As part of two outdoors site visits, the Forest Stewardship Program lent everyone in the class a good set of basic forester tools to later use on our own land. Already packed into pockets of a fluorescent orange safety vest, the following tools were loaned out:
Google Earth is just plain cool. I am now able to overlay my site map directly into Google Earth via a personalized image overlay. By doing this I can view all of the site locations relative to everything around it and the underlying satellite photo landmarks. More importantly, I can tilt, pan, and...
The detail available from free online satellite imagery is getting progressively more amazing. Google Earth (www.google.com/earth) first raised the bar with its integration of aerial photography onto 3D...
The idea of a driveway became a bit more tangible today. After buying a roll of bright yellow flagging tape at a local hardware store, we walked the length of the existing old logging road into the property. We bushwhacked its length while looking for the best entry curve and minimization of...
The Forest Stewardship Site Plan is a map of our property that includes both current and future projected forest/usage characteristics. It's one of the more important parts of a Forest Stewardship Plan since it tells a story and includes lots of information at a quick glance. I used Adobe...
Our land has the beginning characteristics of later old growth forest, though technically it may not occur on the site for another 500-1000 years. Forest succession is where a forest goes from post-disturbance bare ground to plants fighting to get higher than everything around...
The Forest Stewardship Coached Planning Program provides a one page forest stewardship values template to help hone in on primary values and goals of owning our forest land. It also provides separate questions to answer in the 5 inch thick binder of materials from the first class. They...
Tonight, I started a 10 session course called the Forest Stewardship Coached Planning Program, offered in King County through the Washington State University Extension. We meet every Tuesday evening for up to 3 hours, and there is also a Saturday field trip to local private forested properties for...
We have a tree stump on our property that will perhaps make a good chainsaw carved chair someday, complete with view. I may keep some of the larger stumps from trees that get removed for any building site or solar access, to use for seats. We'll likely keep some other trees at half height to serve...
Due to the forest on our property, calculating sun angles is critical data for selecting which trees would need to be cut down for solar access and which trees beyond that southerly triangle can live on into the future. I researched how to create a solar path chart for wherever you are located...