Tiny Invaders, Big News

The NRCS approved our Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Plan a few weeks ago. In that exercise I learned a lot about the invasive species that threaten what we love about our property. Information came mostly from government and university web sites. With the '10s resurgence of environmentalism, why aren't bug-and-blight threats in the news more often?

The Society of Environmental Journalists offers these tips to reporters who are bugged by the invasive insect problem...

Hundreds of species of tiny, sometimes invisible insect and microbial predators are among the hordes of invasive species that cost billions of dollars to fight each year, and that continue to cause major environmental disruption despite such efforts.

The nemeses often come into the country while hitchhiking on some of the billions of pieces of goods imported each year, such as shipping containers, plant material, and wooden handicrafts, or through processes such as ballast water discharges. They spread by flying, floating in the wind, attached to products such as ships, nursery plants, or wood products, and in other ways.

Some of the latest knowledge about these invaders has been unveiled in two recent studies. One looked at problems in urban and natural forests, and the other focused on microbial pests in various settings.

-- "Historical Accumulation of Nonindigenous Forest Pests in the Continental United States," BioScience, December 2010, Juliann E. Aukema, et al.; Dec. 6, 2010, American Institute of Biological Sciences press release, "Forest Pests Accumulating Despite Regulations": link (through early January 2011, contains link to full study).

-- "Invisible Invaders: Non-Pathogenic Invasive Microbes in Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecosystems," Ecology Letters, December 2010, by Elena Litchman; Dec. 7, 2010, Michigan State University press release, "Invisible Invasive Species Altering Ecosystems" link (includes link to full study).

In natural and urban forests all over the country, there have been at least 470 invading insect and pathogen species over the past century and a half, and major new nemeses continue to turn up at the rate of one every two years or so. Recent examples include emerald ash borer, Asian gypsy moth, Asian longhorned beetle, laurel wilt disease, and sudden oak death. The authors say that, until this study, no one had comprehensively investigated the temporal patterns for invading forest pests. The authors found numerous distinct patterns that may provide insights for efforts to mitigate and prevent problems.

Current procedures and regulations used by the Dept. of Homeland Security and US Dept. of Agriculture have failed to stop the problems, the authors say. One primary recommendation of the study is to improve prevention efforts at points of importation (including shippers and travelers), since eradication of problems seems to be nearly impossible once the invaders gain a toehold.

The study was funded by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (which is supported in part by the National Science Foundation) and The Nature Conservancy. The researchers are from the US Forest Service, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, Michigan State Univ., and Univ. of Central Florida.

For two examples of media coverage, see:

-- "Bugs, Beetles, and Borers Put U.S. Forests at Risk," Washington Post, Dec. 13, 2010, by Brian Vastag: link.

-- "Ravenous Foreign Pests Threaten National Treasures," Ascribe Newswire, Dec. 6, 2010: link.

In her review of even less-visible invaders, Michigan State Univ. associate professor Elena Litchman (269-671-2338, link) focused on culprits such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and genetically modified microbes, including recent problematic examples such as blue-green algae, diatoms, and destructive soil microorganisms.

She says that very little is known about the problems that these pests can cause, though numerous hints of their destructive power exist. She speculates that problems could become even worse with climate change and accompanying extreme weather events, since those can provide additional avenues for invasion. Her review of this issue provides numerous hooks for delving into specific problems and general angles.

Webinar: Making Google Earth Work for Land Management

If you haven't looked up your property on Google Earth, stop right now and do it. Keep this page open, and I'll see you in an hour or two. (Don't drool on your keyboard.)

Here's a shot of part of our property. Much higher zoom levels are possible:

Google Earth is a powerful tool that helps landowners see their land and understand it better. This leads to improved land management decision making and information sharing.

NC State University is hosting a webinar that will discuss and demonstrate basic Google Earth setup, exploration, navigation, menus, data creation, and production. The outcome is that participants should be able to use Earth in making land management decisions.

This is directed at Land managers, natural resource professionals, government agency professionals, and landowners.

Time & Date: January 19, 2011, from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM (Eastern).

To participate, visit forestrywebinar.net on the day of the webinar. Click on Upcoming Webinars to find the session.

Sign in early so you can download the webinar client software and work out any kinks before the webinar starts.

