The leaves have fallen...

With the days noticeably shorter and cooler and, with the insects gone, one of my annual fall projects is to work on one or two of the numerous woods roads that transect our land. Most of these are old skid roads and have been left with occasional deep ruts; the scars of logging too late in the winter. This fall, I tended to finishing a road I'd started two years ago. It's part of my cross-country ski loop which placed it on the top of my priority list. Two deep ruts were filled with rock, the road leveled, graded and seeded. Another 250' of woods road completed. With a few warm days left, I'm hoping the seed I spread germinates. I use a conservation mix which includes a variety of grasses and clover.

The fill rock came from an old farmers rock pile originally left from clearing land over 100 years ago. For some reason, this pile was placed in the middle of a field. Tearing the pile apart was fun. The kids spent several afternoons digging to find "treasures" which included old cow bones and fragments from both china plates and earthenware.

Much of the rock from this pile went to leveling yet another portion of road I am working on which provides access to the back corner of our property. Part of this road is corduroy I placed two years ago. I'm not sure how long the corduroy (wood) portion of this road will last. It's fairly quick to build but the wood eventually will decay. Rock lasts forever and, while it may take a bit longer to move and set, is inevitably much more durable. Big rock goes on the bottom, smaller rock gets placed on top. Finally, the road gets a coating of gravel to fill in all the gaps. In Maine, we have plenty of rock....

The larger stones went to rebuilding a stone wall but that's a story for another day.

Wow, What a Summer!

This was a summer for the books. An early and warm spring allowed us to plant our garden almost three weeks earlier than usual. Clear, sunny days with maybe three weeks of real heat sporadically appearing in June then July. August has begun to feel like fall with the nights cooling off for pleasant sleeping. Having taught for the 2009-10 school year, I was glad of summer vacation. It was an intense first year back after a lengthy sabbatical, especially with trying to fit my Chemistry curriculum into a one term teaching model.

I had to shift my summer work expectations as well; knowing that I would get less done in our forest than I had in the past. The logging was completed last October. Sadly, there was more habitat destruction than I would have liked. After clear instructions to leave specific trees for deer habitat, they were cut down. Since then, I have seen very little evidence of deer in our woods. But, with time, I know the habitat will regrow and the deer will return this fall in search of apples. On a positive note, the areas that were selectively cut were cut well. Brush from the logging was spread out and cut small enough to lie close to the ground. After one year, the brush has settled down. In a few years, the brush should begin to decay well and the forested areas look better than before they were worked. When you bring someone to work on your land, they bring their knowledge and ways of looking at things with them. Finding compromise and being comfortable with the outcome is important. While I'm upset that some areas weren't cut as I would have liked, I'm grateful to have had an experienced logger work my land and leave it looking as nice as though it were his own. Life, after all, is about appreciating balance and accepting compromise.

Clearing the land ends up being both a blessing and a curse. As more land is cleared to field, there is more to mow. The popples, raspberries and other invasives tend to want to plant roots and grow. Keeping these in check the first few years is important to allow the native grasses to recolonize. Mowing stole a good amount of my free time this spring and summer.

With my remaining time, I continued to clean up the corridor along our access road. There is a band of white pine that runs diagonally through our property and which crosses the road. This is where I focused my efforts this summer. Slowly, I made my way through each small portion of pine and pruned the branches up to about 10-12 feet. I continue to embrace my method of dissecting branches. The largest pieces of wood are cut into 3' lengths and taken to an area I want to fill. Branches between 1-3 inches thick are stacked to be chipped later on and the smaller branches are piled in a flat area and shredded with my field mower.

I continue to experiment with the wood decay process in what I affectionately call the "You Rot" pile. These have taken on several incarnations. One area is a large steep hill side on the edge of a field that I want to temper to a gentler slope. There are also regular small depressions within wooded areas I want to fill. The method remains similar regardless.

The larger pieces of wood are laid flat, all in the same direction, filling in a depression or creating a slope.

