Hazard Trees

One thing about working in dead forests is that there is a high risk of being struck by a falling tree.  All those millions of beetle killed trees that you've been hearing about for the past decade are going to fall down.  In fact, they are falling as I write.  (Do they fall soundlessly?)  Mostly they fall harmlessly, but they can pose a hazard to those who are working among them.  There are, of course, certain things that make it worse—wind, for example—but they can fall at any time, and without warning.

I made the photo of the Elk River, above, on a calm morning at 9:21:43 am.  I made the photo of the Elk River, below, on the same calm morning at 9:23:09 am.  In the 86 seconds between images, a tree fell—on the other river bank, fortunately—into my picture.  It was a dead lodgepole pine, and you can see it in the image below (framed in yellow).  It doesn't look very big, but if it hit you, it would likely be fatal.  The other thing to keep in mind is that the remaining live trees in the forest are almost never wind-firm, and that they will almost always blow-down, too.  (See, the top picture.)  So, whether the tree is live or dead, it presents a hazard to anyone in the forest.  Better that y'all just stay home until this whole issue, ahem, blows over.

Fruit Tree Tragedy

Our best pear tree broke today.  It was carrying a bumper crop of fruit on one of its branches, and the branch broke.  We had thinned the fruit, but probably not enough.  I had also tried to prop the branch with piece of wood.  It seemed like a solution, but I almost wonder if it didn't create a breaking point because the branch could no longer bend naturally.

In any case, it is very disappointing.  The garden has not done especially well this summer, but the fruit trees were looking great.  Now, we've probably lost a good portion of our pear crop.  We picked up all the developing pears and put them in a box just to see if some of them will ripen anyway, but it seems doubtful.  There were at least 60 pears.

Arborglyphs

Aspen tree carvings—or arborglyphs—are often common in the places where I work.  When a carving is especially interesting, I may stop to look and make a picture.  This week, for example, in Colorado's Park Range, I came across four carvings of naked women.  Two of them were by the same carver, and were so good that I had to photograph them.  (Now, Rural Ways is a family friendly blog, and by "good" I mean fluidly carved and realistic.  The image above has been edited for publication.)  I mentioned these to one of my colleagues, and he said that they are sheepherder carvings that have been recognized as an art form and cultural resource.  I googled it and found a fair amount of information about the carvings of Basque sheepherders in Nevada and California.  In Colorado, however, the sheep camps have traditionally been inhabited by Mexicans, and, if the final carving I found is a self-portrait, by South Americans.

Great Basin Gopher Snake

On Saturday, Ellen spotted a snake on The Homestead.  Valerie got a pretty good picture of it.  It looks like a Great Basin Gopher Snake (Pituophis catenifer deserticola) to me.  It is harmless to humans, but it should be hell on mice.  Between the snake and the cat, I expect to be rodent free around the garden.

View From the Office

We're working in the lodgepole this week, between Yampa and Kremmling, Colorado.  Most of the pines five inches in diameter and larger have been killed by the mountain pine beetle.  There is some nice looking spruce, and a few aspen clones, but much of the rest of it is fir.  We're not allowed to cut any green trees, so any treatments we prescribe will simply release the fir.  We call it the fir preservation and promotion project.

56 Days

At The Homestead, we've been waiting for rain since the 18th of May.  In anticipation of it, I began singing to Ellen, in my Bob Dylan voice, "It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."  Something must have worked.  When I got back to my computer today after a day in the woods near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I had an email from Valerie.  The subject line:  Hard Rain.  Yep, after 56 days of scorching sun, we got rain in Parowan.

Garden Revenues

Because summer started two months early this year, the garden at Rural Ways is already producing.  We've picked peas, beans, tomatoes, and strawberries since the end of May.  Actually, Valerie has done the picking, and she has helped me by weighing (in ounces) her daily production.  At this point, the garden has provided about 130 ounces of food, or a little more than eight pounds.  It isn't much, really, but the true heavyweights—melons, winter squash, pumpkins—are still to come.  Plus, we should have a good crop of apples and pears and potatoes.  I suspect that we will haul in many, many more pounds of food.

