An unanticipated consequence of the pruning of the trees is more sunlight in the rows of the plantation, an area away from the hay harvesting machinery. Milkweed plants grew rampant last summer. Monarch butterflies emerged and flourished around the property.
Trees, Youth, Our Future
May 4, 2018
The Eastern Ontario Model Forest has produced an outstanding film series narrated by Andy Kerr-Wilson on the history and future of the forests of Ontario.
Look below for links to the films, including a 12 minute preview. The first film runs 47 minutes, and the second runs 50 minutes.
If you found Two Billion Trees and Counting an interesting read, you’ll certainly want to have these films at your disposal.
The Croskery Woodlot, October 22, 2017
October 24, 2017
The blog’s called The Walnut Diary, so I decided to take advantage of some drone videos our son Charlie shot on Sunday. He filmed on very high resolution, then uploaded them to You-Tube so that your computer can stream them at a resolution it likes. With my Mac I need to turn up the resolution to 720 after it loads.
Charlie recommends turning off your sound while viewing. It’s just motor, propeller and wind noise, anyway.
A look into dangers of using herbicide to control wild parsnip outbreak in Lanark County
COMMUNITY Feb 03, 2016 by Theresa Peluso
I write from the point of view of a Rideau Lakes Township property owner who looks after fifty acres of trees on a 107 acre fam. Wild parsnip is a current problem to my seedlings because it has spread from the township road into adjacent fields. Ms. Peluso naively claims that “After two years, the plant dies.” She further suggests that the seeds don’t spread far. Nothing could be further from the truth. The seeds are magnets for birds. I now have clumps of wild parsnip growing wherever on my tree plantation there was a patch of bare ground and a bird has stopped to roost after a big meal of parsnip seeds. These were not “disturbed” sites in almost all cases.
After eight years of careful mowing, I can state definitely that Ms. Peluso is wrong when she claims that regular bush-hogging before the plant goes to seed will kill wild parsnip. In its first stage it will regrow and flourish indefinitely.
Until this year I have used increasing concentrations of Roundup in a spot-spraying program to keep the wild parsnip from overwhelming my seedlings. Reluctant to spray excessively, I mowed the aisles between the seedlings with a rotary mower. The Roundup worked, but the areas I chose to mow repeatedly, simply grew back. But now the wild parsnip survivors have become tolerant of the spray. It’s time for a new herbicide.
“With proper management, using environmentally sustainable solutions, we can control the spread of this plant.” Sorry, Ms. Peluso, we can’t. Not unless we kill every small bird in Eastern Ontario with a taste for wild parsnip seed.
My merchant just quoted me $1450 for a container of Clearview. Roundup ran $265 last time. Clearview is a serious financial step for a hobby farmer or a municipal government, but I see no point in unleashing Roundup-tolerant wild parsnip seeds on the environment.
Finally, I would suggest that parents not listen to those who belittle the risk to kids of wild parsnip. It’s nasty stuff, far more of a threat to unprotected faces and arms and legs than poison ivy.
How the Lake works
April 8, 2017
Readers of the ice reports on this blog have a proprietorial attachment to the body of water which surrounds Scott Island, but the coming summer will be one of celebrations on the canal and free lock passes, so it’s a good idea to look at surrounding lakes and the culture of those who cherish them.
The Big Rideau Lake Association’s website now features an ongoing series of learned essays under the general title How the Lake Works. They sent me copies of the first six papers. Of very high quality, the essays seek to inform without bias, so the tone remains carefully neutral and the bibliographies are good.
I particularly recommend the paper on water levels by Brian Hawkins, and Life Under the Surface by wildlife biologist Buzz Boles which will be posted over the next few weeks.
https://www.bigrideaulakeassociation.com/howthelakeworks/
Or you can go immediately to my neighbour Doug Bond’s lyrical description of the geological features of the area:
https://www.bigrideaulakeassociation.com/how-the-lake-works
Weighing in on Wild Parsnip
June 3, 2016
This spring I attended a session in Lanark on the spread of wild parsnip and the county’s plan to spray with Clearview to control it. The protesters, young, articulate women, were there in force, communicated by text, worked in shifts, and generally disrupted the meeting.
They left little time for a reasoned discussion of the selection of Clearview as the pesticide of choice, so I’d like to weigh in on the risks of wild parsnip’s spread and eradication efforts versus the greater risk to the environment of the spread of DSV, or Dog Strangling Vine.
Since 2006 I have become increasingly proficient in the use of Roundup, another post-emergent pesticide. The MNR guy told me outright that my black walnut seedlings wouldn’t grow unless they were protected from grass during the first three years of their life. That was probably an exaggeration, but it did encourage me to take the pesticides qualification course and maintain my certification. Last year’s renewal turned into a one-week online course from the University of Guelph — far from a formality. I kept wondering if I had blundered into a graduate school program by mistake, but I hung in there and survived.
