Posts Tagged ‘trees’
Weather Drama
The dramatic weather events seem to be never-ending here. Yes, it has been the wettest spring that anyone can remember, and this pattern is following the dry fall season that had us suffering under drought conditions. Now, we have entered a pattern of severe thunderstorms that keep rolling through, one after another.
We got rocked out of bed early on Friday morning, by a particularly thunderous storm. I headed to work in the darkness of driving rain, and came upon a very large tree limb, lying in a farm field. It was a big surprise to me, because there were no trees around from which the limb could have come. I turned onto a county road and a short distance further, I came to corner where a few houses are located, and every tree around appeared to be severely broken off, or completely uprooted. The debris completely covered the road.
I stopped my car, put on my raincoat, and stepped out to check if it would be possible to drive around the broken limbs. I discovered that just beyond the first few branches, a giant tree completely blocked the road. Then I noticed, that tree had also brought down a power line that was in the tangled mess of branches, just a step in front of me. I quickly returned to my car and turned around to backtrack to an alternate route.
One thing about that morning storm, as the intensity waned, the lightning flashed non-stop, yet there was only a rare rumble of thunder. It was strange to see so much flashing, without receiving the follow-up thunder booms. Last night, it was just the opposite. There was a storm in the distance that was giving off a constant rumble, even though we couldn’t see the corresponding lightning flashes.
In an interesting turn of events from the “it’s a small world” files, I think we made progress on the plan to get someone to cut our hay. Cyndie and I were hoping our neighbor who runs the CSA farm might be interested. Cyndie initiated contact by email, and received a phone message in response. He didn’t say, ‘no,’ but he hedged it a bit by saying that they are pretty busy trying to get their own hay cut and baled, in between rain storms. We figured we better keep looking for other options.
Yesterday afternoon, our fence guy called to check in, and expressed his vested interest in our getting the growth cut from the areas they will be trying to work. He hadn’t yet found anyone to take on our task, and was talking over ideas with me, when he suddenly had an inspiration. It occurred to him to call the “co-op.” He hung up to do so, right away.
It was hardly a minute later that my phone rang again, this time with a call from that very neighbor we were hoping could help us. He tells me the co-op just called him to see if he could cut my hay field!
It didn’t seem like enough time had passed for my fence guy to have made the first call, let alone the co-op person then reaching our neighbor, before he then made the call to me. He said they described my place and gave my name, and he was able to say that he knew me already.
I think he will be able to help us, but we are still subject to needing to wait for the right weather. He needs a batch of four consecutive dry days.
At the rate we are going, if that ever happens, it will be a dramatic weather event, in its own right. Four consecutive dry days?!
Stored Energy
I stayed overnight in the cities for two days in a row, so yesterday was a precious return to Wintervale for me, after work. There is no snow anywhere in sight!
I went for an abbreviated walk to survey the conditions and found that it appears to be as dry as I’ve yet seen it this spring. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it is dry, by any definition of the word. There is still standing water visible on the gravel drive in front of the barn, slowly trying to make its way down to lower ground.
Just as I was thinking about what that meant for our fencing project, the contractor called to check in. They are so far behind on every job they have booked, that it will take them long days and weekends to adequately serve all their customers. He did not want to hear that there was still water on the driveway there.
We are hoping to see a fair amount of activity over the days of the coming weekend. Maybe even some progress on the hay shed!
I came upon a broken tree limb stretched across one of our trails, and marveled over the new growth sprouting, regardless the fracture at the trunk of the tree. All that stored energy still does what it is programmed to do.
I wish I had some of that energy in me, for all the spring projects unfolding before us at a thrilling pace right now.
Damage Assessment
Thank goodness that is over. The weekends are an amazing opportunity to work on absolutely everything here. Yes, I am feeling grateful to have the distraction of the day-job, lately.
Yesterday, we started with one agenda, and wandered through several distractions that were not really part of the day’s plan, finally finding ourselves mired in a muddy exercise of clearing an area of the woods near the barn, to prepare a spot for future manure management.
We went for a walk along the trails of our woods and discovered how merciless that last blast of snow was to our trees. It also explained the dramatic number of snaps I heard that morning. It was a bit odd, because I could hear so many branches breaking, but I rarely spotted the damage happening. Yesterday, everywhere we looked, large and small, we found branches, and sometimes main trunks, cracked, shredded, or completely broken.
