Beechmere Diary

On this visit, I gathered about 400 walnuts and planted these in the area above the pond. It will be interesting to see if this succeeds and if the walnut seedlings can compete with the golden rod and other old field plants. The walnut trees have produced another large crop this year, but the hickories, beeches and oaks are very sparse.

I am not willing to brush hog and apply herbicides, so any trees I plant have to compete with the existing growth.

I also planted about 100 black willow cuttings in areas where the canary reed grass is dominant. I am using a dibble bar to make 1/2 diameter by 18 inch deep holes and then driving the 18 inch cutting into the hole until about 6 inch is exposed.

Most trees have drop their leaves with the exception of sycamores, oaks, and autumn olive. The oak leaves are unusually intensively red this year.

The water level in the pond is down just a bit from the last visit and the streams have just a little water.

On this visit, Chris, Sophia, and I collected and planted walnuts, maple seeds, and black willow cuttings.

The willow cuttings are an experiment to see if fall planting works. If this is successful, I plan to plant about 2000 cuttings next fall.

The Fall color is at it’s peak this week. We hiked, poked about in the streams, and had great campfires each evening.

Sharp’s Fork is very low right now and we looked at the old train engine boiler and train track that is normally submerged and wondered about the history. We also found a great deal of coal pieces in the gravel bed of the stream. We added some of this to our campfires; it burned a long time.

Sunday night was cold; there was a light frost. I sure wish the cabin was insulated and had heat.

The driveway is finally dry enough to be worked. I smoothed out the ruts and reseeded the entire north/south portion.

I also began cutting the grapevines north of the stream. This area is part of a 21 acre plot which has been approved for a grapevine removal cost sharing. I will receive $70.00 for each acre cleared. This plot contains a good number of maple, oak, and ash seed trees and is well stocked with smaller trees.

On Sunday, the remnants of hurricane Ike came through. There was no rain, but a lot of wind. As the cabin has solar power, I was not aware at all that much of the area had lost electricity until I started my drive home.

The pond water level remains about the same. I begin to think it won’t fill until spring.

There has been enough rainfall that the streams and springs continue to flow. Last year, most water sources were dry at this point.

My daughter and grandsons visited this trip.

We hiked and explored the streams. We found box turtles, lots of cray fish and salamanders.

We also finished cutting the grapevines and permanently marked property lines for the on the new 1.4 acre plot.

Again, as there has been no appreciable rainfall, the pond level has not changed much.

On this trip, I seeded the rest of the dam, including the downhill side. There has not been much rain since the earlier seeding and I don’t see much germination yet.

As the driveway is still pretty well rutted and still not dry enough to work, I spent much of my time trimming small shrubs and overhanging branches in order to let more in sun and improve air circulation.

The pond water level seems about the same as before.

This visit is primarily to check the new dam and pond before making the final payment.

The pond is one week old at this point and there is about six feet of water - mostly due to the heavy rains last week. Surprisingly, there are signs of life already. There are small tadpoles, dragon flies, and swallows catching insects.

I hand spread pasture grass seed on the dam top, the sod overflow, and where the dry creek feeds into the pond. I need to get more seed and a handheld spreader to seed the dam outside slopes.

During the dam construction, our driveway became seriously rutted, and then the heavy rains added to the mix so that the driveway was pretty well unusable. Ronnie used the bull dozer to smooth it all out.
Unfortunately, a neighbor drove over to look at the pond and put the ruts back.

The driveway is lined with trees so that much of it is shaded. The shaded areas don’t dry well and become very muddy. So I spent several days pruning the trees lower and overhanging branches. This should help dry the roadway.

I walked and recorded several of the woodland trails with the GPS. I intend to use these recorded tracks, along with a topo map to produce an accurate map of the woodlands and the trails.

The pond construction started on June 30. We had good weather until Thursday, July 3. Strong rains started at about 2:00pm. So the work could not progress. At this point, only finishing the sod overflow, connecting the water source stream, and adding an additional 5 inches to the north end of the dam was needed.

The pond will be roughly one acre in surface area and will be about 14 feet deep at the center. The total dam length is 450 feet.

I found another white oak tree with the jumping oak gall. This tree is not affected as much as the other trees. At this point, it is not clear how well the large tree will recover.

I arrived here at about 3:00PM, and rain began almost immediately. It is astounding how loud thunder can be. I read two books that afternoon and evening before dropping off to sleep.

On Tuesday, the weather was perfect. I used the GPS to mark the south border of the 1.5 acre fragment and began cutting grape vine. This area was severely logged in the mid 1970’s so the only trees of size are sycamores, basswood, and boxelder. There are many 6″-8″ dbh sugar maple trees, though. There are many large rock outcroppings and the terrain is quite steep. There are two old logging roads running north/south along the hill side.

When I first arrived, I noticed that several oak trees had turned brown since our last visit. One tree is a nice 32″ DBH, 70 ft tall white oak that is clearly visible from our cabin.

I was able to pick several leaves from the affected trees and photographed the leaves. When I returned home, I emailed these pictures to the local forester. He told me that the culprit is jumping oak gall, a gall caused by the larva of a small, non-stinging wasp. He further commented that the affected trees will probably bounce back, but he can’t be sure of that. A Google search on jumping oak gall revealed that the small galls on the leaves actually contain small larva. When the larva, encased in the gall, fall to the ground, the larva start jumping about much like mexican jumping beans. There are videos on the internet showing this.

We met with the contractor at the proposed pond site to firm up our requirements. The pond will be about one acre in size and probably 12-15 feet deep at the deepest portion. Depending on the contractor’s schedule, we expect to start work in late July.

I was please to see that a high proportion of the black willow cuttings I planted in April show new growth. Because the reed grass is already several feet tall, it is hard to see the cuttings. I did search out 14 cuttings and 12 showed new growth. This is better than I expected, but I need to see how areas with more standing water will respond. I am hoping to do a fall planting.

The temperature was 93 degrees on Friday , June 6. The temperature at the cabin back in the woods was only 82, but humid.

On Saturday, we used the GPS to mark the western boundary of a triangular 1.5 acre tract that is part of the property we purchased in November, 2007. This tract has never been fenced on the west property line and was last surveyed in the 1880’s. The three corners do have surveyer’s pins, so this was a fairly straight forward project — except that this tract is on a very steep hillside.

The primary task this trip is to locate the flags set for the CRP program and to mark these with 4 foot permanent markers. The Farm Service emailed me a database file of the GPS readings for each of the 56 flags. I was able to load this into my GPS software and then into my GPS as way markers. This worked very well and I was able to find most flags with little trouble. This was good in that the canary reed grass was already knee high.

I had hoped that my neighbor would have been able to put in our pond later this year, but his health is not good. So I will need to find another contractor.

I have marked out the area for the new shelter house and have started the design. I hope to start this project in June.