Biting off more than my chipper can chew

A few years ago a logger friend suggested clear cutting some of the aspen on our Brimson property.  I was hoping he would take some of the balsam, but he said there is no market for it. About two years ago, he and his partner cruised the property to assess how much they would cut.  I thought they would be working that winter.  They never did because “It was too damn cold!”

Last fall some people expressed interest in buying the property.  My wife was eager to sell and I went along reluctantly.  I called my logger friend to tell him not to cut because of the possible sale.  Well, the buyers couldn’t get a loan unless there was a working well.  Our dug well hadn’t produced much water in probably ten years.  We sure didn’t feel like spending the money to have a drilled well.  End of sale.

I called my logger friend back and said he could start when ready.

I assumed he would be cutting in an area of about two football fields, and so I said I would pick up the slash.  I would use it for chips or firewood.

We walked the area in which they were cutting and discovered a clump of five large birch trees, each probably at least fifteen inches in diameter at the base.  One was already rotted, and my wife and I cut that down and salvaged the bark for fire starter.  We thought we would cut the other four down after the loggers were through.  But they offered to cut them down for us, and they even dragged them to the landing area (the place where they put cut logs on a truck to take the chip-board company).

Meanwhile, they kept working across the property until they had cut double what I thought they would.  And then they cut three times what I thought they would.  Then the spring road restrictions went into force and they stopped.  They want to come back next year to take even more!

Before I go on, let me say a few words about clear cutting.  Aspen (popple or poplar) is a weed! It is a large plant whose root system extends over several acres and keeps putting up shoots wherever conditions are right.  When we bought the property, an area had been clear-cut a few years before.  In fact, we have an aerial photo that was taken after the clear cut – “desolation” for acres and acres.  When we bought the property, that area was covered with thousands of trees one to two inches in diameter and eight to ten feet tall.  A few years later, I was taking out trees for firewood that had fallen over; they were three to five inches in diameter or larger.

Also, a DNR forester who did a stewardship plan for us, said, “If you want moose, clear cut!” We did see a few moose tracks about that time, but we haven’t seen any for years.  It may be wishful thinking, but I think I saw a single moose track on one of our trails a week or two ago.

And, many of the smaller trees that were not knocked over by the heavy machinery are six to eight feet tall and greening nicely.  Oh, about ten years ago, the Forest Service put out a contract for clear cutting on the property that runs behind ours.  The only way we know it was clear-cut is that there are no really big trees.

One of our disappointments in our first few years owning the property was all of the dying or dead birch.  They were so far gone that only their bark was useful, and we haven’t even collected all of that yet.  Birch is a tree that grows out of old stumps, and we now have hundreds of newer birch trees.  I made up a rule of thumb that if I couldn’t put my thumbs together and reach my forefingers around the birch, it was a candidate for firewood.

Those trees are safe for awhile.  I finally got the four big birches cut into rounds for splitting and am awaiting the loan of a splitter.  We may have three to four years worth for our cabin. our sauna, and our fireplace in Duluth.

Meanwhile, I am working through a jumbled pile of “slash” that must have been thirty feet long, ten feet wide, and six feet high.  The majority of it is four to fifteen inches in diameter and from four to sixteen feet long.  These were either too small or two crooked to take to the chip mill.  I think I have the pile down to about a sixth of what it was.  And the pile of rounds of aspen is probably three times the size of the stacked birch.

Meanwhile the pile of stuff too small for firewood keeps growing.  For a change of pace I do put that through my chipper and pave the paths with the result.

The problem with all this wood cutting and splitting is that I don’t have time or energy to keep all the paths mowed or cleared of brush.  I haven’t even taken the time to go around “The Path”, a triangle that is about three-quarter of a mile in length.  And there are two other loops that I have neglected over the years.

My wife insists, and I agree, that the loggers should clean up the slash of next year’s cutting, and even clean up what I haven’t removed of this year’s slash.  After all, as that same DNR forester said, “Don’t make it a sweat farm!”

Wild about wild animals

The people of the world seem to be going wild with various ideologies that are harmful to others, and I need a break from writing about these foibles.  So, why not write about wild animals I’ve encountered?

