On 8/27/2010 10:23 PM, Giles wrote:
Well, actually, a couple of days.

Arrived late Wednesday evening, as usual, and visited briefly with an
overnight guest who stays here occasionally while awaiting and
supervising the completion of her (and her husband's) new house about
four miles from here as the crow flies.....nine or so by road. Late
to bed and early to rise.

Yesterday....the first half, anyway.....was spent sipping coffee and
wallowing in an extraordinarily lyrical and eminently readable book,
while basking in the first really nice day in over two months. When
Larry arrived around midday we began sampling some adult libations and
discussing what needed to be done. Such discussions are prone to last
well into the evening, especially so in the last couple of months as
the weather has permitted little more than languid discussion while
sampling various adult beverages. But the weather was pleasant so we
actually managed to get out into the woods and get some work done.

We started with the pond. Larry put in an artificial pond shortly
after acquiring the property largely because a friend (whom he happens
to be talking to on the phone as I type) started digging the hole for
it one day while Larry's attention was directed elsewhere. The pond
is actually a tiered affair with a small "stream" beginning at the
high point and draining down into the pond proper. The trouble was
that the stream was overflowing its banks. Larry was convinced that
some sort of drastic measures were required. Something involving
digging up the rubber liner, moving a ton of stone, wading in muck,
etc. I grew up in a place where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were
perpetually active. Not a great fan of the corps myself, but I've
studied their works enough over the years to have a clue or two as to
the nature of the problem and a possible solution. Where streams are
concerned, the corps go to strategies, in most instances, appear to
number exactly one.....channelization.....dig a deeper trench in mid-
channel. Of course, they do regularly practice other insanities, but
this one is a particular favorite, made no more palatable by the fact
that much to my surprise (and, no doubt, theirs) it sometimes
works.....which is to say (however grudgingly) that it was the right
thing to do. In the instant case, it was obvious that this was the
right thing to do. The rubber sluice that forms the streambed is
filled with nicely rounded river stone.....no. 8 if memory serves.
Over the last fifteen or twenty years pedestrians, while tending the
surrounding gardens or chasing dogs or whatever, have walked in the
stream often enough to disturb the stone. Winter ice and snow have
doubtless also done their fair share. As a result, the stone has
shifted ever downward, creating a more or less flat bottom, which
resulted in mid-channel level rising. Roots of various plants have
also filled in the spaces between the stones. The result is that the
bottom of the stream has effectively risen by three to five inches. I
simply pulled out plants, roots and all, and then spread some of the
rocks from midstream back out toward the banks, creating a U-shaped
channel. The whole process took about as long as describing it here.
Problem solved.

After that I went out on the big John Deere mower to continue mowing
between the rows of trees. This is not a forest. It's a tree farm.
For various reasons, which should be mostly obvious with a little
thought, tree farms are vastly different than forests in almost every
respect save the presence (and dominance) of trees. Chief among the
most readily discernible (and understandable) differences is that tree
farms are almost universally set out in nice neat rows.....makes for
easier and more efficient planting, pruning, thinning, harvesting,
etc. Given that trees are a long term crop (anywhere from a few years
for pulpwood to many for saw or veneer logs) "undesirable" plants have
a long time to grow up between them and impede foot traffic.
Naturally, these undesirables have to be kept in check in order to
maximize efficiency. Hence the bigass mower. No big deal.
Except.....

Except that back in the spring we decided we weren't going to mow
between the rows. One of the many problems that beset tree farms (at
least in this part of the world) is that on sunny winter days the
combination of direct sunlight and yet more sunlight reflected from
the persistent snow cover is just enough to warm young trees to the
point that the sap under the bark will thaw. It refreezes later,
after the sun has set and temperatures once again plummet. This will
happen repeatedly over the course of a winter, and more so in a tree
farm (which has little or no understory to block incoming sunlight),
than in a natural forest. The result is long longitudinal cracks in
the bark and in the underlying wood that take pretty much forever to
heal over, if they ever do at all, and which drastically reduce the
value of the saw or veneer log.

