It is a good feeling to know you have the firewood gathered for the winter. All year-long as you go about the business of the Canyon you are in the back of your mind looking for a good place to get firewood. Last year I found a very nice situation below the old pig corral / now materials depot. This year I found an even BETTER one, still accessible by pick up truck, the perfect situation. A large limb of a black oak tree, which has aged dead, still in on the tree, falls but only touches the ground in a place or two, so sits another year or so aging, laying just above the ground in such a manner that you just start up your chain saw and cut off the beautiful rounds, that split apart like pistacheo nuts. Hmmmm good.
Arturo and I also fetched a load of old oak from where I had cut some rounds in the spring while clearing the trail along the water line. This is also the trail to the “Broom eradication site”. The photo with this entry is our load back from picking up some of those rounds. The wood is ok but not great. A little too “digested” by being on the ground. I think we’ll let the rest of that carbon stay where it is and slowly become soil. We have better dead wood in other spots. The trail along the water is quite nice now, or at least passable. We spend a little time each year at improving “the water line trail”. This spring (2011) the CCC crews spent all their time on the water line trail. Last spring (2010) the crew focused on the area around the “mine pond” and the “high road” to homestead. I am happy to say we have the Broom Infestation “on the run” . Of course every year time will need to be spent pulling up fresh seedlings and cutting re-sprouts of “too-big-to-pull-old plants”, and searching and attacking smaller isolated stands. BUT the big infestations have been hit very hard.