The mulch left from mower shredding is raked up, piled in my tractor bucket, dumped and spread over the top of the wood. I'm hoping this creates an ideal habitat for all the microorganisms that cause wood decay. The layer of mulch will allow the wood to remain moist while allowing some air to get in to the pile. Time, of course, will tell how successful my method is.

The remaining 1-3" branches will be run through my chipper and the chips used for mulch around fruit trees, raspberry bushes or newly planted concord grape vines. The remaining chips will be broadcast over the area they have come from. My hope is that the extra time I spend now cleaning up these areas will be time I won't have to spend in the future maintaining them.

The edge of a forest is a transition zone and I am sensitive to keeping most all of these areas intact. Most I will completely leave alone. The ones closest to our road though I tend by thinning and pruning the balsam fir that grow there naturally. There are plenty for us to selectively cut for Christmas trees and every year, we also offer trees to those in our area that can't afford or don't have access to a tree for the Holidays.

The burnable wood that comes out of cleaning up these areas (there is always standing dead hardwood) gets bartered. Lucky for me, I have a wonderful neighbor who is a massage therapist. She likes the small diameter wood that comes from selective cutting for the wood cook stove in her kitchen and I'm certainly not going to argue with the offer of an occasional massage.

Economic Reality

Once in my life on the "other" coast, I used to occasionally climb big mountains. Quite a few of the people I used to climb with had this need to get to the top. Many times this need overwhelmed their rational brain and perhaps that's why I was asked to join the climbing party. Getting to the top was nice and all but I really enjoyed just being out there, enjoying nature and the kindred spirits of the other people in the climbing party. I mean, you get to the top and what happens? You look around for a few moments, give a few high fives and then turn around and go back down. I guess that I'm the type of guy that enjoys the journey much more than the destination.

The economic downturn had it's effects in our family just as it did many others. The funds that we saved to build went instead to supporting our family. I returned to the classroom this fall to teach Chemistry. It was time. My wife and I were very lucky to have been able to spend lots of quality time with our two kids before they started school.

I have weathered a few of these life-changing, course-changing experiences. They are not without their angst. But, they teach us if we are willing to listen. And, if you care most about the journey, then the experiences aren't so devastating. Life is full of different roads, each one with something special to teach us about ourselves.

So, my "Thoughts from the Woods" may be more infrequent. Being a good teacher is time consuming. We have had about half of our acreage "cleaned-up" by our neighbor and his tractor. He has done an excellent job of not only harvesting wood that needed to go but in grooming the forest-land as he went. I don't agree with all that he has done but, by and large, the harvested areas look great.

This summer and fall, I have focused my efforts on cleaning up specific areas of debris left after tree removal. These areas surround the "core" of the property and these areas we will ultimately use when we do build. Branches were cut off of limbs with a machete, piled in rows and mowed with my field mower. Limbs were stacked in piles and are slowly being chipped as I get to them. Wood that is too big for my chipper is moved to low areas and packed into "you rot!" piles. The idea here is to get this wood all together so that the wood decaying organisms can have a field day. Wood chips then brush is piled on top to keep the area from drying out in the summer.

What is left in the core area, now that all the pine and fir have been removed, is a hardwood (mostly maple) forest. My next goal is to thin this to all but the larger trees and to sell the gleanings as firewood. In a few years, once the ground litter (the shredded brush and chips) has decayed, I'll plant clover and grass.

One of my other goals is to slowly create a forest garden. The concept is simple. You add food producing trees & plants to the understory of your forest. I add a few trees each year. In the last three years, I have added 6 hearty nut trees, 3 apple trees, rasperries and concord grapes. There's no telling how well they will survive in the long run; that's part of the experiment. Some of what I plant is free. The rasperries were grabbed from the outskirts of someones raspberry patch as raspberry roots will "run". The grapes came as rooted pieces from an old grape arbor that had fallen and the shoots had rooted themselves. This year I will add a few pear trees and perhaps some blueberries.

Though I can't get into our woods as often as I did (or as I would like), I've adapted to this course correction. I'm glad to be back teaching high school. I'd forgotten how much fun it is (and how much work is involved). After grading a few quizzes this morning, I'll be puttin' on my snowshoes and heading in to our woods to begin pruning wild apple trees.