Spring work party

The weather in June is at its absolute best here this time of year. Everything is still very green. Temperatures are in the 60s when we get up in the morning, and reach the high 70s by mid afternoon. It's light by 5:00 AM and stays light until 9:30 PM. Blue skies and cool mountain breezes leave us nothing to complain about.

 

I felled 13 trees on Friday afternoon and another 30 on Saturday morning before our guests arrived. They're mostly 7-12" dbh pine, with a tendency to hang up in other trees as they fall. I had a 3-tree domino, a fun thing to watch from a safe distance.

 

Our good friends John and Mara came up this weekend to visit and work. They brought their tricked-out VW camper bus, the same one they use every year for the Burning Man festival.

 

We cleaned up about 1/2 acre where we've finished thinning and pruning. Now, that area is ready to recover. We gathered slash into burn piles, moved other piles into better locations for winter burning, dragged longer logs out of the area, and left 3 ground logs behind. The pine grass and brush will take over and it will be all green by this time next year. Other than having about 2/3 fewer trees, it will look as natural as before.

 

The work goes pretty fast with a 4-person crew. Nonetheless, it's easy to see how slash control alone could take 20 to 30 man-hours per acre.

 

We had a great dinner outside by the summer evening light -- we kept talking and drinking quite late. Suffice it to say, we had less appetite for hard work the next morning. We all had a leisurely breakfast and went for a walk around the property before our friends headed back to Seattle.

 

 

Portable sawmill work to begin next week

I'm very excited to say that the on-site milling of our building logs is scheduled to begin next week. It's supposed to take a week or maybe two.

 

We cut our 120 Douglas Fir house logs last summer, from our 20 acres. The logs are all about 10" d. at the small end, and run as long as 60 feet. They'll be milled into 7x7 inch "cants," which are basically square beams ranging from 10' to 25' long. Those will be stacked to dry and, in some later year (2012?), we'll build a house with them.

 

I italicize scheduled because this work is an imprecise business at best. We had to find a sawyer with the right equipment (which we did). The sawyer has to get his mill on site (it's here) and tuned up (almost done). The log truck needs to load the logs and park them beside the mill for easy transfer. And there needs to be someone, in addition to yours truly, who can support the sawyer by loading logs onto the mill and stacking cants after they're milled, using a front loader with log forks.

 

If I forget to post photos, someone remind me. This should be interesting!

 

 

'Tis the Season for Felling Ponderosa Pine

Now that the Summer Solstice has passed, we're comfortable cutting pine. We've been cutting fir so far this year, and there has been plenty of it in this year's target stands.

This is part of our continuing thinning from below to reduce fuels and improve forest health. We avoided cutting pine this season until now, because fresh pine slash is like catnip to those pesky little Ips pine bark beetles. In 1991 the western pine beetle was responsible for the death of 21,679 trees over 28,159 acres resulting in a loss of 1.267 million cubic feet of lumber -- and it's been getting worse ever since. Even so, it's tragic to see even one tree, a feature of my favorite view for years, suddenly turn brown. We've lost dozens of trees to beetles, often in clusters.

Advice varies as to when it's "safe" to create slash by felling pines. Starting dates range from June 1 to August 1, depending on whom you ask. We've often heard mid-June or late June, so we picked the Solstice and planned accordingly.

Now it looks like we'll be busy milling for a week or two, so the pine beetle will have until early July to pick someone else's trees.

Western Washington Forest Owners Field Day July 31-August 1, 2009

This is the largest such event of the year, aimed at 1) helping landowners understand fundamental management techniques and emerging issues, and 2) uniting family forest owners with goods and services (such as consulting foresters) that will help them successfully accomplish personal objects.

 

Official Field Day website http://snohomish.wsu.edu/forestry/2009FieldDay.htm 

 

Brochure http://snohomish.wsu.edu/forestry/documents/09WWFieldDayBrochure.pdf

 

Activity schedule http://snohomish.wsu.edu/forestry/documents/WWA_FD_2009_Event_Schedule.pdf

WA DNR Cuts Stewardship Foresters

Western WA stewardship foresters are due to lose their positions as of June 30, 2009. Not affecting us in central WA yet, but it certainly could... if forest owners don't speak up soon.

 

Washington Department of Natural Resources has decided to eliminate stewardship foresters west of the Cascades. They're being quiet about it, and many small forest owners are unaware of the impending cuts. State employees are forbidden to discuss some aspects of the decision publicly.

 

Stewardship foresters are the people who work with small timber landowners to manage stands sustainably and advise us on reducing fire hazards. They make site visits and approve forest stewardship plans. They co-teach the coached planning class, and the advanced stewardship class I'm taking now, in partnership with Washington University Extension.

 

The elimination of these positions is purportedly due to state budget cuts. The westside foresters being cut are the least numerous and most burdened -- there are more family forests on the west side than on the east, and fewer foresters to cover more counties.

 

If stewardship foresters are cut on the east side as well, thousands of families here will lose a major source of help. We've benefited from those services in our effort to eliminate fuels, reduce forest fire hazard, fight bugs and disease, and fund necessary activities that are uneconomical on a small property.

 

WA DNR should restore those westside foresters' posts, rather than lose the many years of experience and territory familiarity they possess. I hope DNR doesn't cut eastside stewardship foresters next. So I'm e-mailing the WA Land Commissioner and my state legislators. You should, too.

 

Find your legislator's name and contact info using your address

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/

 

Office of the Commissioner of Public Lands

1111 Washington St. SE

PO Box 47001

Olympia WA 98504-7001

cpl@dnr.wa.gov

360-902-1004

Fax 360-902-1775

 

The Washington Farm Forestry Association's lobbyists might also be able to help more if they hear from private forest owners. www.wafarmforestry.com