Wannaskan Alamanac for Thursday August 30, 2018 by WannaskaWriter

During the years of the farming boom, of the 1970s, as tens of thousands of acres of woodlands fell before the bulldozers of land spectulators and were pushed up into mile-long windrows, like raked cut hay, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources erected a large wooden sign along Highway 89 at The Nine Mile Corner, that I thought was sort of stupid, that read: “Welcome to Minnesota’s Forest Areas.”  

I had grown up in Des Moines looking at neighbor’s houses, streets, business buildings and powerline poles. By purchasing this farm in 1971, I realized I had the opportunity to change my view by planting trees. I contacted the Soil & Water Conservation District in Roseau and had a conservation plan drawn up in May of 1973, with assistance of the late Harold Grothem. Receiving it, and reading all that was suggested seemed a tall order, but was my entry into conservation.

Long impressed by the sharp conical spires of conifers, I asked Grothem about one in particular. “You want to plant Black Spruce? You’ll be an old man before you see them grown!” I remember him saying. Here I am, a man as old as he was then, enjoying their teenage years.

In June of 1973, I came up north to the farm and was shocked to see a scene of desolation that didn’t exist the years before. A neighbor, whose land adjoined mine across Mikinaak Creek, had cleared hundreds of acres of his woodland property of all its trees and brush for pasturage, destroying a landscape I had obviously taken for granted practically all my life.

Furthermore there were few trees on my farmland at that time and the absence of the neighbor’s woodland further changed the picture. My uncle Martin Davidson, from whom I bought the farm, had planted white cedar, birch and white spruce (all of which still grow in 2018) near the house he had built there in the late 1950s, and which he later moved to Roseau. (910 Center St E.). He also planted two rows of white spruce northwest of the house bordering the eastern edge of a field, as a windbreak for the yard, some of which trees still stand today. These are encompassed on the east by a small woodlot of popple (poplar), young stands of bur oak, and “baumigilead” (Balsam poplar). Martin told me he had always planned to plant trees in the tiny extreme northwest corner of the farm that bordered a little creek and wetland, but hadn’t done it.

I don’t think that planting trees, especially on land that was cleared to be farmed, during Martin's era, was looked on any more rationally than it was during mine. It just wasn’t being done. And too, some thought the replanting of trees into fields cleared by hand, horse, dynamite, and grub hoe was a disrespectful act. I heard that muttered as I started planting my first trees, and wore that complaint until I remembered that the farm had been in Soil Bank in the 1950s and 60s. Wasn’t that just as disrespectful, and yet done by the very persons who had done that awfully hard work? I relinquished my shame.

As I surprisingly learned writing this, during the Soil Bank Program of the 1950s, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) enacted by the Agriculture Act of 1956, offered farmers the opportunity to plant trees on idled land to prevent soil erosion and receive cost-share for it. I had understood the prevailing thought was that wooded land was considered waste land even up to twenty-five years ago. Even the homesteaders had to clear trees off some of the land in order to take deed of it as part of the Homestead Act of 1862. Trees were thought, ‘evil’, an abomination to productive soil or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_Reserve_Program

I’ve always felt that, in a sense, all I’ve been doing is an attempt to recreate the semblance of a landscape that was there before ‘settlement’ by reintroducing white spruce, tamarack, red pine, white cedar, green ash, bur oak and birch. In its non-cropped idleness, the land reverts to a wild state on its own too, with islands of popple and baumigilead, box elder, a variety of willow and understory plants. Planting trees, and controlling their competition the best way possible, gives them a boost over the rapidly growing ‘weeds’ that shade them and restrict their growth.

Coming from a rural Iowa landscape of predominantly cropped farmland, the majority of it corn and soybeans for miles upon miles, trees were only found in state parks, along rivers, city streets and parks, or around farm homesteads gloving houses and barns. Trees seemed older there too. Cottonwoods, four to six feet in diameter, along rivers in Iowa with its long growing season, weren’t uncommon, and before the onslaught of Dutch Elm disease, great stands of elm peppered pastures or lined boulevards in every Iowa town.

‘Up home,’ conifer and deciduous trees dominated ‘The Northwoods’ the farther north of the Twin Cities and urban population I traveled. Big towns become non-existent, as did ‘tarred roads,’ and trees grew close to the roadsides in places creating an ambiance of Minnesota wilderness that I loved more with each mile north I went. Up towards the Red River Valley, not so much, as the rolling wooded hills gave way to a flatland expanse with similarities of Iowa. Trees were pushed off the landscape and restricted to service jobs around farmsteads as windbreaks, along riverbanks as erosion controllers, or in long thin lines planted across fields after the throes of the Dust Bowl era to protect fields from the scouring winds sweeping across the open country. Field windbreaks that today, throughout the Valley, are being removed as though the lessons of the Dirty Thirties mean nothing.

