Re Rustica

Saws and axes are still good enough for thinning trees. Shovels are still good enough for planting trees. And, it turns out, tents are still good enough for living in!

We love trees. Who doesn’t? Yet we cut down a big one - almost 4 feet across. Then we cut down another! And then we cut down many smaller ones in our farm’s Sierra forest.

Why?

The monoculture on our farm is unnatural. Just a few hundred years ago, the pines - which provided better lumber - were cut down to help build Fresno, Clovis, and even far away cities. John Muir and other primary sources describe, besides the lumbering of the forest, cutting the trees to make way for sheep and other domesticated livestock.

The oaks were better able to survive this crisis. Even after the big oaks were cut down for wood, their acorns sprouted up. Now, the forest is mostly oak - several kinds of oak.

The larger herbivores that would have checked the growth of these oaks were destroyed by over hunting - they competed with the livestock. So the trees today grow too close together, and the lack of diversity further encourages disease. All trees increase the amount of water in an ecosystem, but the large sequoias and redwoods excelled at it. Now the forests burn so easy.

We are thinning the trees to a healthy density, and then a bit more so we can make room for sequoias, redwoods, pinions, junipers, and other evergreens. We will also be planting apples, cherries, pears, raspberries, blackberries and other native fruits.

A healthy forest is a diverse forest, but ours will still lack those necessary large herbivores! They will come when the habitat is restored. The carnovores and the necrovores will also return.

We see it whenever we reclaim land for our crops. An increase in biodiversity will lead to more diversity. And this healthy forest will improve the yields in our vegetable and fruit patches.

In other news,

If you’d like to come see our progress - or help in the lumberjacking or tree planting - you can more easily find us now. After long days of trying to talk to a human being (alas, time not spent blogging or doing real farm work!), the County has finally (kindly) given to us an address! There was some problem that we could not get an address without a house, but after a long discussion with the County, they have decided to recognize our tents as residences. Now we can vote, too!

We’ll be blogging more about this later, but were so happy that we had to share it today.