As I believe I may have mentioned, my neighbor owns hundreds of acres of woods and I keep his roads open in exchange for the firewood. This involves chainsaws and a tractor that I use to load big pieces into the truck and pull logs to more accessible locations. The tractor also has a backhoe, which comes in handy for my neighbors at times.
So yesterday I took the day off from work to have my car serviced and my neighbor and I took advantage of the opportunity to dig out a culvert. It carries a stream under one of his roads near the property of the town historical society. The stream is runoff from a cornfield.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this sort of situation, what can happen is that if the stream slows down at the entrance to the culvert, silt will fall out of it. Once this starts to happen it's self-reinforcing. The ridge of silt slows the stream down further and more and more silt falls out until the culvert is completely obstructed and the water is forced to flow over the road.
So I dug out what must have been a ton of the most beautiful black topsoil you ever saw. The farmer sprays the field with synthetic fertilizer every spring, and as the topsoil washes into the Shetucket he just keeps spraying more. That's where the corn comes from -- a factory that uses natural gas both as fuel and as feedstock to manufacture ammonia. About 2-3% of the world's natural gas consumption is used for this purpose. So to be clear, you are eating fossil fuel, while the world's top soil washes into the ocean.
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Saturday, April 13, 2019
State of the Forest Report
Two weeks ago the top of a huge maple tree on the edge of my woods broke off. I cleaned up the top, which had about 40 feet of trunk. Well, mostly. I still have to split it and shed it. Anyway I had to borrow my neighbor's chain saw with a 25 inch bar to fell the trunk, and that was still pretty difficult since it's a good 36 inches in circumference four feet up where I made the cut. It came down quite nicely though. I measured it at 32 feet so the total height of that tree was about 76 feet. It was senescent, with a hollow bole, and it was hollow where it broke off.
So that tree had reached its natural life span. I looked it up and that could be anywhere from 100 to 175 years depending on the environment. Since it was in the woods, away from any noxious environmental stress, I'd lean toward the high end. Since it was in a moist environment, it hadn't been defoliated by gypsy moth caterpillars, at least not since I've been here.
There are a few mature trees like that around. The predominant species is oak. I have one oak tree that's more than 4 feet in diameter. It has a long scar from a lightning strike but otherwise seems sound. Red oaks typically live 200 years but can live much longer. Most of my oak trees --
Oh, I just stopped to watch a red fox ambling through the woods --
Anyway, as I was saying, my oaks are mostly about 18 inches or so in diameter, some 24, I'm guessing a little over 100 years old. This land does not appear ever to have been farmed but some of it was evidently used briefly as pasture as there are stone walls. (The stone walls did not function as property dividers, as some people think, but just as a dump for rocks.) Anyway, what happened is that the New England forest was largely cleared for charcoal in the 19th century. They would leave a "grandmother tree" here and there, for shade and also to anchor the block and fall they used to pull stumps. That's what the big ones are. The forest regrew after petroleum largely eliminated the market for charcoal, so the math works out. This is a second growth forest but it's reaching maturity.
There are real problems however. Invasive species are number one. The woolly adelgids are killing the hemlocks, and outbreaks of gypsy moths have severely stressed the oaks. In fact there are so many dead oak trees along the roads them state has been out cutting them down and vast tracts of oak logs line route 14. The gypsy moth outbreak was more severe along the roads. As I say, in the deep woods they don't seem to thrive as much. Now we're threatened by the Asian long horned beetle, which hasn't made it here yet, and the emerald ash borer. The chestnuts and elms were wiped out long ago. The white birches were almost exterminated by a blight but there were some resistant trees and they've made a bit of comeback. I have a few, I'm happy to say.
I already mentioned the deer overpopulation as a major threat to the forest. Still, it's come back enough that the wildlife has recovered with it. We'll see how long it lasts.
So that tree had reached its natural life span. I looked it up and that could be anywhere from 100 to 175 years depending on the environment. Since it was in the woods, away from any noxious environmental stress, I'd lean toward the high end. Since it was in a moist environment, it hadn't been defoliated by gypsy moth caterpillars, at least not since I've been here.