Questions: Please contact Bill Hubbard whubbard@uga.edu, 706-340-5070.

Thanks to Andy at WSU for passing along the information for me to share with you.

Forest Stewardship Coached Planning Program in Riverside WA

In short, this is a priceless education for $75. I took this course a few years ago, and I highly recommend it for anyone who cares for a land parcel with trees. In the 2-month course you'll write a complete forest stewardship plan. Our plan qualified us for much lower property taxes, and thousands in funding from USDA and DNR. You can read more about that here on the Small Forest Timber Owner Blog.

WSU Extension Forestry will offer the course in Riverside in 2011. Classes meet once a week starting January 25, 2011. Here's their description:

This 8-session practical, hands-on course will help forest landowners prepare their own forest stewardship plan with guidance and coaching from natural resource professionals.

Open to all, this program is designed to help forest landowners develop customized management solutions to meet their own unique objectives. Whether you own 5, 50, or 500 acres of forest, if you want to expand your knowledge and gain confidence for managing your forest, this course is for you!

Why should I attend?

• To learn about keeping your forest healthy and productive for generations to come.

• To learn how to identify and implement practical steps to meet your individual ownership objectives.

• To write a plan that may qualify your forestland for property tax reduction.

Information:


Emily Burt
Extension Educator
@: emburt (a) wsu.edu
tel: (509) 775-5235 x1114
http://ferry.wsu.edu/

Ice coating protects evergreen seedlings from freezing



Ice-covered seedlings in WA nursery

 I enjoyed these surreal photos of seedlings covered with ice.

For 34 hours in late November 2010, cold temperatures descended on Washington state's lowest elevations. At times it dropped to 13F.

Sweeping sprinklers gently showered acres of tender seedlings coating and recoating them with water that froze in layers of protection.

Crews worked day and night to keep sprinklers form freezing. They continued until 1:30 AM November 24th. Two shifts of crews did the continuous 24-hour job.

More backstory:

Icing protects trees at Webster Forest Nursery

and a great photo gallery:

Flickr gallery

Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) information

Happy Thanksgiving! Below is a note forwarded to me from NRCS about their CSP funding program.

This is a relatively modest program in terms of payments, and not the same as the more generous EQIP program that we're participating in, but perhaps CSP is a good introduction to NRCS for family forest owners.

You must have your application in before the cut-off date for the upcoming year's funding -- January 7, 2011. There's a fact sheet/FAQ at http://www.wa.nrcs.usda.gov/

Dear private forest landowner:


If you’re a private, non-industrial forest landowner who would like to address natural resource management concerns by implementing additional conservation practices on your land and if you’d like to improve or maintain existing stewardship practices, you may be eligible for financial and technical assistance to do so.

The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is administered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) which provides financial and technical assistance to help identify, plan and implement stewardship practices that will help conserve and enhance soil, water, air, plant, wildlife habitat and related natural resources on your land.

Private forest landowners may be eligible to receive average payments of approximately $10 per acre for five-years depending on enhancements implemented and (or) stewardship practices maintained.

In short, CSP encourages non-industrial private forest landowners to improve conservation systems by undertaking additional conservation activities and improving, maintaining, and managing existing conservation activities and the program will pay you for these stewardship activities.

I have attached a Question and Answer fact sheet regarding CSP for your information. I encourage you to consider this opportunity to help keep your forest healthy. Please contact your local USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service office today for more information.

The application ranking cut-off date for this year’s funding is January 7, 2011 so don’t delay.

We look forward to serving you in the future.

Sincerely,

CARRI GAINES, NRCS State Forester
Carri.gaines at wa.usda dot gov

Speaking to a forest stewardship class about our experiences

The lead instructor of WSU's forest stewardship extension courses in Everett WA invited me to speak, as a two-course alumnus, to his current class.

Slash pile, one of many we've created from thinning and
pruning our stands to make them healthier, safer in case
of forest fire, more attractive to wildlife, and
more aesthetically pleasing. 

I put together a slide show that serves as a virtual tour of our property, starting with pictures of the thick woods when we bought it, through today's thinned and pruned stands.

I told 20 minutes' worth of stories about our experiences, lessons learned, and advice for those starting out with private timber land.

It was genuinely fun to go back through photos to build the deck of 65 slides (they go fast), and even more fun to present it to the adult students and take their many, interesting questions.

