Forest Management Again

Y’all remember last summer (my last post)? We were working towards having our property brushed, limbed, and generally cleared of all unwanted vegetation and there was some paperwork and a couple of surveys that still needed to happen before the process could begin. Well all the final details were completed on March 2 and the clearing work began in earnest March 3.

Before we get to the fun details, one of the owners of the of the company we contracted, Double Tree Forest Management, on an initial inspection told me that his crew likes to start early. Great, said I. On March 3, we learned exactly what he meant as three large excavators along with assorted trucks and trailers began moving to the area around our house at 6:00 AM.

These excavators have swapped out the traditional bucket for a masticator that has a helical cutter head that can remove a large tree including the stump in a matter of minutes. It is fascinating to watch and watch I did. I spent most of the day watching in awe as what would take me easily several months to year they accomplished in less than an hour.

In the following days they opened up areas of our property that we had never seen and it is stunning. While I know we live in an area with a lot of elevation change, it became demonstrably clear that we live on the side of a mountain. These excavators have the capability to handle 45° slopes but as it turns out we have areas where the slope is significantly steeper and therefore inaccessible to the excavators. We are still waiting for the final report as to how much of the property they were able to clear and unfortunately it will not encompass everything we had hoped. Who am I though to look this gift horse in the mouth?

There was one issue that I unfortunately discovered too late. When these masticators grind up the wood and brush, they can throw pieces of wood up to about 75 feet. After witnessing several such examples of wood pieces rocketing across the landscape, I stood back a ways to avoid any potentially life threatening encounters. Or so I thought. It turns out that when they grind up the poison oak (of which we have plenty) it weaponizes the urushiol oil found on the plant into airborne droplets. I just happened to collect a bunch of them on my arms, neck, and face, which then subsequently spread, to other areas of my body. So I find myself in this dichotomy between the pleasure of seeing our property opened up (and expanded) and the pain (and itch) of a really good (aka bad) case of poison oak. This too will pass.

One interesting observation that Cheryl and I both happened to make is that with the property cleared and opened up it appears both larger and smaller at the same time. Larger in the sense that we can see more of it and smaller because we can see familiar landmarks from areas where before we could not. Our comment usually is, “I didn’t realize that was so close.”

My plan with the cleared areas is to establish a network of trails connecting the picturesque parts of our property with the main house. While I hope that guests will utilize the property, these trails are mainly for Cheryl and I and our dogs. And after living here about 4-1/2 years it is about time that we actually saw our property.