There are a few mature trees like that around. The predominant species is oak. I have one oak tree that's more than 4 feet in diameter. It has a long scar from a lightning strike but otherwise seems sound. Red oaks typically live 200 years but can live much longer. Most of my oak trees --
Oh, I just stopped to watch a red fox ambling through the woods --
Anyway, as I was saying, my oaks are mostly about 18 inches or so in diameter, some 24, I'm guessing a little over 100 years old. This land does not appear ever to have been farmed but some of it was evidently used briefly as pasture as there are stone walls. (The stone walls did not function as property dividers, as some people think, but just as a dump for rocks.) Anyway, what happened is that the New England forest was largely cleared for charcoal in the 19th century. They would leave a "grandmother tree" here and there, for shade and also to anchor the block and fall they used to pull stumps. That's what the big ones are. The forest regrew after petroleum largely eliminated the market for charcoal, so the math works out. This is a second growth forest but it's reaching maturity.
There are real problems however. Invasive species are number one. The woolly adelgids are killing the hemlocks, and outbreaks of gypsy moths have severely stressed the oaks. In fact there are so many dead oak trees along the roads them state has been out cutting them down and vast tracts of oak logs line route 14. The gypsy moth outbreak was more severe along the roads. As I say, in the deep woods they don't seem to thrive as much. Now we're threatened by the Asian long horned beetle, which hasn't made it here yet, and the emerald ash borer. The chestnuts and elms were wiped out long ago. The white birches were almost exterminated by a blight but there were some resistant trees and they've made a bit of comeback. I have a few, I'm happy to say.
I already mentioned the deer overpopulation as a major threat to the forest. Still, it's come back enough that the wildlife has recovered with it. We'll see how long it lasts.
Saturday, April 6, 2019
Pride in Dixie
I was at the local auto repair shop the other day and Russ and his friends were there sitting around the cracker barrel. They were discussing a story in the Norwich newspaper (there still is one, believe it or not) about our first selectman who had apparently allowed himself to be photographed in front of a Confederate battle flag at an outdoor meeting in the neighboring town. Evidently the flag just happened to be there, a homeowner was displaying it. The meeting was about building codes or some such anodyne matter.
So Dan should have known better but the interesting question for me is why we see so many Confederate flags here in northeastern Connecticut. The people who display them have probably never been south of New York. Not too long ago I saw a pickup truck in a restaurant parking lot. The front license frame proclaimed the owner to be the town fire chief. Instead of a license plate, it contained a Confederate battle flag. For a while it was fashionable to fly a U.S. flag on your pickup. Some guys actually had a U.S. flag on one side and a Confederate flag on the other. There's a house on a road that's heavily traveled because it connects Windham Center with North Windham, where there's a commercial district. This guy has a lot of old heavy equipment rusting in his yard, and a huge Confederate battle flag hanging from a tree.
I don't think I have to tell you that Connecticut did not join the Confederacy. Connecticut was in fact the home of many noteworthy abolitionists including, of course, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lincoln won the state's electoral votes in a landslide. The state lost more than 4,000 men in the Civil war.
So what point are these clowns trying to make? There must be some intention behind the gesture. Unlike southerners, they can't pretend they're honoring their ancestors or remembering their dead. What do they want us to think of them?
So Dan should have known better but the interesting question for me is why we see so many Confederate flags here in northeastern Connecticut. The people who display them have probably never been south of New York. Not too long ago I saw a pickup truck in a restaurant parking lot. The front license frame proclaimed the owner to be the town fire chief. Instead of a license plate, it contained a Confederate battle flag. For a while it was fashionable to fly a U.S. flag on your pickup. Some guys actually had a U.S. flag on one side and a Confederate flag on the other. There's a house on a road that's heavily traveled because it connects Windham Center with North Windham, where there's a commercial district. This guy has a lot of old heavy equipment rusting in his yard, and a huge Confederate battle flag hanging from a tree.
I don't think I have to tell you that Connecticut did not join the Confederacy. Connecticut was in fact the home of many noteworthy abolitionists including, of course, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lincoln won the state's electoral votes in a landslide. The state lost more than 4,000 men in the Civil war.
So what point are these clowns trying to make? There must be some intention behind the gesture. Unlike southerners, they can't pretend they're honoring their ancestors or remembering their dead. What do they want us to think of them?
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