But, does it pay?  This is one of the questions, right?  Is the amount/value of food you can produce at home worth the time and effort?  I mean, as you drive through California's central valley, you can see green fields 100 miles across.  The farms are so large, and the economies of scale so tremendous, that there may be no way to compete on your own patch.  If you can get tomatoes from California at a buck a pound, can you ever make a home garden pay?

This summer, we are taking a shot at quantifying the costs and benefits of the garden/orchard.  We have already spent more than $500 on hoses, soil amendment, seeds, tomato cages, etc.  Can we grow $500 worth of food to match?  Better yet, can we grow more than that?  In other words, can we make it pay?  I suspect that we will eventually make it pay, but, it may pay only about ten cents per hour.  In any case, our current revenues, based on average grocery store prices for our garden produce, plus the return on a couple of seedlings that we sold earlier in the year, is $49.26.

Clouds

So far, so good.  We made it through the 4th of July with no new fires in southern Utah.  Perhaps it was the flashing signs on every highway advertising a statewide fireworks ban accompanied by the threat of a $5,000 fine.  Or, perhaps it was the cloud cover.  On Wednesday afternoon a monsoonal flow came in from Arizona with wall to wall cloud cover and relative humidities of 26% (instead of the 6% we've had for weeks).  When we got up this morning the streets were damp.

(I'm not sure if we can call it "rain," but there must have been a brief drizzle.  For me, "rain" means at least two things:  First, it has to settle the dust; and second, it has to actually hit the ground.  It wasn't dusty this morning, but the ground under our trees was dry.  There wasn't enough falling from the sky to drip off the leaves.  So, I'm not sure we actually received "rain.")

In any case, the higher humidities and break from the sun were good enough for the Shingle Fire.  And, in our euphoria, we even thought we'd go for a hike.  Unfortunately, by the time we got out there, the sun was back.  We walked about half a mile up Noah's Ark and then decided that it was too hot.  How about some more monsoons?

Martial Law

Most of the intermountain west has seen no rain for more than 45 days.  It has been clear and sunny, with a scorching wind.  There is no place from Kansas to California that is not experiencing critical fire weather.  At Rural Ways we don't watch TV, but those that do may have noticed that Colorado Springs burned down in a wildfire.  Last night we went to bed with the smoke from the 100,000 acre Clay Springs Fire hanging over town.  Today the Seeley Fire jumped to 33,000 acres.  The New Harmony Fire (near Cedar City) has been controlled, but it destroyed 30 structures and closed I-15.  Yesterday, somebody started a fire on the Markagunt Plateau—today it is called the Shingle Fire.  It has jumped to 1500 acres with 0% containment and 1500 evacuations.

And here comes the 4th of July.  Oh, holy heck (as they say in southern Utah).  I-15 is packed with all of southern California and Nevada headed for the mountains.  And every camper, truck, and trailer from all of southern California and Nevada is packed with cheap fireworks.  At Rural Ways we like to take care of ourselves and do not generally look to the government for intervention.  But, if the Parowan mayor wants to post a 7pm curfew and patrol the streets with the National Guard for the next two days, I'm all for it.  Any soldier who notices some idiot with a package of bottle rockets should be authorized to shoot on sight.  People, please, save the fireworks for New Year's Eve.

Even Bigger Trees

A couple of weeks ago, I submitted a post regarding sixty-inch pine trees in the Sierra.  Now, a sixty-inch tree is a large tree anywhere, but there are, in fact, much larger trees in California.  This past week, I stopped and put my tape on a Sequoia.  It was 221 inches in diameter at breast height (DBH).  That means that if you cut through the tree at DBH, the stump would be 18 feet across.  If you want to know how big around it was, you need to multiply the diameter by pi.  Thus, the circumference of my sequoia tree was roughly 60 feet.