So we decided that it might be worthwhile to experiment with leaving
the undergrowth unmowed in the hope that the resultant "weeds" would
block some of the sunlight and thus save a few trees from
worthlessness. Well, things look different in the depths of winter,
or summer, than they do in the spring. In fact, there were already
several plots that hadn't been mowed in a year or more. In fact, we
already knew that a year's unmowed growth results in very little (if
anything at all) that noticeably diminishes the amount of sunlight
hitting the trees in winter. In fact, we also knew that anything much
more than a year's growth makes navigating through the rows and
between the trees an arduous, thankless and pointless task......well,
except for the blackberries.

So, a month ago, we started mowing again.

That's what I did yesterday afternoon.

I had planned to go to a Chinese buffet in Sparta for supper. That
plan changed when Larry got a phone call just before my planned
departure. It was Brent (Larry's son, who Becky and I actually met
before Larry.....it was through Brent that we originally contacted
Larry.....and the rest, as they say, is history). Brent and his wife
Ann (not her real name.....she's Thai. She told me her real name at
the 4th of July picnic but it was kinda drunk out that day and I
forget) invited us to their place for supper. Cool!

Brent and Ann (and their three children) derive almost all of their
income from organic market gardening. They sell at local farmers
markets, in season, and through various other outlets for a couple of
months on either end. They raise an astonishing variety of
comestibles and ornamentals. Pretty much everything you'd put on the
table.....vegetables, fruits, meats, and a nice floral centerpiece.
Ann, not surprisingly, does magical things in the kitchen, learned
back home in her youth, whose arcane origins and alchemy I covet
unreservedly and unashamedly. I WILL pry her secrets from her. Last
night's menu contained nothing particularly novel, but everything was
fresh.....VERY fresh.....literally right out of the garden and the
pens. Fresh is good.

Well, almost everything was fresh. Honey is bee vomit.....and it
keeps nearly forever.....fresh is pretty much meaningless.
Nevertheless, this honey WAS fresh, extracted from the combs and
filtered that morning. What was NOT fresh was Brent's home-made
pickles (three weeks fermenting in a plastic bucket can hardly be
called fresh, right?) and Ann's home-made pickled mustard greens (I
suspect that most Murricans have never tasted mustard greens.....would
find them vile if they DID taste them.....cooked or raw.....and would
NOT consider pickling them as representing any sort of improvement on
the original). Both were absolutely awesome!

I got to help their eldest son, 14 year old Jeffrey, put the chickens,
ducks and turkeys in their pens a bit after dark. The fowl need to be
penned up (despite being in a fenced enclosure) to protect them from
marauding coyotes, coons, foxes and even an occasional bear. They
have a couple of varieties of chickens and ducks. One of the chicken
varieties is something or other of recent Asian vintage. These birds
are smart enough to go into the barn in the evenings and roost out of
reach of predators. The white chickens, ducks and turkeys are too
stupid to find their way to a safe place and, even if they could,
cannot be trusted to make their way to a roost without actually doing
physical damage to themselves and thus pretty much ruining them for
market. We herded these with a broom and our booted feet. Jeff is a
pro. So is his younger brother Justin. I got to help because Justin
was at the skating rink with some friends and Jeff was eager to get
done with it so he could move on to something more important.....video
games, I presume. But he and Justin will be there for the slaughter,
come October. Jasmine, 9 years old, has chores of her own, but they
are nowhere near as arduous or as close to nature as those of her
brothers. Mostly she is responsible for amusing grampas dog, a task
she takes to wholeheartedly and with remarkable skill.


