The rehabilitation has begun.
As I’ve shared here before, we bought some land adjacent to ours. It’s about 6.5 acres, of which about 2.4 was totally obliterated by logging before we bought it. I’m not against responsible logging or even selective clearing - our view depends on my cutting dozens of trees every year; we mostly burn the resulting firewood to heat our house.
But I know what happens when you leave a clearcut to nature. Ol’ Mother Nature is a vindictive bitch and within 5 years it’s practically impenetrable with low brush, thorns, and approximately 1 billion saplings, most of which will grow straight up in an intense competition for light, resulting in a forest like this:
So we’ve started planting evergreens, because I love an evergreen forest. If I could have it my way, I’d plant 3,000 of these things in a tight grid pattern over the whole clearing. But... that would be a) expensive, b) incredibly time-consuming and c) well... amazing? But for now I’ll settle for planting as many as I can. My parents have a field that’s being taken over by white pines, so they’re happily transplanting them until they get bored.
These, we actually bought from the state nursery. It’s a variety of white spruce, blue spruce, con-color fir, and one other I can’t think of right now.
It will be fun to watch these grow, if we can manage to keep other growth down. On that note, I’m starting to see some of the conservation mix seed sprouting, which is another win. In any case, it’s a start!