My first close encounter with a wild animal that I remember was on a Boy Scout camping trip.  I don’t remember if I was a junior or an adult leader at the time.  I was sharing a tent with one of the scouts when we heard scurry along a bottom edge of our tent.  I got out a flashlight and we saw a mouse running around.

Without thinking, I grabbed the mouse and stuck it in my shirt pocket; the shirt was on a hanger on a rope at the top of the tent.  Then I started worrying that the mouse might gnaw a hole in my shirt, but I did nothing.

In the morning, I found my shirt pocket intact, but with the mouse dead inside.  I don’t think I injured it when I captured it; I think it died of fright.  I felt sad, but I felt it was a territorial dispute.

A much later animal intrusion ended more happily.  A bat went down the chimney at our cabin and rustled all night trying to get out.  Lucky bat, it was not cool or cold weather when we would have had a fire below.  I managed to get it out with chimney cleaning rods and duct tape.  I gave the rods a couple of taps on the roof and the bat went gliding off.

I’ve encountered bears many times, and my first Reader submission was a compilation of bear stories.  Black bears are more likely to turn and run when encountering humans, but don’t count on it.  My latest encounter was a bear in our cabin yard.  I stepped outside to take its picture, but I made the mistake of clicking my tongue to catch its attention.  I got its attention, but it chose to run the other way from that eight-foot tall animal standing to the top step.

We’ve seen moose tracks around our cabin, but these have all but disappeared as the trees have grown bigger.  A DNR forester told us that if we want moose we should clear cut.  The moose like to munch on young aspen.  Maybe we’ll have more moose as our recent clear cut fills in.

The most moose I’ve seen was on the Kawishiwi River in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  My son and I must have seen fourteen moose in one day.  We were at least three canoe lengths from one grazing the water plants.  I wonder if I’ll ever find those pictures in my jumbled archives.

Among the most skittish animals are woodpeckers.  Even if they are twenty feet up in a tree, they often will fly away.  I did manage once to get some pictures of a pileated woodpecker a lot closer than that.  Within a block of our house one was battering away, and I took several pictures almost level with it.

I did sneak up on a sapsucker drumming on the aluminum vent stack of our outhouse.  I guess it was so lovelorn that it didn’t notice me sneaking up on it to within eight feet.

Probably the least shy animals are wild turkeys.  Or is it most dumb?  A few years ago I saw one strutting around on the shoulder of Hwy. 44.  I stopped and took several pictures of it.  It would walk toward me and then back off.  I almost thought it was a domestic turkey.

But this past weekend I missed a flock of turkeys.  I saw a single turkey on the opposite side of the road.  I decided not to stop.  Then I looked to my right and saw about a dozen turkeys on my side.  Thank goodness they were on the shoulder and not on the pavement.  I slowed down but didn’t stop.  I was too tired from cutting up firewood.

One animal that I had to stop for was a huge snapping turtle.  Its shell must have been two feet or more front to back.  I stopped and took several pictures as it made its slow way across the road.  I doubt that anybody would have hit it; the damage to their car would have been considerable.

I do wish that I had stopped for another turtle crossing the road.  I was staying with my sister-in-law in a small town while I attended a conference several miles away.  As I drove to the conference I saw a turtle crossing the road.  I thought of stopping and carrying it across but didn’t.  When I came back in the evening, there was a broken shell only a quarter way across the road.

Another amphibian that fared better was a green toad that got caught in our rain gauge.  I tried shaking it out, but its sticky feet held tight.  I laid the gauge down on the ground, but it still didn’t leave its “shelter”.  I stomped or banged the ground behind it, and it darted out so fast that I almost couldn’t see it.

Deer are both curious and skittish.  I have taken pictures of them as little as thirty feet away looking right at me.  Other times I only have to wave a hand while I’m in the cabin and they will bolt.

I rarely see wolves, but we hear them or see their kills.  We came across a deer carcass on one of our trails. The next time we passed the spot, the carcass was almost gone except for an organ and some hair.

I did get a great “video” of a wolf howl.  You can listen to it on YouTube; look for “Wolves Howling in Brimson”.

You can also find some of my animal photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/28887068@N00.

Some year Mel will be organized and find all of his notes and pictures.