Feedback from the audience was positive, which is always a nice ecouragement for me to speak again if the opportunity arises. The instructor, Kevin Zobrist, has asked me to record the presentation so other instructors can use it. Of course I will, but that does take the fun out of it for me.

The courses are Coached Planning for people writing their forest management plans, and Advanced Planning for people implementing their plans on their own. The first course is rich in information and well taught. I highly recommend it. The advanced course is unfortunately no longer offered. Both are the product of Washington State University Extension Forestry.

Fall 2010, the end of forest stewardship operations for the winter

When autumn descends on this place, the light and air are different. I always enjoy being outside, getting the place ready for winter.

When the sun hits the big-leaf maple trees deep in the evergreen forest, the golden leaves seem to be brilliantly backlit.

We're done with logging work for the winter. All we have to do until spring is burn piles of slash. And there are many of those, perhaps a hundred or more.

EQIP approvals for our 2010 forest improvement work

NRCS has inspected the last of our on-the-ground work for this season, and approved it for payment.

Greentree Reforestation crew prunes trees on our
property up 16'  as part of our EQIP-funded project.

That's a big milestone for us, because this is our first year of a 5-year EQIP agreement for thinning, pruning, and slash disposal.

We use Greentree Reforestation, a crew referred to us by our friend Doyle Burke in 2001. Greentree does very good work on understory thinning, tree pruning, and slash piling.

By "good work" I mean the limbs are cut within a couple of inches of the trunk, without otherwise damaging the tree. No long stubs, no stripped bark, no stray cuts.

Their piles are regulation 4x6x6 foot neatly stacked slash piles that burn very thoroughly. I'm most impressed with how they build a pile on a steep slope so it not only stays put, but it doesn't send burning logs rolling downhill.

Power pole saws work well on large
Ponderosa Pine limbs like this.
But for Douglas Fir, a simple pole
saw works better.

In one unit, 2 acres, we had the crew "lop and scatter" the slash for a more natural aesthetic and to supply nutrients to the soil. There are specific tolerances for how much debris can be on the ground, in tons per acre and in its height off the ground. The slash has to be pulled back from the base of each tree without creating an unduly large ring of fuel around it.

Pruning contractors in north central WA: Greentree Reforestation (509) 882-2900 Dick Schellhaas (509) 630-6486 Jim Jack (509) 548-1290

Thinning and Pruning Workshop

Thinning and pruning are two of the best tools available to enhance the health, beauty, and habitat that your forest provides. Join WSU Extension for a hands-on workshop where you will learn how to thin and prune properly and safely.


The class will be taught by DNR Stewardship Forester Mike Nystrom and WSU Extension Forester Kevin "May the forest be with you" Zobrist.

Registration is $15 per individual or family, and includes one set of materials.

http://snohomish.wsu.edu/forestry/thinprune2010.htm

Saturday, November 6, 2010

10:30 AM - 3 PM
Sedro Woolley, WA

Topics will include:

• Why thin and prune
• Types of thinning
• When, how much, and how often to thin
• When and how to prune
• Tools of the trade

 

■Register by mail: Print out the Registration Form and mail in with your payment.
■Register online: https://ocrs.wsu.edu/Signup/?eventid=660

For questions or additional information, please contact Tamara Neuffer, WSU Extension Forest Stewardship Program Assistant, at 425-357-6017 or tneuffer at wsu dot edu.

Conservation Cost Sharing Workshop - Snoqualmie WA

If you've wondered about the subsidies you read about on this blog, like FLEP and EQIP, check out this free workshop offered by WSU Extension for rural landowners.

6:30-8:30 pm
Weds 11/10/10
Snoqualmie Library
Snoqualmie WA

Cost-share programs are there to help you fight invasive species, thin forests, plant trees, and enhance wildlife habitat.

Register on the WSU web site. Or call 425-357-6017 or e-mail TNeuffer at wsu dot edu.

Web Site about Tax Treatment of Timber

Very few sections of the Internal Revenue Code are written specifically for timber. This means there is a considerable amount of interpretation involved.

This website was developed to be used by timberland owners, as well as a reference source for accountants, attorneys, consulting foresters and other professionals who work with timberland owners by answering specific questions regarding the tax treatment of timber related activities.

http://www.timbertax.org/

The site appears to be independent and has USFS endorsement.