With a friend’s help, I began planting trees in 1974, planting 1500 white spruce and red pine by hand, in late May when the mosquitoes were out full-force. We used a borrowed canoe to transport the bales of trees and supplies across the creek. As doing anything for the first time, I learned that red pine should not be underplanted in a poplar woods, no matter how thin it looks because the poplar are fast growing and will shade the pine, keeping the sun-hungry seedlings from maturing as they should. Consequently, although I transplanted 65 of the pine to the west side of the creek in later years, they all were lost in an accidental brush fire. Only one red pine remains on the east side as of 2018, a spindly, arching remnant of five hundred brethren.

1974 spruce woods planting

A tree planter gets used to tree loss because there are so many variables they can’t control whether ‘weather’ related issues or not. Some trees grow rapidly others find their own pace, like human children, from whom you take a source of pride as they mature.

In 1981, I planted 3800 trees with the help of friends. This time I used a tree planter I rented from  the DNR/Forestry in Wannaska, pulled behind a tractor I borrowed from my place of work. What joy it was compared to repeatedly throwing a steel planting bar into hidden root and rock strewn ground. Although I was disappointed that we had problems keeping the rows parallel (newbie tractor drivers), we planted two rows of white spruce, a row of honeysuckle, and an outside row of hybrid poplar from the Palmville Town Hall east, all the way to the west side of the Palmville Cemetery, following the contours of the creek, echoing the other rows its total length,

1981 hybrid poplar planting/west side of farm road

The beauty of those trees more than made up for the problems they caused. I can be bull-headed.

A longtime schoolbus driver retired after she learned she was going to have to drive in here as there is a steep drop off to the creek on the right side of the road. 

 

 

The 1974 plantation is visible across the creek.

Looking back.

Tree rows north of Palmville school house

Beauty above and below. An edge of the 1992 plantation.

Rows mowed through the willows of 2012 planting

Criss cross

You'd never know that there are living trees, in places, within these rows of willows. Mowing like this opens the rows to sunshine on both sides, allowing them to grow faster than if they were allowed to be choked by the willows. Flagging the trees when they were first planted and reflagging every couple years keeps the rows identified so I can mow them.

Trees are getting big enough that I can't use the tractor to mow between them. I have to narrow the wheelbase of the tractor or purchase an ATV and pull a mower.

The spires of the1981 planting in the distance overlook a pond

Mowing out a row between two mowed rows

The town board was displeased I had planted trees so close to the northside of the township road, because I didn’t leave enough ‘fall’ against snowdrifts that would cause the road, a schoolbus route, to become unnecessarily blocked. They pointed out that roads on most farmsteads and in the township were built so the winds would blow snow across them and keep them open.

I wasn’t happy about that. Open fields with no trees to block the winds are bleak in the wintertime. But I hadn’t thought to ask the township about any regulations as to the town part of the road that adjoins my farm road, and further, even my conservation plan indicated the rows shouldn’t be planted closer to the road than one hundred feet. I had neglected to read the instructions thoroughly.

One hundred feet seemed excessive to me as it would cut into the field I had rented out, and thought the renter wouldn’t be happy about that either. Angry at myself,  I pulled all of the trees from east of the schoolhouse and transplanted them elsewhere. I got my curving tree-lined road that I wanted--and I fought snowdrifts for years just as they said, but the beauty of those trees more than made up for the problems they caused. I can be bull-headed.

I planted 100-500 trees a year until 1988, when I enrolled the farm in the Conservation Reserve Program. On the advice of one of the Breilands, knowledgeable neighbors, we staged the rows substantially east of County Road 8 in the advance of the road’s planned improvement, a tidbit of memory that I remember fondly and am glad we heeded. With again, the help of friends and family, we planted hundreds of white spruce and hybrid poplar in 3/4 mile long rows, (some by hand) two of spruce and one of poplar, north from the Palmville Town Hall to the Palmville Cemetery road then east, to about where Johnson Creek flows under it. The field, north of the schoolhouse, was planted to bromegrass and timothy by a neighbor we hired. A year or so later, with the help of Matt McDonnell, I replanted the spruce rows where it was needed, using a tractor and planter, and added a row of spruce to the east side of the spruce.

