How then, do we move backwards? How does a society, with most of the people having no clue of future events, move from being dependent on a vast and intertwined network of goods and services produced by the indigenous people of whereever, to a local resource and renewable energy based society, and do so in the timeframe available (20-30 years using the most liberal extimates, 10-20 with resonable estimates, 5-10 with worst case scenarios), all the while prices on everything increasing, world politics getting more militaristic, governments continuously reducing civil liberties, shortages of goods on the market and weather patterns resembling bad Hollywood movies?
Joined: Oct 16, 2004 Posts: 1364 Location: Appalachian Foothills of Virginia
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:19 am Post subject: Re: Land! Finally.
Olaf wrote:
Planning to order in the vicinity of:
20 Black Walnut
10 American Hazlenut
10 Butternut
As this is a long term investment, I recommend finding out what cultivars work well where you are. The Northern Nut Growers Association has many members in New York (where the organization started) and there are many experts you can email for their recommendations. http://www.nutgrowing.org/experts.htm
Black walnut is good for timber 50 years from now, but the nuts are very difficult to extract. The heavy husk around Black Walnuts takes an enormous amount of energy to cut away and leaves one's hands green for a week.
English Walnuts have the benefit of dropping out of the husks at harvesting time, and are a plumper, sweeter nut. Metcalfe and Coble 2
do well in your area.
Hazelnuts are nice, though only get those that are immune (or highly resistant) to the Eastern Filbert Blight. Cultivars include Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Tonda di Giffoni. Deliberate on which you want as your main nut trees, and which you want as pollenizers. http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/em/em8836-e/
Butternut is an interesting nut, but is coming under severe duress from the Butternut Canker; make sure you understand the risks before ordering/planting any Butternut.
Quote:
20 Black Cherry
10 Apple (Red Jonathon maybe)
5 pear (Kieffer maybe)
I highly recommend disease-resistant varieties that do well in your region. Understand the various diseases (e.g., cedar apple rust, fireblight, apple scab, etc) and the timing of the apple harvest, as well as the bloom times to ensure pollination. Varieties I'm growing include Pristine, Enterprise, Liberty, and Black Arkansas. I choose Fuji Red and Golden Delicious from a local store before understanding the above. Now I have the choice of spraying those two every 14 days or cutting them down and reaping the lessons learned.
Joined: Feb 01, 2006 Posts: 474 Location: Northern US
Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:37 am Post subject: Re: Land! Finally.
A few other thoughts:
Contact the local 'soil and water' folks. Depending on your long range plans, you can enter into conservation districts and get a small check every year for doing nothing. (Have never looked into this for us.)
Around here, they can get you trees cheap, sometimes do a cost-sharing for planting, improving and protecting watershed areas, and many other perks. Used to even loan out their tree planter.
Who knows, you could have them help develop a tree farm. If you create a 'farm' entity, there are other perks like no state taxes on ag equipment and supplies.
There should also be a county Farm Bureau. Our FB does not require you to be a farmer but with the ground and some fruit trees, you are a farmer. Plenty of resources available through FB. A great organization (IMO). _________________ "...the problem is today we have unknown unknowns."
Dominique Strauss-Kahn; IMF chief
Thanks for all the continued good advice. I actually work in the government office in one County where the Ag. Districts are created. However, I'll be living in a different County. I make all the maps for the ag. districts in two separate Counties.
I will be looking into the Ag. Districts and Ag. assessment possibilities.
The town that our new land is in does not have zoning besides a minimum requirement for lot sizes.
The plastic weed matting I was using is fibrous and definitely looks like it will allow infiltration, but may not be the best stuff to use. I likely won't use it for any more of the trees and I am thinking I'll just let the conifers compete with the grass. Still planning to try and get the protection system in place that Heineken was talking about with the wire. I have some cardboard I could put to good use as well.
Olaf _________________ "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
Contact the local 'soil and water' folks. Depending on your long range plans, you can enter into conservation districts and get a small check every year for doing nothing. (Have never looked into this for us.)
Around here, they can get you trees cheap, sometimes do a cost-sharing for planting, improving and protecting watershed areas, and many other perks. Used to even loan out their tree planter.
Who knows, you could have them help develop a tree farm. If you create a 'farm' entity, there are other perks like no state taxes on ag equipment and supplies.
There should also be a county Farm Bureau. Our FB does not require you to be a farmer but with the ground and some fruit trees, you are a farmer. Plenty of resources available through FB. A great organization (IMO).
This is good advice. I contacted the soil and water conservation service responsible for the county my tree farm is in and enrolled in a reforestation program for my 7-acre field. They gave me a $1200 allowance to reforest the field. I had to spend only about $600 of it on seedlings and the planting operation.
I filed my claim for reimbursement and guess what? They sent me a check for $1200. I got to pocket the $600 difference.
Government. Go figure. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
and I am thinking I'll just let the conifers compete with the grass.
You may have to mow around them a few times the first year or two. Otherwise they can get smothered---lost in the jungle.
Once they've grown a couple of feet, they've won the fight.
It can be amazingly challenging to establish tree seedlings. I guess this is because what we're doing is unnatural---trying to radically speed up the natural process of succession. So we're sort of duking it out with Ma Nature. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Joined: Sep 09, 2004 Posts: 379 Location: Upstate New York, U.S.A.
Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:56 am Post subject: Re: Land! Finally.
Well, we got a good amount of work done yesterday. We had a total of 400 trees and I would say we planted about 250 of them yesterday. We'll get the last of the Scotch Pines in this week and then start looking into what exactly we want to do with the nut and fruit trees. Started to get a few of the posted signs up as well. The trees we planted last weekend look like they are doing well.
Olaf _________________ "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 8:34 pm Post subject: Re: Land! Finally.
Olaf wrote:
About 20 miles east of Syracuse. Some good size land available in spots depending on what you are looking for and reasonable prices once your away from metro areas.
Olafr
I'm in Syracuse, NY. As of Dec '08 I'll have my bachelors in Forestry. This summer I'm doing field work (mostly forest inventories) to get some experience. I will probably wind up working for an established company when I graduate, but I also want to start a small side business as a consulting forester. Right now I don't have much experience dealing with NIPF (non-industrial private forest owners) and would really like to change that. I also want to build a list of good references and contacts. If you would like, I'd come check out your land and make some recommendations (consistent with your goals) for free.
It would also be nice to meet another Peak Oiler
P.S. Just out of curiousity, do you use ArcGIS for any of your map-making?
Joined: Sep 09, 2004 Posts: 379 Location: Upstate New York, U.S.A.
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 10:00 pm Post subject: Re: Land! Finally.
bromius wrote:
Olaf wrote:
About 20 miles east of Syracuse. Some good size land available in spots depending on what you are looking for and reasonable prices once your away from metro areas.
Olafr
I'm in Syracuse, NY. As of Dec '08 I'll have my bachelors in Forestry. This summer I'm doing field work (mostly forest inventories) to get some experience. I will probably wind up working for an established company when I graduate, but I also want to start a small side business as a consulting forester. Right now I don't have much experience dealing with NIPF (non-industrial private forest owners) and would really like to change that. I also want to build a list of good references and contacts. If you would like, I'd come check out your land and make some recommendations (consistent with your goals) for free.
It would also be nice to meet another Peak Oiler
P.S. Just out of curiousity, do you use ArcGIS for any of your map-making?
Ahh, you must be at ESF. Great school.
I do use ArcGIS. As far as the evaluation, thanks for the offer and I'll keep it in mind.
Olaf _________________ "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
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