Progress

FB shared a memory with me the other day – a photo I posted four years ago of a rain-sodden deer camp in November of 2005.  We had just moved back into the house the previous week and you can see the yard is still quite torn-up from the construction crew.         

The view is from the second floor blue bedroom looking west.  The trees on the horizon are my neighbor’s woodlot a quarter mile distant.  The arc to the right defines the border of the prairie planting and center-left you can clearly see rows of machine-planted trees.  One year-old bare root stock when they were planted in 1998 they were about knee-high when this picture was taken  At the time I thought I wouldn’t live long enough to see them grow to maturity and amount to something.       

Fast forward to today – fourteen years later.  Here is a photo taken from the same room and an additional picture looking west from the front yard.  Everything has grown into an almost impenetrable thicket of young forest that is now home to all manner of wild things.  With natural regeneration occurring you can barely locate where the original rows are.    

click on images for a better look

Raising a toast to sustainable forestry!