This version has a few corrections from the original article at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/08/5095_wild_about_wild_animals.

People come and go, the woods endures, Chapter 3

Somewhere we have a summary of the titles issued for our property since the first homestead, and so I can't give a complete history in that respect.

I do remember that the Kero family bought the property sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Kero is a shorter version of the original Finnish name. They tried their hand at fox farming. We don't know if they succeeded, but we still haven't succeeded in pulling up all of the tangle of grass, chicken wire, and wood frames.

Eventually they moved to Michigan, presumably to work in the auto industry. Their daughter Nora Holm inherited the property and later sold it to us.

Once there was a co-operative grocery in the big clearing on the north side of Little Creek Road. Supposedly people would walk to it on the path that runs to the SSE from our cabin. We don't know if that was before or after the Keros occupancy. Now that clearing is the Rack Shack, a small cabin and garage owned by a group of hunters. They are a friendly bunch, but neither of us takes the time to walk across the road and visit.

After the Keros moved the property was rented several times. I met one woman who said her first child was born in the house on the property in the same year I was born. A couple who we later met rented it in the seventies. Somebody else rented it after them. At the time our friends rented it, there was no well and they had to haul water in. I would guess that they got their water from the Rack Shack well; it is excellent water.

The satellite picture was taken in the morning; the shadows are the west of many objects. So, some details get lost, like exactly where is our drive to the road. One feature that does show is the path to west of the northernmost large field. Along much of that segment, Ernie Nelmark planted red pines decades ago. Ernie lived in a cabin to the west of where the Rack Shack is. Those red pines are now dozens of feet tall and a foot or more in diameter.

Kevin Hellman used that same path as a logging road twenty or so years ago. He widened and leveled it for his equipment and continued it into the Forest Service land. To level the road, Kevin dug "borrow holes" on each side. Most of these still remain; many covered by overgrowth. Kevin cut mostly aspen both on Nora Holm's property and Forest Service land. When we bought the property, the regenerated aspen was only 10-12 feet tall and less than an inch in diameter.

See http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/people-come-and-go-woods-endures.html and http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/people-come-and-go-woods-endures_23.html for the previous chapters.

People come and go correction

I had assumed that people would see a satellite view of Brimson in my previous post. I should have included the following:

Before you go any further, make sure you have a satellite view by clicking on the button in the upper right hand corner of the map.

I have corrected that post and will delete this post after a few days.

People come and go, the woods endures, Chapter 2

For this chapter, you might want to see a satellite view of our Brimson property. Go to Google Maps and enter

Little Creek Rd, Brimson, MN

You'll see a little red balloon and a big white balloon for Giving Ground Farm, a herbal products company run by a friend of ours.

Before you go any further, make sure you have a satellite view by clicking on the button in the upper right hand corner of the map.

Zoom in towards the red balloon until you can see the roads. Giving Ground Farm's balloon is just east of a bend in the road. If you move west to where the road heads directly west again, that is just past the east boundary of our property. The middle of the road is our northern boundary; the next intersection is our northwest corner. The clearcut to the South is Forest Service land and is our approximate southern boundary.

In the upper middle there are three clearings. The northernmost is where we built our cabin; the easternmost is where the old house and well were, and the westernmost is what we call "Jan's field".

The little line going southwest is what we call our Park Path; the line going SSE we call our Raspberry Path; and the line wiggling between them just north of the clear cut is our Path of Least Resistance. The first two existed before we bought the place and I'll write about them another day.

To the east is a very dark area; this is a stand of black spruce which is only partly on our property. I don't know much about the dark line running through it other than it once was wide enough to drive through, but that would have been decades ago.

The darker area to the west of the cabin are mostly balsam fir; the less dark areas to the south are mostly aspen with some birch, willow, and way too much alder. The lighter area to the east of the cabin once had lots of aspen but they were blown down in the mid 90s.

I had cut loops to the east and the west of the main loop, but I haven't kept them open for three years or more.

For some ground views of our place in the woods, see my Brimson pictures on Flickr.

Next time I'll get back to the history of our place.

For Chapter 1, see
http://magree.blogspot.com/2009/09/people-come-and-go-woods-endures.html