Regeneration

Last week doggo and I went out for a walk to see if we could find a forester in our woods.  No, we weren't playing Where's Waldo; I had gotten a text from a consulting forester we recently hired notifying me that on very short notice he was conducting a timber cruise.  You're probably thinking this has something to do with a luxury cruise ship or forest ocean liner.  For forestry purposes a timber cruise is a field survey conducted to measure, count and assess the quality, volume and species of standing timber for reasons of management, sales or tax purposes.  Inasmuch as we've not listed anything for sale this is strictly about updating our management plan going forward the next 25 years or so.

Doggo located our guy in short order and after an exchange of pleasantries we discussed past management practices and his professional first impression of what we got going-on in our built-from-scratch forest.

Some of you may recall that after acquiring our crappy piece of farmland in 1994 we decided to naturalize much of it by means of planting native cover - namely trees but also seven acres of pollinator habitat.  In 1998 and 1999 we planted roughly 40,000 native Wisconsin conifers and hardwoods.  For years I imagined I'd never live long enough to see those little seedlings ever amount to anything.  Lo and behold we woke-up one year and discovered we had a real forest on our hands.  It was so thick that in some locations you couldn't see through it, walk through it or even consider hunting it.  

So on the heels of the COVID shitshow we hired a logger to perform a pre-commercial thinning; a practice of removing less-desirable softwood conifers in order to release the more desirable and valuable hardwoods. A release is basically removing the competition so that the oaks had more access to sunlight and other resources.  

And I gotta tell you that opening-up the canopy accomplished two things.  First, the released trees put-on a huge growth spurt.  

Second, with sunlight reaching the understory Ma Nature allowed all manner if little seedlings to sprout and all of a sudden we had thousands of tiny little trees popping-up all over the place.

Naturally, the deer, rabbits and mice eat the tastier oaks, white pine and cedar but as a general rule turn-up their nose at tamarack and spruce.  That doesn't mean there's no regeneration of the former, just less.  And with the exception of something we might stick in the yard we're out of the business of planting trees.  Done!  Nature has assumed responsibility for the process going forward.  If you disregard the original investment in preparation and nursery stock, years of work, capital investment in equipment and time; all of these little trees are free for nuth'n. 

 

And an updated management plan will inform our actions going forward and serve as a guide to any future owners.

Next step is to hire a surveyor and actually determine where the property lines and corners actually are located.

Stay-tuned.....