Today dawned cool (48 F.) and bright. Larry arrived mid-morning and
we cruised the grounds to assess priorities. I elected to clean up a
semi-fallen oak. Larry went off to do something else. I say "semi"
fallen because very little but the ends of a few branches actually
reached the ground. The 18 inch diameter trunk had broken about 12
or 15 feet above ground level on a hillside but the fall had been
arrested by four white birch (Betula paperifera), two shagbark hickory
(Carya ovata), three trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) and a few
smallish smooth sumac (Rhus glabra), as well as sundry other small
fry. It was a mess.

The hickories, sumac and other small crap could safely be ignored in
trying to determine how to deal with the problem of cleaning all this
up. The birches (ranging from 4 to 7 inches in diameter) and the oak
itself, however, represented a considerable risk. I don't know how to
calculate the exact forces at play here but suffice it to say that
when a large tree is prevented from reaching the ground by leaning on
several other trees, all of which are severely bowed by the weight of
the big one, it is a very dangerous situation. The smaller supporting
trees can snap at any time, and most certainly WILL snap when cut.
The problem is in determining in which direction they'll go and what
will happen to the rest of the mess when they do. The consequences of
calculating (or guessing) wrong can be fatal. I narrowly missed
having my head taken off a couple of months ago when, in a similar
situation, a three inch cherry branch barely touched the surface of my
ear as it went by at mach three or thereabouts. Another inch or so to
the right would have meant almost certain death. So I worked slowly
on this puzzle today, all the while being certain that I would be
clear of supersonic branches and having a clear retreat in the event
of the oak coming down sooner or faster than expected.

Four hours later I had enough of it cleared up that Larry and I could
spend an hour chipping the slash. The rest (pretty much nothing but
the trunk and major branches of the oak) will have to await another
day.....maybe tomorrow.....hard to say.....lots more stuff on the
agenda. Have to go through the priority assignment routine again in
the morning. No waste, anyway. We'll get half a cord of firewood and
about a cubic yard of mulch out of a day's work.

Meanwhile, just after supper, we were sitting on the deck and heard a
tree crash somewhere to the north and east.....probably up by the pine
plantation.

A brief digression: In 50 years or so of hanging out in the woods at
every opportunity, I could probably count on one hand the number of
times I've heard a tree falling somewhere. Since I began coming up
here to the tree farm a year and a half ago I've probably averaged
about one a month, on a single eighty acre plot.....most of which is
out of hearing range due to the terrain and heavy cover. Becky and I
heard four in the ten days we spent here in early June. Huh? Why is
that? Something to do with staying in one place as opposed to my
previous peripatetic ventures? I dunno.

Anyway, after I supper I went to take a look. Sure as ****, a fairly
substantial big tooth aspen (Populus grandidentata) was lying across
the trail with its head among the red pines. Well, that's one more to
clean up. And that's in addition to the huge black cherry that's
been lying across another trail (over on the Stromberg side) for the
last month or so. All of this would be discouraging if these were
trees that Larry had planted, but they aren't. These are all much
older trees that predate his ownership.....from back in the days when
most of the tree farm was pasture, bordered by woods that had somehow
escaped their owner's attention long enough to make clearing them more
of a nuisance than the extra pasturage would be worth. Needless to
say, the trees that I have planted in my tenure here would be
impossible to hear falling from a distance of more than five feet or
so.

On the drive back from the pine plantation (in the new 'Gator!) I
surprised a barred owl who sprang up from the ground as I drove by and
landed in the nearest tree, eight feet off the ground and no more than
twenty feet from me. It stared at me in evident disgust (edged with
what might easily be taken as a hint of fear) for about a second and a
half before taking off for parts deeper in the woods. Three minutes
later I was back on the deck watching the bats begin their nightly
dance of death with the moths.

My money is on the bats.

giles.

that was fun!! thanks.

is this place over by, or on the way to, the kickapoo? i'm trying to
remember the topography up there, and the only rolling hills of any size
that my diminishing gray matter can recall were on that side of the
state in the journey from milwaukee... chestnuts still agrowin, though
something has taken a liking to the leaves/leafs on one. plan to
transplant from pots soon.

jeff