In the grand scheme of overall damage, ours is actually rather small. Others suffered more dramatic tree loss than any single tree on our property. But in comparison to no damage at all, it feels like we have an overwhelming amount of loss.
It will be a big chore just clearing the trees that now block our trails. I don’t think I will venture into the rest of the woods. Nature will have to take its course there.
Quick Rescue
It is the month of May, after all, so it comes as no surprise that when the precipitation pauses, and the sun peeks out, the snow melts very quickly. The first order of business for me was to try to salvage or mend the damaged trees.
Using a pruning saw on the end of a telescoping pole, I gave my arms a workout, cutting broken branches back to the main trunk of otherwise intact trees.
This image shows how the damage varies, and can be easily overlooked, if you only scout for obviously broken limbs. The branch below is easy to spot, but the one above has an open split that remains connected on each end. It demonstrates the reason I was hearing so many cracking sounds, without seeing very many branches actually falling, when I was out for a walk after most of the snow had accumulated.
Hard as it is on tiring arms, to stand on the ground and hand-saw a branch high up in a tree, there comes the added complication of trying to get the severed branch down out of the tree, without breaking others, or causing any additional damage. It had me cursing for fear of doing more harm than good.
I succeeded in pruning multiple branches out of 4 of our prominent maples, before my arms gave out, and daylight faded.
I took one significant break from exerting myself on that project, during which, I rigged up a way to pull up a pine tree that had tipped over, using a come-along. It is the same tree that I wrote about in my post titled, Doubly Tipped, which we tried to support by tying to t-posts. That time, we just used muscle to push it back up to a partial tilt. The posts weren’t able to keep it upright, because the ground was too wet for them to stay put.
For now, we will let the tree rest against the pull of the cable, rigged to a nearby tree, with chains and straps. When the ground finally dries out, we’ll put the posts back in the ground and tie the tree off to them again.
Look at the dramatic difference of a few days in the life of this pine: (If you click on the last image, it will enlarge so that you can see the way we have it supported.)
Doubly Tipped
Saturday we woke to an unpleasant surprise. Peering out our bedroom door to the deck, I discovered one of the pine trees at the bottom of the hill was leaning severely. Closer inspection revealed that there were two trees tipping over.
My first thought was that it might be the result of deer pushing on them, mainly because of the fact it was more than one tree. However, when I stepped near the first tree, I decided it was more likely a function of the soil being completely water-logged. Those tree roots were trying to hang on to ground that was like a thick soup.
We tried pushing them back as close to upright as possible, and then tied them to some T-bar fence posts that we had from the old fence that was pulled out last fall. It was a little tricky, because the posts have to get pounded down into the same soup that wasn’t good enough to hold the tree roots. I started at an opposite angle with the fence posts, but once tension was put on them, they moved to almost straight up.
It seemed to work for the time being, so we wandered off to the next project. We started the pile of tree roots on fire again, and raked out the ground on about half of the labyrinth. We wrestled with trying to move some boulders by hand, using pry bars, but we weren’t very successful. Lastly, we did a little work on the spot by the barn door where today we plan to host our fence contractor and his skid loader, to dig out the berm and open up a driving lane behind the barn.
Ironically, we need to uproot a perfectly happy pine tree, and relocate him to clear the way. I expect we will be staking one more tree, before the end of the day.
Forest Garden
My friend and mentor, Ian Rowcliffe, uses the moniker, “Forest Garden Estate” to identify their property in Portugal, a place that has served as one of our primary inspirations for the land we have acquired and are developing in Wisconsin. Yesterday, I received a visit from an arborist who I have known for many years, and who managed care of the trees on our Eden Prairie property. At my request, he made a special trip out here to survey the growing things, and provide advice on issues of stewardship. The impression I am left with is that we, too, have a forest garden here!
I was aware of some evergreens, and obvious oak, maple, and poplar trees. Oh, and two willow trees.
Now I know that a lot of the evergreens are Australian pine, and may not be the heartiest tree for our region. We discovered some fungus on the needles of one, and analyzed the status of another that looks to have succumbed the drought of last summer and fall. We do also have some white pine, and the one we looked closely at appears to be doing very well, with thick, full growth throughout. He suggested I add more of those, and possibly some eastern red cedar, which I would be very happy to have.
