If a landowner wants to formalize a commitment to preserving healthy ecosystem features plus get tax credits for doing so, then completion of an Island County Rural Stewardship Plan is the way to do that. This type of plan is integrated with Low Impact Development (LID) techniques and the Public...
Today I received the final signature page from the helpful DNR forester. So, it is now truly completed and ready to use with Island County and timber management programs. Yay Yippee Yahoo!!!
The National Wildlife Foundation's Backyard Wildlife Habitat program has helped many urban, suburban, and rural property owners think about how their own small part of the Earth can be a wildlife habitat and not just a yard for a house. It has been a fairly successful ongoing program, and acts as a...
While sleuthing around on Island County plat maps, I found some "mystery remnants" of past plans for our property that apparently never came to be. The plat map below shows a potential subdivision of our property into about 7 different lots, most of which were each larger than other lots in the...
Wells... important stuff on an island... relatively limited aquifers, potential for salt water intrusion near shorelines, longer recharge times. And in our case, we will need to make a decision between installing a well or hooking up to city water lines that are available on two different sides of...
Nice milestone this evening: I completed my Forest Stewardship Plan, the one that I started 6 months ago. Finally prioritized picking it back up again, and it feels good to be at this point. It's a healthy 26 page report, and I can say that going through the process of creating it was helpful on...
The Puget Sound LIDAR Consortium provides high resolution topographic data for land throughout Washington and especially the Puget Sound area. It is mostly of interest since it shows topographical...
I found a 1990 black and white satellite view of our property on Terraserver, which show US Geological Survey imagery. Interesting to see how little development was in the area just 18 years ago. Fortunately our area above Long Point is still mostly forested, but certainly less so than in these...
The University of Washington has a detailed online topography database that shows both land topography and underwater bathymetry of the Puget Sound area. The visual representations of the data are interesting since...
I participated in the three day Game Of Logging course in Oakville, emphasizing two days of tree felling technique and one day of yarding and bucking. It was a great learning experience...