Last year a French study linking Roundup to Non-Hodgins Lymphoma appeared in Lancet. This spooked me a bit, as my father died of that rare disease even though he farmed organically and had no use for pesticides — or even diesel fumes, for that matter.
So you may safely assume that I use as little pesticide on the farm as I can. Over the last three years all of the spraying I have been forced to do has been against the steady encroachment of wild parsnip.
I believe the seeds came mixed in with sand spread on the roads in winter. The first year of the infestation concentrated on township roads where the heaviest sanding took place the previous winter.
Birds undoubtedly find the sunflower-like seeds attractive, and have spread them around to isolated locations on our 107 acres where I have done what I could to battle them back. My neighbour was remiss in weed control for a couple of years and the corner of his field was full of the stuff. Now I see no more parsnip on his side of the fence, but the things are well established on mine.
I have a 12v spot sprayer mounted on my Polaris Ranger, and spray by driving to the area and having at it with a 3% solution, striking individual plants. In cramped areas this is fine, and I’m doing pretty well around individual spruces. It’s the open areas where it’s mixed in with grass that I have failed to control the parsnip. Mowing the stuff just doesn’t work. It just grows back like grass. On the other hand, it never gets to the seeding stage, so mowing every couple of weeks is better than nothing.
Why don’t I rig up a wider sprayer and nuke the plants and the hay I generally mow, or use Clearview? I’m more concerned about airborne DSV seeds than I am the parsnip. I don’t want to leave bare patches of earth, as DSV has spread to within a half-mile of our farm but hasn’t established a foothold yet anywhere that I can find. But it’s a relative of the milkweed, so its seeds blow around.
Why not use Clearview? I don’t know it well enough. Roundup is a crop spray, well known for its herbicidal effectiveness and very short persistence in the soil. I own several thousand little trees which have grown through repeated spot sprayings in their vicinity. The feedback loop is pretty slow when using a spray, so I guess I’m slow to adapt.
On Lockwood Lane last summer there was a 100 sq. foot bare spot in roadside vegetation which clearly wasn’t created by Roundup. It was totally dead. I don’t know for how long Clearview’s effect lasts, and what can be planted to replace the plant cover, and when.
So my advice to those property owners in Lanark worried about Clearview spraying? Don’t ask for a ban on road spraying. That’s the route to disaster. Ask for Roundup for your roadside and ditches. After the first application you’ll likely need to qualify as an applicator yourself to complete the process. You’ll need to spray more frequently than with Clearview, but you can be pretty sure the crop herbicide won’t hurt your water, or your frogs, and it will beat down the wild parsnip if you keep at it.
That would be a show of true commitment. Waving cardboard signs and disrupting public meetings just doesn’t cut it in the battle against invasive plants.
Update: CBC Ottawa has a story on their site about the dangers of wild parsnip to cyclists and children.
BBC on Roadkill Cuisine
May 20, 2016
I have never managed to shoot a deer. They don’t exactly volunteer, it turns out. Before I retired time wasn’t available during the short hunting season: for some reason school administrators have a big conference that week, and I usually had to run the school in the principal’s absence. After I had retired, I couldn’t be bothered wasting a week sitting still on a deer run when there were far more interesting things to do.
A few friends have stepped up over the years to fill my license for me, though, and there were occasional deer which had been whacked by a passing vehicle. Of the two sources of venison, I’d have to rate the found carcasses generally higher in palpability than those shot with rifles.
I’ll provide a single example and then leave the subject. One evening in early December I was driving down Hwy 15 when I came upon a large yellow truck stopped on the shoulder, with drivers shuffling around at the front of the truck in some confusion. I stopped. A dead doe lay in front of the truck without a mark on her.
The drivers needed to move on, had a long run and nowhere to put the doe. I offered some steaks if they helped load it into the back of my SUV. I drove directly to a guy I knew who had processed venison all through hunting season. He skinned and cut it up for me for $100.
I reported the pickup to the OPP and the clerk concluded with: “Enjoy your deer.”
Clifford told me that the only mark he could find on the large doe was a small hole in one ventrical of her heart, no doubt from the hydraulic shock of impact with a large, flat object, the front of a Hertz truck. The meat was outstanding in flavour and texture.
I won’t tell the far messier story about a rifle-killed specimen which did not taste very good.
O.K., one more story. While commuting from Carleton Place to Smiths Falls I occasionally encountered road-killed ruffed grouse. Just about everybody picks them up. They’re hard to hunt, easy to clean, and flat-out delicious. One afternoon I was in a line of traffic when the Honda Accord three cars ahead of me took out a low-flying male with the tip of its antenna.
