted corn there and had that one part wiped out by the creek deciding to come up and over the road and field. Planting it is trees that don't mind a bit of wet in (I think) 2013 has yielded this:

They have had 12 growing season, now, and are starting to look like a little forest instead of a bunch of lined-up sticks.

The 2020 planting got very weird. Planting was arranged in the fall of 2019, but when 2020 rolled around . . well. Planting starts in the far south, and the crews work their way north just ahead of the spring weather planting bare-root seedlings. By the time they got to Maryland, lockdown happened and they weren't allowed to go any further north. My husband called everybody and their dog trying to find places to plant thousands of extra trees that had been headed for Pennsylvania and New York state.

We had been scheduled for 6 acres of planting to 'retire' pastures my father wasn't using any more. I don't know HOW much we ended up with, but it was a lot.

That hill in the middle left of the picture is planted on all sides; probably a couple thousand trees. It'll be interesting to see how this all changes over the next twenty years.

The 2020 crew was folks from Jamaica. Most or all of them were fully deaf or hard of hearing. I guess they grouped them together so they could have one sign-language translator for the whole group. At one point, my 80-yr-old, white-bearded father put on a suit jacket (with his jeans)(?) and went up to see how they were doing. From their point of view, an elder came walking across the field, nodded to them, and then disappeared into the forest and was not seen again. They thought he was an appalachian spirit of some sort.

You just never know.

Land Management and College

I have posted at length about my son's struggles with health/adhd/college, but . . one more. The fisheries major requires a course called Bio494 Independent studies. "Independent" is a slight misnomer, since the student has to be supervised by a professor (none are available) or a business/agency that can sign off on the hours worked and such. Son started trying to get a job relevant to fisheries/stream health back in January, I kid you not. He had the usual struggles that Gen Z faces with hiring (I'll try not to rant and fuss, but sheesh!). Now we're actually IN summer.

Son, Husband, and I finally came up with a plan for him to do forestry/invasive species removal/stream health surveys, etc, on our own property, and have a professional forester my husband knows well sign off on the paperwork. There was a lot more frustration involved with setting this up than seemed necessary.

So. Send a little energy and good luck his way as he picks up a chainsaw this week to begin a forest thinning process called 'crop tree release'. Very thick saplings crowd each other and grow much slower than they could.

If you pick some good ones, and cut out the ones on either side to give them extra space, they grow MUCH faster and the forest regenerates from a harvest more quickly. Plus the cut trees on the ground enrich the soil, harbor mushrooms and bugs, all kinds of goodness.

Maddening. A fully-loaded gooseberry bush (the tiny berries still have the spent blossom hanging on) that will cast ALL its fruit before they get any bigger than peas. I had a gooseberry bush at my farm twenty years ago, and it set fruit and then lost it every year. I asked a person from the Ag services, and he told me that there was a pathogen (connected to white pine? maybe?) that caused this. To get fruit, I'd have to spray it every two weeks from the flower stage onward. I didn't want to do that, both because it's too much hassle and because I just don't want a food plant around that can't do its job without chemical warfare.

This massive, luxurious bush down at Home Farm made berries one year, about five years ago, and since that time it has just dropped the fruit like mine used to. I'm going to cut it down (grumpily, probably whilst cussing) next winter.

The lovely barn behind it my father built when I was a child. It was the barn for goats. It's been empty since 1992, but it will soon be a mews for a hawk. For a while. Then, who knows?

This (erosion) is a mess, and I don't know what to do about it. Fixing something that big takes large equipment, and also stuff like complicated government permits. (Pinching my nose and looking haggard)

Odd heaps of soil, trash, and beautiful flowers. My father's legacy, in one image.

Chilly Day

I decided to take advantage of the chilly weather to put on my denim jacket and go cut brush in the field. I've been working on it, a little at a time, for a YEAR now.

This tangled mess extended at least 50 yards, but today . .

standing roughly in the same spot, I can see a long way! Of course, I had help.

A ferocious guard-cat, extra-spicy.

and Nutmeg, nibbling many leafs. Hero attended, and spent most of his time rubbing his itchy hide on trees and leaving clumps of gray and white hair around. I'm sure the nesting birds will enjoy that.

So much water drains off the mountain in spring. There are springs, seeps, underground creeks (you can hear it bubbling under there!) and wetlands both temporary and permanent. I really want to get some shrub-type willows started here to support the edge of the creek. I put out a few last spring, and I'm curious if they survived the winter. Maybe today I can go cut a bunch of little branches from the Streamco and pussy willows and try to root them.

More-or-less all of this area:

is permanent wetland; it has its share of really interesting plant species but also a depressing amount of invasive thorn bushes. I would LIKE it to be full of elderberry, buttonbush, spicebush, hazelnut, swamp alder, and willow. The little white dot and the larger gray dot in the field are Nutmeg and Hero.

We planned in 2019 to have a 6-acre area of old pasture at Home Farm planted in trees. 2020 spring planting season came - with complications. The planting crews work from south to north to catch the early spring weather as it rolls up across the country. When they got to Maryland, they were 'stuck' and couldn't go any farther north; everything was shut down for Covid. My husband, who was a forester for the state at that time, got on the phone to anybody he could think of who could take the thousands of seedlings that had been scheduled to be planted in Pennsylvania and New York. We ended up planting quite a lot extra at Home Farm, too. This hill has cedar and pine regeneration lower down, but was quite treeless across the top. The new saplings, after four growing seasons, are poking out of the protective tree tubes, now, and flourishing.

In about ten years, it will be starting to look like a young forest, here. With a little luck.

