The "You Rot!" Pile

I am a thinker. I will wake up in the wee hours of the morning and will not be able to get back to sleep because I start to ponder. (You will note the hour of many of my posts is early AM.) This "thinking thing" also happens when I'm out working in our woods. Sometimes those thoughts get kind of weird; thus the title of this post.

Learning about and following Mother Nature's paradigm for decay has become something of a, well, I hesitate to call it a passion, perhaps obsession is a better choice of words. Decay is nothing more than a feeding frenzy of microorganisms and fungi that find their "niche". In biological terms, a niche is an environment where a particular organism thrives. Create that environment "and they will come". I've realized that in clearing land naturally, what I've really been trying to do is create mini habitats for particular species of organisms.

In areas that I want to reclaim quickly, I have been using the biology of surface area. This means that by shredding and chipping, I am increasing the amount of surface area that microorgansims and fungi have to work on. As long as these areas of chipped/shredded brush/wood stay predominantly damp, I will have created an environment conducive to rapid decay.

My brush piles are more like time release fertilizer. Initially, they provide habitat for both ground dwelling animals and for small birds. As time goes by and the lower logs decay, they become habitat for the organisms of decay.

There is a third modality that I am using and this leads me to the "You Rot!" pile. Too many hours alone in the woods Jeff? Perhaps... Both from previous logging and blowdown, I have an abundance of fallen wood in varying states of decay. The newer blowdown (2 yrs old) has peeling bark where insects have colonized between the bark and the wood. The bark keeps the inner wood damp and the insects thrive even if there is little contact with the ground. The wood, pine, fir and popple, shows the initial stages of decay as the wood is beginning to get soft and punky. The older pieces of downed wool on our property go from this initial stage to being completely rotten. All of this wood is too big to chip.

I started taking some of this wood to a low spot (a skidder rut) that I eventually wanted to level. I cut the logs into shorter lengths, moved them to this low spot and then lined all the logs up in the same direction, packing them together as tightly as I could. I did this one year ago as an experiment.

I noticed a few weeks ago that my pile of logs was just about completely decayed! Cool! I knew this would happen but I didn't know it would happen so quickly. I was careful to mix younger (less decayed) logs with more decayed pieces thinking that the decay organisms would spread and apparently they did with vigor. I was careful to place this rot pile in an area of partial shade as I knew being damp was a criteria for decay. At any rate, I've now put two more layers of partially decaying logs on top of the first wanting to keep a good thing going.

I'm in a bit of a quandary as this pile is now in an area I want to level this spring and I have a feeling that if I cover the pile with soil, decay will slow down or even stop. What I will do for now is cover the pile with a layer of shredded brush in an attempt to better keep the moisture contained as I have a feeling we may be in for a dry summer.

Bottom line. The "You Rot!" Pile rocked and is a great technique for getting rid of large pieces of useless wood you wouldn't otherwise know what to do with. The wood decay organisms thrive and multiply in a frenzy of activity as long as you provide them with the environment they need. Depressions in the ground provide an ideal location for this process for their natural ability to retain moisture throughout the year.

(Gee, this almost sounds scientific!)

Corduroy Roads

I'd learned about corduroy roads long ago in high school as part of a course in colonial technology (Thank You Mr. Holmes!). In colonial America, well travelled roads could get quite muddy after rain and especially during winter thaw in areas where the ground froze. Wagon wheels were narrow with little surface area and were prone to sinking quite deeply into the mud. One of the solutions to this issue was to "corduroy" a road. Small tree poles were laid down, across the road, side by side. The good news was that this would keep the wheels from sinking into the mud and getting stuck. The bad news was that this provided both a bone-shaking ride for wagon or carriage occupants and it could also rattle a wooden wagon or carriage to bits if one wasn't careful. A solution to this was to cover the corduroy road with gravel.

I just happen to have a few wet spots where this simple technology is going to be put to trial. I'm a bit wary as I'm going to use Balsam Fir poles for my corduroy and fir seems to decay fairly quickly out in the woods. However, from what I have heard, if I cover the poles with gravel, this corduroy road will last indefinitely. I've an educated suspicion that the fungi responsible for decay require a certain set of optimal conditions to grow, reproduce and perform the process of wood digestion. Change the balance of these conditions and you slow, perhaps even stop the process of decay.

I personally do not know if the decay process is anaerobic, aerobic or both. That is, if decay organisms (mostly fungi) require air or if the process will continue on without air. So, if I bury the logs thus removing much of the exposure to air, will there be little decay? There is also the issue of moisture. Being in a wet environment, the logs will be very wet most of the time and this may also aid to retard decay as fungi seem to favor damp conditions.

I've also read recently two books by Rob Roy (http://www.cordwoodmasonry.com) on Cordwood Masonry. He feels that, in order for decay organisms (fungi) to gain a foothold in wood, the wood needs to remain damp. If wood can breathe and dry out after getting wet, decay is not an issue. Suprising to me was that he recommends Balsam Fir as one of the species that works best in cordwood construction. Apparently it can last as long as cedar (the most preferred wood for cordwood construction) in this type of construction method and does not shrink much when it dries as compared to other wood species.

So, while my smaller diameter trees are going to corduroy some of my wet access roads, I'm now thinking of harvesting my larger Balsam Firs for a cordwood construction project. Perhaps a Cordwood Sauna is in our future.....

And as far as my corduroy road experiment goes? I guess time will tell.... I'll update here of course.