Pretty simple,  get some land…..then stand back.

Of course we didn’t know that and thought one had to put forth a bunch of effort and money.   I find it hysterical and a little embarrassing that we actually dug up trees from our back yard in Virginia Beach, potted them and moved them to “The Gulch”.   A running gag now is to point to 20 acres of solid trees about 30 feet tall and say “There’s the one we planted 8 years ago.”   Just to refresh your vision of what we started with…..Here is the back corner where the loggers left huge piles of debris and all the earth packed down into clay cement from their equipment.

And generally aside from the riparian buffers along the spring fed streams everything looked like this.

So, I got on the research train (i.e. the internet) and found that the USDA could hook me up with some tree planter dudes who employ immigrant laborers to hike across these plots and one by one stick two yr old saplings in amazingly evenly spaced rows .   I arranged for 7K to be planted.   Here’s a pic of me standing beside one of the babies right after it was planted.    I’m holding the top of it down by my ankles.

Here’s a look at the soil conditions many of them were planted in.   Not great.

Okay, so pat on the back for that.   Thinking maybe we might be on the planet long enough to see these little sprouts reach head high but, not to be  …….in a good way. 

Meanwhile the next year things were looking better.  Lots of aliveness, even more than was evident in the previous heavily forested incarnation.   Abundance of wild flowers, amazing insects, birds, mushrooms, reptiles, amphibians.   You know, LIFE.

And in many instances we planted additional wildflowers believing that we were making a future investment in diversity but in pretty much all cases they never reseeded but looked great for a single season,  like this patch of blanket flowers.

And the seedlings looked like this after only five months.  With nothing but encouragement from us.

And about 2 yrs later, like this.

So, you can see why I say ,” Just get out of the way.”,  to make a forest.   And although these trees were planted, here’s a shot of the cabin showing some of the volunteer trees which are equally plentiful to the “farmed” ones.   All the trees to the right of the cabin are volunteers (they planted themselves).

And lastly here’s me again after a few hours of trying to open up some space claimed by all those volunteers.   No need to join a gym.

Thanks for reading, sorry if I’m a little tardy.   Enjoy your life.

BD

Visit: The Tree Farm Story from the beginning:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3

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