Three of us immediately braked for a U-turn. My SUV had rear-wheel drive, so I could power around more quickly than the Golf and the minivan. The grouse had landed on the centre line so I leaned out the door and picked it up. The other two drivers saluted and resumed their trips home. The thrill of the hunt.
Here’s a clever BBC article on why roadkill’s not just for the starving any more.
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160519-why-you-should-be-eating-roadkill
Deadhead at 12:00!
April 19, 2016
The first cruise of the year is always an interesting trip, even if the weather is fine and the fish aren’t yet interested. The highlight of yesterday’s expedition on Opinicon Lake (at Chaffey’s Locks, Ontario) was the huge deadhead below. Because it was unmoving in the wind and waves, I suspect that it is rooted in the silt 26′ below.
I posted the photo on Facebook (Opinicon Lake and Chaffey’s Locks Rocks) and a comment provides a rather precise location for the log. It’s a long way from the channel between Davis and Chaffey’s.
This picture is taken more in the middle of Opinicon Lake in front of Weatherhead’s cottage looking across the Lake at Bachenburg’s, Langlois’s and Burbank’s and Randall’s.
Dave Warren’s comment on Facebook leads me to believe that the thing may well be a local landmark. I hadn’t ventured up to Deadlock Bay for a couple of years, and things change on a lake over time.
The Black Walnut takeover
April 11, 2016
Yesterday afternoon I noticed that a black cherry seedling transplanted to the front yard last year had not wintered well, so I casually looked around for a finger-sized hard maple to replace it. Maples of this age seem to hide in places where they are hard to dig out, but I persisted in a casual search until a hen turkey meandered past me through the pine-walnut stand as I sat quietly in the cab of the UTV. The large bird worked her way west and was on the verge of entering the woodlot when she suddenly spotted food at the edge of the mowed area and frantically pecked her way around for a couple of minutes before continuing on.
With renewed resolve I searched two fence rows between the house and the woodlot. Every transplantable tree smaller than my thumb was a black walnut. In 2006 when we began the walnut project there were no volunteers in these areas.
Young black walnuts are now even growing in what I would have considered inhospitable terrain a half-mile north of the seed trees, across a stretch of open field. Gray squirrels are amazing seed propagators, and the local climate has changed enough that black walnuts can now grow in exposed areas of the drumlin where they had no chance of survival before.
Frost
May 24, 2015
Friday night (May 22nd, 2015) the temperature dropped below freezing for several hours. The next day was cold and very windy. The frost, or the frost combined with cold, dry winds, did considerable damage to the foliage and flowers of various trees and seedlings scattered about the property.
The most obvious victims were young green ash saplings. By Saturday afternoon the five-year-old ashes beside the brook had turned completely black, stems and all. The damage in a stand of green ash and silver maple planted in 2006 was entirely restricted to the ash. They showed moderate defoliation on some lower branches. All maples seemed to hold up well to frost.
White birch seedlings planted two years ago (2013) showed little frost damage despite rapid growth this season. Their escape might have to do with their height. Seedlings under a foot of height were hardest hit.
Shagbark hickory leaves on 2010 seedlings showed extensive damage. Pin oaks varied: the more verdant the recent growth, the more leaf damage. Slightly older red oaks showed red leaves, but no shriveling.
Black cherry saplings transplanted to the front lawn showed no damage.
Mulberries on the lawn have shriveled leaves, but the undeveloped seeds seem intact, if slightly discoloured. This applies to both the red mulberry trees and the hybrid which produces freakishly sweet, mauve mulberries.
2012 black walnut seedlings were whacked by the frost. That’s no surprise, for I looked at 7 acres of 2005 walnuts and only the most sheltered have the bulk of their leaves intact. One relatively exposed plot of 2006 butternuts will have to grow new leaves, a trick these trees do anyway in response to insect attacks. The adjoining black walnuts planted in the fall of 2005 have heavily damaged foliage, as well.
The real question remains whether the apples, pears, and the producing black walnut tree which lie in the shelter of the house will bear fruit this year. I suspect that the presence of two furnaces running nearby on the night of the frost may have created a micro-clime to allow their flowers to survive. Time will tell.
A note about weeds might be in order. Buckhorn seems impervious to frost. I detected no frost damage to the dreaded wild parsnip which I spent Friday and Saturday spraying. Wild cucumbers and the more verdant climbing vines suffered greatly in the frost, but the robust climbing vines soldier on.
Apart from the green ash, the showiest sufferers were 2013 Norway Spruce seedlings. They had been having a great spring, but the new growth is now brown and dessicated. White spruce and white pines, like maples, seem to have suffered not at all.
the Walnut Diary 