Ideas to become a better steward of the land?

[plowhog]

It's interesting to see the varied problems and benefits of diverse geography, topography, and climate. What I think unites many of us is to try to work with nature as best as we can, while warring against it in selected areas--like invasive weeds or pest animals.

 

[MossRoad]

What you may want to look at is permiculture, and having a forester out to develop a forest plan. For us it was a free service through our dept of ag. They came out talked to us, walked the property and made suggestions on what to do.
We ended up enrolling a few acres into CREP. A conservation program that we enroll property into for 10-15 years and plant trees and shrubs to help with erosion which helps the Chesapeake bay.
Our problem with the deer is they mow everything down. We have a 6' browse line on most of our trees. This in turn means that we do not have a lot of forest regeneration. I will be saving up and putting in deer exclusion fencing in the next few years to try to help the understory of our forest.

When we had the deer overpopulation around here back in the early 80's the state parks all put in about 100' square fenced in areas to see how excluding deer would work.... as you mentioned, nothing outside of the fence was growing between the ground and 6' up. The deer ate everything. Inside the fenced exclusion areas, the plants came back the first year. 5 years and you couldn't see through the fenced area because it was so thick.

It was nothing to drive into the state park and see a herd of 60 deer over there, 40 over here, another 30-40 over there. And this was in a 6 square mile state park, about half of which is a lake, so really only about 3 square miles with several hundred deer on it. It was ridiculous.

 

[MossRoad]

I found a quote from the impact of wild deer at potato creek state park study....

" deer population has increased considerably over the last decade in Potato Creek State Park, from 77 total deer in the park (5 per sq km) in 1981 (R. Grimes, pers. comm.) to counts of 95.7, 79.5, 96.9, and 83.6 per sq. km (248, 206, 251, and 214 per square mile) in 1991, '92, '93, and '94, respectively."

Read that closely....

There were 5 deer per square kilometer in 1981. That equals 12.95 deer per square mile.
Just 10 years later, here's the deer counts for 4 years.

248 deer per square mile in 1991
206 deer per square mile in 1992
251 deer per square mile in 1993
214 deer per square mile in 1994

While lots of people enjoyed driving out there and watching the huge deer herds, if you looked closely, they were starving. There was nothing for them to eat. It was all gone up to 6' high.

They've implemented a quite aggressive deer management program in the state parks here since then. And now the deer are down to normal levels per square mile. The forests and plant life are coming back very well. Nice and thick.

It's not natural to be able to see through a forest in this part of the country.

Here's a link:
IMPACT OF WHITE-TAILED DEER ON PLANT COVER AND BIOMASS
IN POTATO CREEK STATE PARK, ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, INDIANA
1995

Interesting read.

https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/ias/article/download/7378/7369/0

 

[plowhog]

Perfect burn day-- permissible burn and rain scheduled to come in about noon. I started burning this morning, mostly small stuff, and decided to change course about the bigger stuff. I loaded it all into the 1 ton dump truck. I'm going to find an out of the way place to dump it on the property-- starting up a new "critter condo." Seems much better than burning and faster too.

 

[CalG]

Get yourself a copy of Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac".

Appreciation is perhaps the most important detail in living.

A Sand County Almanac - Wikipedia

 

[L120]

When we bought this 2.5 acre country home property, I swore nothing but wood or paper was going into my burn piles. Something I noticed was that the grass around the burn pile is a luscious green and thick healthy looking. Hmm...

It piss's me off to no end that a-holes around us burn anything & everything in a burn pile. The plastic stinks to high heaven for hours. It's even in our town ordinance about what can and can't be burned, but these people don't give a crap. I could call the police every time, but don't want to be known as the towns whinny lil -itch.

We trade some annoyances for others when we move from city to the out back country.

 

[plowhog]

We had an incinerator at the property but it is long gone. We only burn vegetation and downed wood. But after getting input here and elsewhere, I am going to cut way back on burning.

 

[ning]

I used to start burn piles with old fuel but decided that the occasional resultant explosions probably weren't good for my heart. These days if there's nothing very kindling-like in the pile I grab the propane weed torch - if it won't catch with 400k BTUs, it shouldn't be burned.

 

[MossRoad]

When we bought our property back around 1990, there was a field that had many grasses, shrubs, small saplings, etc.... except for one perfectly round circle about 60' in diameter, where there was just one type of small grass. That was the only thing growing in that circle. One plant. My forester said that kind of thing is caused by the farmer turning around a couple times in the same place with his herbicide sprayer on and double or triple dosining the area. Nothing grew in that area but that one grass species for several years after that.

 

[Jstpssng]

When we bought our property back around 1990, there was a field that had many grasses, shrubs, small saplings, etc.... except for one perfectly round circle about 60' in diameter, where there was just one type of small grass. That was the only thing growing in that circle. One plant. My forester said that kind of thing is caused by the farmer turning around a couple times in the same place with his herbicide sprayer on and double or triple dosining the area. Nothing grew in that area but that one grass species for several years after that.

There's an old farm up in northern Maine where an old Civil War veteran lived. If you don't know the history it's just another spot in the woods. Yet it is one of the few places I've seen where the trees haven't grown back in, it's just a bit clearing in the woods. I don't know what he did there to keep the trees from taking over.