NRCS extends CSP deadline for conservation funds applicants

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) announced Oct. 8, 2010 that the ranking period cut-off date for producer applications in the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) has been extended to January 7, 2011.

Authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill, CSP offers payments to producers who maintain a high level of conservation on their land and who agree to adopt higher levels of stewardship. Non-industrial forestland is eligible.

CSP is offered in all 50 states, District of Columbia, and the Pacific and Caribbean areas through continuous sign-ups with announced cut-off dates for ranking periods. The program provides many conservation benefits including improvement of water and soil quality, wildlife habitat enhancement and adoption of conservation activities that address the effects of climate change.

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/new_csp/csp.html

Horse Logging in Western WA

I did a lot of riding in my youth. Years later, I considered horse skidding, back when we decided to log our property ourselves. The practice got a passing mention in one of my WSU sustainable forestry courses. I know someone who did this for bug-kill removal in Idaho's Sawtooths. But we didn't try it, in part because we didn't know who had horses and rigging for the job.

"King County turns to horses to move logs through delicate site" (Seattle Times 9/22/10) describes a county biologist's use of horses to move logs into sensitive creekbeds. She was rebuilding fish habitat, so heavy equipment would be counter-productive.

WSU's Forestry Extension presented a horse logging workshop several years ago, and organized a field day featuring horse logger Wes Gustufson. The process is slow. Skidding with horses (and dragging logs rather than grappling) still creates some impact. Road apples distribute the seeds of noxious and invasive weed species, unless horsemen are very careful with feed and grazing.

If you're really interested in learning about horse logging so you can use it on your place, contact Andy Perleberg at WSU -- or find Wes at his company, Wood'n Horse.

Rancher's Plan to Stop Pine Beetles

At the Cleantech Open I usually focus on the energy-related contestants. But this semifinalist's story in Planet Profit Report caught my eye today for another reason.

DenDroCo has a molecule that disables a beetle's sense of smell. Without smell, the beetle can't follow others to mass-attack a weak pine tree. Without mass attacks, the beetles can't kill trees.

The emotion Ray Prill expresses at the loss of his trees hits very close to home for us. He almost chokes up in his interview.

Here's a rancher who stepped out of his element, found a discarded discovery from the 1980s, helped get the researcher a grant, and is now in the limelight and writing a business plan. We wish him luck.

NRCS to inspect our 2010 forest thinning work this week

After 3 solid days of skidding, we're finally down to the last few logs to remove from the 4 acres in this year's plan.

We've worked every weekend lately to finish thinning and decking. A crew is coming in to prune trees, and another outfit will bring in a loader and trucks to take away the logs. There are probably about 60 tons of logs waiting to be loaded out.

All of that needs to happen before the rains come. And the rains are coming. It's starting to rain as I write this. When it rains for a few days, everything, especially roads, gets dangerously slick and stay that way until it snows. Then it's impassible.


Two of the acres we thinned this year are within view of the house site, and along the uphill side of a level road. That was fairly easy work, although we paid extra attention to the impact on our view.

The other two acres are on the north property line, on a very steep slope. This is a remote area where we're doing additional thinning to create a fire break along a ridgetop.

The extra logging, steep slope, and lack of road made this a very difficult piece of land to log. Several of the logs were 200-300 feet from the winch point. I had to pull about 300 lbs of cable up the slope to each log. It was very slow work -- but the world's best thigh workout.

Fires are a reminder we need more often (the Chainsaw Paradox)

Fire visible from our property consumed "only" 3 acres.

Summer fires remind us of the importance of sticking to our plan for thinning the woods around our future house site. By spring, the fires are a distant memory and we soften our resolve to thin as much as we planned.

We certainly don't need more fires, but we somehow need more frequent reminders.

July and August are forest fire season in this part of WA. It's also when thinning slows down because of restrictions on forest chainsaw use (because of the related fire hazard). By now, we've done most of the cutting for the season. Here and there we've been "lenient" and left trees that were supposed to be cut.

Watching the news about local fires makes us want to go in and thin a little more -- take out those nice clumps of trees we left alone, increase spacing near fire breaks (roads), clear a little farther from the house site.

