Ideas to become a better steward of the land?

[forgeblast]

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.

YEP!!! A class I took brought us to land that was fenced to exclude deer, it was amazing seeing the growth. There was another place that was growing forest in old pasture land. They took 50' of 5' high fence and made a circle from it. T-posted it into the ground and let it grow. The deer kept out of the fence because they did not want to be 'caught'. With the deer too lyme disease is a high possibility. In the end too I would like to leave my property better then I found it.

 

[L120]

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.

Or or or maybe one of the outerspace aliens landed there to dump their potty tank.:laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

Or or or maybe one of the outerspace aliens landed there to dump their potty tank.:laughing:

Gee, now I have two reasons not to locate our well in that area....

 

[houska]

Interesting reading in this thread for a new joiner like me. Just acquired a couple hundred acres of wilderness land in Ontario, Canada.

Around here, the two most important things to do as a steward of the land, whatever the end use, are:

1) Watch the watershed, in particular what you put into it. That goes for septic, and any other runoff (agricultural, fuels, detergents, other chemicals). What you or others do to your land is local, and (generally) recoverable in a few years. Poisoning the watershed isn't. And too much organic matter accelerates eutrophication of lakes and ponds, basically early aging due to dense plant growth and lack of oxygen. It also goes for thoroughly cleaning equipment that goes into the watershed brought from elsewhere. We've got invasive zebra mussels and milfoil making a march across the province, and they spread by boats and other gear taken from infested to not-yet-infested waters.

2) On the land itself, watch for and keep under control invasive plants, especially -- around here -- purple swallowwort and hogweed/cow parsnip (poisonous sap!).