He identified a butternut hickory behind the barn. I want to watch it for nut production. Sounds like they will be worth collecting, if any show up.
I learned there are plum trees and nannyberry viburnum (which produced an edible fruit) on the old fence line of our north border. It sounds like they are worth keeping, and will present a challenge for our goal of getting the rusty barbed wire removed. The guys pulling fence prefer to clear trees to make room for installation and maintenance of the new fence.
In several areas of the woods we have wild raspberry or blackberry, gooseberry, and elderberry bushes growing. No wonder there are so many birds!
Other trees noted were ash (which are likely doomed to the emerald ash borer that is making its way across our country), elm (which he was surprised hadn’t been taken by dutch elm disease yet), hawthorn, apple, red maple, sugar maple, choke cherry, blue beech, ironwood (hophornbeam), and both red and white oaks.
I hadn’t considered what spring will look like around here, but plenty of those trees will flower before they produce fruit, so it will be interesting to see how they behave. Some of them are growing in the partial shade under the canopy of larger trees and may not be readily apparent unless walking the trails through our woods.
I am not going to worry about the trees that are broken from past storms, and will let nature take its course. As he pointed out, I will have plenty of other things demanding attention around here, and the danger in dealing with them isn’t worth the risk.
If it didn’t get so darn cold here, I could add some camellia trees from Ian’s collection and we could call this place Forest Garden West. For now, we’ll stick with Wintervale, but I’m expecting the name we have chosen won’t do justice to the growing garden of trees and bushes that will be blooming here in the spring.
Wooded Wonderings
It is now October and our closing date is just over 2-weeks away. Something tells me the days will pass very quickly. Yikes!
And, yahoo!
We stopped by the property twice over the weekend, on our way to, and from, the lake. That really revved up our excitement another notch, if that is even possible. Sunday, we met my sister, Judy, and her husband, Scott, in Ellsworth, to give them an opportunity to visit our land before they head back to Arizona for the winter.
Each time I walk the property, something new is revealed. It became obvious that we will need to do some serious exterminating. There are a lot of mounds of dirt piled up from gophers. On the bright side, I probably don’t need to worry about aerating my lawn.
I did discover a bit of the invasive species, Common Buckthorn, growing in our woods. Looks like a small enough percentage that I can handily dispatch and control it myself.
There are plenty of trees to be found with cross-branch rubbing, and a few broken limbs that haven’t fully detached. I will have no shortage of chances to play lumberjack in my new woods.
We came upon a significant pile of branches and other natural rubbish, and even some inorganic trash, tucked away in the woods. Maybe I can make that into a bonfire in the middle of winter. I don’t even want to whisper the word, ‘fire’ right now, with the extremely dry conditions we are experiencing.
One drawback of our dream property is the lack of any surface water in the vicinity. No lakes or significant rivers, on or near our borders. There are a fair number of small rivers and streams in the county, but I’m not clear yet, about what the closest river is, with enough water to flow year-round.
Back on the subject of the woods, of the many utilitarian devices we will be needing to purchase, a light and reliable chainsaw is very high on my list. On my old corner suburban lot, I got by using hand-saws for the moderate chores, and hired a tree company (which provided my very own certified arborist) to prune or take down the few large trees that needed attention. I suppose I could check and see if they do any work that far out of the metro area, but I expect the expense would be rather extreme.
I sure would love to have my arborist give an analysis of my new woods. I cherished the map they provided of my suburban lot, showing the location of all the primary trees, each one numbered and identified by species. I can’t imagine how such a thing would be accomplished on our new property, although, I’m sure there is a way to do it. Certainly lumber companies know the inventory of what is growing on their acreage.
The new property starts with a few cottonwoods down by the road, then a variety of evergreens that the current owners have planted in the 11-years they’ve been there. There are a couple of fair-sized willows, a good number of poplars, some big oaks and maples. I’m not so quick on identifying elms or ash, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover those, as well. Those two have been hit pretty hard by disease or pests in the region, so might be scarce.
I may be inclined to add some cedar, and will look into whether birch will work or not. I can dream. It will be a trick to manage it all while needing to commute to the day-job, so tending to the forest will likely be a weekend hobby for quite some time.
Here’s hoping the current drought goes gentle on our little forest, so I have something worth managing in the years to come.
Relative Something 