Just a week ago we had a lightning fire in our canyon, on a ridge about a mile from our property. It started in a previous burn, where trees were thin, so it was a ground fire, not a crown fire. Winds were light, the brush was green, and it rained. A USFS fire crew responded quickly. Neighbors were ready to help try to protect a home nestled in trees 1,000 ft down a steep slope from the fire. The fire burned less than 3 acres.

There were 32 fire starts from that thuderstorm. One of them burned nearly 2,000 acres in Nahahum (nuh -Hom, rhymes with "the mom") Canyon several miles away. I took a tour of the burn on Saturday. Homes were protected, but other property was lost.

Our goal is to protect not only our home, but the habitat on the surrounding 20 acres. We also want to help protect the homes of our neighbors in a canyon-wide strategy. If we're ever evacuated because of a fire that threatens our place, we want to be confident that we'll return to a house and trees, not charcoal and grief.

Signs of Sustainable Forest Stewards

We have been honored in recent years with two certifications for sustainable forest stewardship. So we have two signs we're very proud of, that we plan to post in a few years, after the heavy work on our property subsides.

The "Stewardship Forest" sign on the left was awarded to us in 2007 after we completed a 9-week course offered by the Washington State University Forestry Extension. The culmination of that course was a Forest Stewardship Plan, approved and signed by our Washington Department of Natural Resources forester. Andy Perleberg of WSU, and John Keller of DNR, led the instruction. (We went on to complete the Advanced Stewardship Course with lead instructor Kevin Zobrist of WSU.)

The "Family Forest" sign on the right indicates that our property has been certified as a sustainable forest by the American Forest Foundation (AFF) American Tree Farm System (ATFS). Wood products from an ATFS certified forest are stamped so the end user knows the wood was grown and harvested sustainably. Andy Perleberg at WSU oversaw the process of applying for certification in 2009. Having a written management plan was a prerequisite.

Rather than risk having the signs damaged by heavy equipment or falling trees, we'll keep them in a safe place for now. This is a web exclusive sneak preview for our blog readers.

Small-Scale Logging: Moving Slash

(Click the video to see a larger version in a new browser window.)

We're logging hilly terrain, where level landing space is scarce. We winch logs out of the woods using a small tractor and a logging winch blade. We prefer to bring them out with the limbs and tops -- guts feathers and all, as they say.

We skid a few at a time to the landing. Then we limb them on the landing before we buck and deck them.

That process creates a big slash pile in a hurry, and that takes up space and makes it hard to maneuver equipment the way we need to.

So we started piling slash in a small utility trailer, and hauling it to another, unused landing, where we can burn it this winter.

Now, it's enough work to hand-pile slash into a trailer. We didn't cherish the idea of unloading it by hand.

So we came up with this idea. (Look under your trailer before you try this at home; see note below.)

Over time we'll have to develop a better, safer technique, but this is how we did it the first time:

Hook one log fork under the hitch, lift the front enf off the ground, and make a dump truck bed out of the trailer. The slash slides right out onto the ground, in a perfect 4 by 8 foot pile, ready to burn. Note the wheels of the trailer come completely off the ground, which is necessary to get the slash to slide.

One problem is the trailer's tendency to jump off the fork and roll away (possibly a later video?). We started hooking through the hitch's safety chains for better control.

The trailer is a light-duty snowmobile trailer with a tilt bed. However the bed doesn't tilt far enough to dump the contents. The design of the trailer is such that the rear underside can touch the ground without breaking or bending anything.

Please be careful. This is definitely not an OSHA-approved maneuver.

Solstice weekend work mostly rained out

This is the wettest spring I can remember in 9 years of working this property. In the past 2 weeks we've had rain storms that reversed all the drying we've had. Even the rocked roads get slick and tricky to drive, especially down the canyon. The clay logging roads and trails get too soft to operate on.

They dry up in a day or two of no rain. Saturday we got some logs yarded out of the woods near our north line, which is on a ridge. We worked until 6, it being still very bright out. Around the Summer Solstice it's light until nearly 10:00. Unfortunately it was too chilly to dine outdoors, something we typically enjoy doing this time of year.

Then that night it rained steadily, and continued drizzling through lunch on Sunday. I got some indoor projects done -- repairing the plumbing in the RV we call the "instant cabin," checking the water in our solar power battery bank, and taking photos of a generator we later sold on Craigslist. (We're in the market for a solid-running 5kW diesel genset, if you know of one.)