In 1990, east of the 1988 planting, with the help of family, we machine planted 20,000+ trees across about seventy acres, the north half of the field in rows east to west, the south half of the field in rows north to south, beginning on the east side echoing the field contours. According the the conservation plan, we were able to leave a five acre opening called a ‘wildlife planting’, as I recall, of fruit trees and berry-bearing shrubs, like cotoneaster and chokecherry.

But the year proved dry and it appeared that tree survival was poor. I asked a forester to walk the plantation with me and offer his opinion, it being just what I was afraid to think myself, that the loss was catastrophic, upwards of 80%, maybe 90%. I had to replant, sooner than later.

However, the next spring I came down with a serious case of pneumonia and spent a couple weeks in Grand Forks, United Hospital, ICU. There was no way I could do it that year, so we waited until 1992 and, because rules had changed, we had to plant that five acre wildlife opening to trees, and so planted an additional 5000 trees to bring our planting that year up over 25,000 trees. What a disaster! The year was a wet one and try as we might, we were always getting stuck with the tractor and planter. I had decided to plant to the contours across the whole field from north to south, keeping pine and poplar up on the higher sandier areas of the field, the spruce, ash and cedar on the lower areas. We fought and slogged our way through as many rows as we could; I had taken as much vacation time as I had, at work, so time was of essence, so I called it quits using mechanical means and opted to hire a forestry crew from Arkansas to handplant the remaining acres. What an education!

They were a team of six Latinos, five of whom didn’t speak English. Their foreman did, and was to whom I explained what was planned. They sang as they worked, each planting over a thousand trees a day. My daughter, only four years old, found them very interesting and they entertained her with their laughter and friendliness. We brought them Spanish language newspapers my wife had got from her college. They did a good job for us. The trees were in the ground at last.

But many more trees of the first planting didn’t die as were expected. And then, because I didn’t follow the original rows and planted often perpendicular to them, I couldn’t maintain the rows without mowing down seedlings. Although I thinned out some brush by hand, too soon the willows got the upper hand and swallowed slower growing trees.

However, totally by accident, what has survived is, to me, a lovely mixed forest of variety, of white spruce, black spruce, red pine, green ash, ginneala maple, hybrid poplar, red dosier dogwood, Russian olive, cotoneaster and other varieties, not the bland all-one-kind-of-tree plantation. There are islands of planted trees in the midst of a willow ocean where after many years the trees have fought their way toward sunshine and overpowered their tormentors, choking off their former dominant view of the sky. It’s a growing forest.

In 1998, we planted about 500 shrubs northwest of the homestead, by hand, a few of which survived due to deer and rodent depredation. In 2003 or so we tried again, even using different kinds of deer repellent, but all were decimated over the course of the years. Fencing would’ve helped but I didn’t have the money.

Years passed, CRP contracts came and went. I contemplated renting out the remaining open land but the thought of the applications of fertilizers and herbicides it would require bothered me and I knew would concern my wife even more.

In 2012, I decided to plant, likely, my last tree plantation and entered a CRP contract to plant 16, 500 trees, with the help of family and friends. Again, all on a contour of the lay of the land. Despite the headaches of maintaining such rows, their design is unique. Few of the rows are straight rows, and instead twist the four directions. Due to the human element, non-GPS assistance, tree rows are, in some places, wider apart than others, and narrower together in others. This plantation I added tamarack, bur oak and scotch pine. If I had only known how fast tamaracks grow, I would've planted them years ago! They're amazing.

Tamaracks grow rapidly--but not necessarily straight. They look like a conifer but are deciduous. In the fall their needles turn orange adding contrast across a field of green, then they fall off.

Toward the end of the planting time, we inserted dead-end rows to fill the gaps, a situation that creates a follow-through dilemma when mowing time comes along and much head scratching is required as I attempt to mow-out each row as I have done for five years. This plantation is the epitome of non-herbicidal maintenance as there are no intersecting rows of an earlier plantation. Where the rows are gloved by high willows, trees still grow, either side of their row open to the sun. I’ve been happily surprised myself to wander down some of them, flagging rows, to find a sturdy growing seedling living under the partial canopy of its bully neighbors.

Oh yeah, the flags. Anybody who drives by the schoolhouse can see the thousands of marker flags in the tree rows yet. Each flag does not mark a tree but instead a row, rows that I can see from where I stand on my old Massey-Fergsuon tractor. True, I spend days on days out there, but there are few places I feel so good than among the trees I’ve planted. 

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Schoolhouse sky