The Tuesday farm report:

I took Hero's hay way out to the far pasture because he has been spending too much time hanging around the barn (where the hay net is) and I know it's not good for his mental health. While I was lugging the hay I also had pruning shears tucked under my arm (and a cohort of dogs and cat). Today I'm going to plow through the thorn bushes between the fence and the creek.

It was SO muddy. Every step was a slog or a squelch.

An hour and a half of mud and grumbling; there is now a wide, clear path through there. My shoulder may be very upset with me tomorrow; I pulled a lot of the smaller bushes up like weeds. There is also the strangest bent poplar tree:

It apparently fell over when it was much smaller, but had just enough support from a neighbor tree and just enough roots left in the ground that it lived. It sprouted new "trunks" and is just hanging out, living life. Quite a good place to sit and listen to the stream.

Picking away at this a bit at a time - but OH how I wish I could use a flamethrower!! IF I can get the large thickets cut down, then my husband will be able to mow the area with a brushhog in the future. Also, any bushes that resprout in the spring will be like catnip to Nutmeg; tender green shrubs are a goat's favorite!

There's a scrawny hawthorn tree in here that was preciously crowded by two other trees. As they have both died off, the hawthorn ought to grow much bigger in the next year or two. I don't forage haws (too bitter) but the wild birds love them and they are a good food source in winter. I'm going to pile some of the deadwood around the base of it, as a long-lasting fertilizer source.

Monday

Busy Monday (I work at home, why are busy Mondays so common?) I did paperwork/billing paying/insurance checking and other small [annoying] tasks early on, then late in the morning I got my gear on for working outside. This reliably puts both dogs into hysterics. It took me longer than I wanted to get heavy jeans/socks/hair-braided/work hat/pruning saw/pruning shears/oops-I-forgot-camera and all the nonsense put together. Scooped up Baxter because he enjoys when I work in the far field. Off we went, a 200 yard commute.

There is a narrow stretch between the field and the creek, and we DON'T want it to become completely overgrown with brush and invasive thorn bushes. My husband got one strip mowed with the tractor and brushhog, and I'm trying to further that improvement with hand tools.

You can see, looking south, that it's quite thick. Not quite impassible, but you'd need heavy jeans and boots to get through there.

The other direction, you can see where I cleared a bit last time I was here. Baxter is helping (yellow arrow).

After an hour and a half, during which time Nutmeg joined us and nibbled things with great interest, I had made some good progress.

Shrubs such as spicebush and elderberry get left; they are both native and useful (to wild birds or to me). I am, as you can see . . never lonely.

Off to the left, at the top of the field . .

. . green marks the areas that were full of bushes when I started, and red marks all the places I piled up cut material. Some will get burned and some will be left to decay naturally. My winter fitness program, in a nutshell.

Slow Pace

I haven't made a LOT of progress cutting brush in the far field - but it's non-zero.

There's a lot of open space there that wasn't there before! Nutmeg continues to relish browsing on the bushes I cut down, nibbling twigs and rosehips. If I turn 180°, you can see that the mess continues - seemingly forever! {sob}

("More for ME," says Nutmeg) There is a really nice wild crabapple tree here, and it should be absolutely covered in blossoms in the spring. I will try to remember to get photos.

CREP

Don't worry, that actually stands for Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). We did a big tree planting with their assistance in 2004, one around 2013ish, and one in 2020 (that one got weird).

The one from 2013 was planted because the creek had repeatedly risen up over the road and crossed on section of field, eroding it. We made a joint decision with my father to 'retire' an acre and plant it in tree species that can stand up to wet sites and stream abuse! Black walnut, sycamore, black locust, and wild cherry.

At the end of summer my husband had to prune it a little, because there were branches reaching out toward the road. We didn't want the road crew to come through and butcher them. They're starting to be a little forest, though, and in another ten years the area will look wonderful! The next time the creek decides to flood that direction, the trees will hold the soil.

   I’ve been stuck in the house more than I’d like, and (in the dogs’ opinion) not walking nearly enough. Today I took them to a spot on the farm where I could have an unchallenging walk, admire the 2020 tree planting, and let the poor, poor, understimulated dogs have some fun.

   Large-scale tree plantings like this are common in our area, where a lot of land previously used for agriculture is now being ‘retired’. We had planned about 6-ish acres of planting in the fall of 2019 (the DNR guys do the planning and order trees in the fall; planting is done in March and April). Of course, Covid hit. The crews of workers were already in the US and couldn’t return home, but they were also not able to go everywhere they needed to plant trees because of travel restrictions. All the trees ordered for New York state, for example, had to either get planted somewhere else or get thrown away. We took So. Many. Extra Trees. The hill in the first picture was completely planted with unplanned trees. Call it Future Forest Surprise?

   They’ve had two growing seasons, and they are looking pretty good. A lot of them have either popped out of the top of their little shelters or will do so this summer. They’re planted pretty close together, assuming that there will be some mortality due to deer, dry summers, or voles ruining the roots.

   The most important, thing, of course, is that the dogs had a nice walk and sniffed many interesting smells!

Feb 16, 2022

Trees continued

   Our neighbor had a thinning done in the section of forest next to our pasture. I’m somewhat dubious about it. It seems TOO thinned.

   There are still trees there, but there’s going to be an awful lot of sun on the forest floor. A hundred years ago that would have made no difference; there would have been native tree seedlings popping up too thick to walk through. Now, though there are so many non-native invasive plants in our area. I feel like this forest is going to EXPLODE with briar bushes, mile-a-minute vines, stiltgrass, and other bad actors.

   Part of the reason for thinning was to create habitat for certain bird species that like young forest. Grouse for one, and a couple of songbird species that only nest where there are thickets of young trees. We’ll just have to see how it all turns out.

Dec 13, 2021