When it cleared up, we pulled noxious weeds along the lower part of the shared road. I wish other people would tend to their own weeds, as we do with ours. Knapweed blooms down there, and the seeds travel onto everyone's properties in the mud in our tire treads. The only way to control invasive species like this on our property is to slow them down at the source.

USGBC LEED should recognize ATFS certified wood products

Last week, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) released for public comment a fourth round of draft benchmarks to evaluate forest certification programs in the LEED green building rating system.

The LEED green building rating system gives points to builders who use sustainably grown and harvested wood products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

As an ATFS certified forest owner, I'm in favor of USGBC recognizing more standards, rather than exclusively FSC. Eastside Washington mills use ATFS, not FSC. The USGBC decision limits the market for green-building materials from central and eastern Washington state.

If adopted, the benchmarks would result in continued exclusion of independent forest certification standards in widespread use in North America, including the world’s largest certification standard, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. The bottom line is that three quarters of the certified fiber in North America may not be recognized by LEED’s certified wood credit.

Tom Martin, President & CEO of the American Forest Foundation (AFF) and parent organization of the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), wrote: "After almost 10 years of discussion with the forest community, USGBC continues to discourage the use of wood products in green buildings, and perpetuates their preference against wood products from family-owned forests certified by ATFS. Even though USGBC claims they are developing benchmarks to open up their green building standards to more certified wood products, all you need to do is look at the benchmarks to see that they continue to skew their standards toward one wood certification only."

Nine U.S. governors have written letters and more than 5,700 forestry experts, architects and builders have signed a petition.

SFI has a short video about green building and forest certification, at http://sfiprogram.org/leed.

Sign a petition:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/leed/

Tweet your support:
http://act.ly/1th

Vote if you're a USGBC member:
https://www.usgbc.org/Login.aspx?REFERRER=%2fDisplayPage.aspx%3fCMSPageID%3d2070

DNR Inspection for FLEP

DNR Forester Bart Ausland visited our property yesterday to inspect work we performed under our Forestland Enhancement Program (FLEP) cost-share agreement that will expire on June 30.

Twin Fawns

On the way up to the property today,
I saw 4 deer in the driveway.

One pretty muledeer doe
had twin newborn fawns in tow.

Instead of bolting from the road (the banks were steep),
she and the little ones trotted ahead of my Jeep.

As she led the fawns on a mile-long uphill run,
I kept a good distance and had some fun --
taking cell phone photos out the windshield,
like this one when we reached a green field.

The fawns are barely 20 lbs, all fluff.
Exercise like this will make them tough --
and ready to deal with the summer heat.
When we parted paths, the fawns looked beat.

Another of the does had a fawn with her.
The fawns force the does to travel slow.

They're clumbsy, all legs and fur,
which makes them entertaining to follow.

Logging is in full swing

I thinned 3 acres thus far this summer, and I hope to thin 2 more. We're working on the north line of our property, which is along a ridgetop.

On the other side of the ridge is an unmanaged, overstocked Douglas Fir stand on a steep slope. If a fire approached from that direction, it would move swiftly onto our property. We would want such a fire to slow and drop to the ground, rather than rushing through the canopy toward our cabin. The ridge can be a line of defense.

Our strategy is to go for some extra spacing in the trees right along the line, creating a "shaded fuel break" about 40 or 50 feet wide for the full width of our property. Then over the course of 200 feet the trees "feather in" to a more dense spacing, reaching the standard 20 foot stem spacing.

Along with that strategy is an overall preference for Ponderosa Pine, which is more fire tolerant than Douglas Fir, and has a better chance of surviving a ground fire.

I'm an amateur at felling trees, and always will be. Thinning on a moderate slope seems to take me about 20-25 hours per acre. That's including time for hung trees, teepees, bound saws, thrown chains, sharpening, and bushwhacking around the hillside from tree to tree. I try to get started early and get in at least 6 hours a day. I can fell anywhere from 10 to 25 trees in that time.

Burning slash piles with a fire truck standing by

We've resumed thinning trees, which means very soon we'll be cramped for space again. Slash piles take up a lot of useful area, and get in the way of skidding logs out of the woods.

It's still wet enough on our property to burn those piles of slash. They're not large by logging standards, mostly limbs from pruning, and logs up to 7" diameter. But they are as much as 8 years old, and dry. The flames can reach easily 20-25 feet high when the piles really get going.

We burned 9 piles Saturday that were not that old, but nonetheless very dry and among trees we plan to keep. So we borrowed a neighbor's fire truck. Yes, you read right. Actually he has two. This is the smaller one, a brush truck. It's compact, for logging roads, so we can get it back into the property.

The fires themselves were not much to look at -- especially after a few hours, when they were reduced to a 12' diameter circle of white ash. So here's another photo of the brush truck.

 

We had family up to the mountains for Mother's Day on Sunday. Our two-year-old granddaughter enjoyed seeing the fire truck, along with playing in the mud. She's also developing a liking for tractors, which could come in handy someday when I need a helper. For now, we all had a great time picnicking in the sun and walking among the wildflowers.

Once everyone had left, it was time to burn more piles. The fires were very well behaved, so we had no actual necessity of the truck, other than it being extremely handy for dousing the ashes before we left the place for the week. It was good practice starting the water pump and climbing a hill pulling 50 feet of fire hose and nozzle. I hope never to need to do it in a hurry.

Spring, time to start logging again

It was a very pleasant weekend, the first time we've spent outside in shirt sleeves. The ground is just starting to firm up enough to operate machinery off the rocked roads.

It was nice to work on the property when the pine grass is greening up, bushes budding, sun shining. We skidded logs and piled slash both days, and enjoyed a small slash-pile bonfire Saturday night with our neighbors.

It's time to start logging again. Our goal this summer is to thin 3-5 more acres out of our 20. The minimum this year will be 3 for our NRCS EQIP contract, and we have a few acres left on our DNR FLEP matching grant for thinning and slash abatement. Both programs have been a considerable financial help to us in accomplishing what we need to do on our land.

Spring, snow, and smoke

A late blast of spring snow makes for an interesting weekend here. Four inches fell late in the week. It melted fast, but there are enough remnants of snow on green grass for some nice photos of wildflowers and such.

The snow also gave us a couple more weeks to burn slash piles. The ground is wet, the breeze is mild, so we dragged out the arson gear and torched 4 small piles Saturday. The wood is so wet that the fuel mixture is difficult to light, and it takes 3 or 4 tries before the pile takes off in flame. I used 1/2 gallon to 1 gallon per pile to get them started!

My favorite part of burning piles is going around late at night and tending them. Tonight is starry and cold -- barely above freezing -- but it's warm by the large piles of coals. I rake the charred stubs from the outer perimeter into the pile, heaping it as high as I can, so there will be nothing but ash in the morning.

Addendum: Early this morning I made the rounds through frost-trimmed wildflowers and snow patches. I stirred the fires, now the size of small campfires.

I saw 8 deer and a red-tailed hawk today.

Spring 2010 damage assessment & wildflower report

The snow is gone (mostly). We finally made it up to the property last weekend to do our spring damage assessment and to open up the cabin (RV).

(Photo: False Hellebore sprouts are coming up in the usual, damp, shady spots. Actual height is less than 12".)

Our cants have developed some black mildew-like spots, and that concerns us. We're researching what we need to treat them with -- and how. It's possible we'll have to submerge each of 120 cants (20 to 40 feet long) in a purpose-built vat of chemicals. The handling, time and chemical issues aren't appealing, but neither is permanent damage to our building materials.

We had surprisingly few broken trees this winter. It was a mild winter without a lot of heavy snowfall. It's good that the leave trees have had an extra season to strengthen their root systems. Years of over-protection from wind by an overgrown stand typically results in a lot of snags after thinning.

The forest is open and visible this time of year. With no leaves on the brush, we can see logs we missed last year. There will be some unplanned skidding to do, as soon as the ground dries up. It's still very moist, which makes it a good time to repair some of our access roads and let them solidify before they take heavy use.

It's also a good time of year to appreciate the beauty of the place. The grass is sprouting green. Tiny wildflowers are coming up, and the balsam is just putting out buds on the sunniest south-facing open slopes.

(Image: Life springs eternal. Wildflowers emerge from the duff and plant debris laid flat by 2-3 feet of snow.)