MREA: Coloring the Midwest Green for 20 Years

Though I’ve already applied some of it, I’m still digesting the feast of info from 20th Energy Fair of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) June 19-21 near Custer, Wisconsin. It’s a great gathering of people who are learning how to live more lightly, and it just feels good to be in the middle of that crowd.

We walked through the gate behind someone wearing solar collectors on his backpack. Garbage and recycling were collected with a pedal-powered vehicle that wound through the crowds without fumes, noise or hazard to unwary walkers. There was a short but steady line all day long as people refilled the water bottles they brought with them at a tap rather than help build Used Water Bottle Mountain.

Whole-tree architect, Roald Gundersen, demonstrates his building process.

This year MREA offered 200 workshops and had 270 exhibits, along with speakers and demos. At any given hour from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. you had to choose between 18 tantalizing workshops, and a demo.

Doug and I divide and conquer by going to separate workshops and comparing notes later. This year the list included, building with trees (by our architect, Roald Gundersen), eco-driving (see my post 10 Ways to Save Gas and Save the Planet), year-round gardening, green countertops and floors, wind power generation, passive solar design, thermal mass and water storage/conservation tips.

The information is solid and ranges from tried and true techniques to cutting edge technologies like electric car prototypes. I attended a workshop on making window warmers only to learn that they are  made using almost the same workbook we used to make window warmers for a passive solar addition in the 1980s. Only change is a more efficient thermal layer and more precise sewing instructions. Check them out here.

The Energy Fair is a vast resource – one that 23,206 people took advantage of it this year. That’s a 5% increase from last year, according to MREA staffer Gina Sinisi. “We were really happy with that increase, especially considering the economy,” she told me.

The windmill presided over and powered the energy fair.

If you missed the fair, don’t panic. MREA has many more options you can take advantage of. Their ReNew the Earth Institute operates on the fair grounds year round as a demo site and educational facility with working models of renewable energy systems, including wind, PV, solar hot water and a masonry stove. Gina says she leads tours at 1 p.m. Monday through Friday and takes a group through the institute just about every week. There is a lot to learn there, and MREA has a very pretty, rural setting, if you are in the area. They are an officially designated Travel Green Destination, recognized by Travel Green Wisconsin

MREA also offers more than 100 hands-on workshops taught by renewable energy experts that range from 1 day to 2 weeks long on topics from wind, PV and solar thermal systems to energy efficient and alternative construction techniques like straw bale and timber framing. Check the schedule for this year here.

Don’t forget the annual Solar Tour. Mark your calendar for the first weekend in October. I look forward to that every year. We come home with notes and photos about what to do and what not to do as we design our own house. We found the timber framer who built our wonderful barn through the solar tour. (check out his website here.) The tour is an encyclopedia of real people trying out alternatives who are happy to share their successes and failures and light the way to more sustainable living. MREA also maintains a list of year-round demonstrations sites. Check out the list here.

Kermit the Frog said, “It’s not easy being green” — but it’s getting easier.

Thank you, MREA.

My next post on Friday will be on idling engines.

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Warning — It’s Wild Parsnip Season

I first walked my land on Labor Day Weekend 2004.  I was responding with a pounding heart to the topographical nuance of a protected hollow where a ravine and another, wider valley meet under a big bowl of sky.  I was already bonding to the rows of toddler pine, spruce and oak that I had instantly taken under my wing.  The seller had just mowed between them so they would look promising, rather than lost in the grass.  I barely noticed the tall dried stalks filling the gaps between each tree or the thick stubble between the rows.

Not suited up, so keeping my distance

If I had known that much of that stubble was the harmless remains of Wild Parsnip, would it have made any difference?  Probably not.  I was in love with that land.  The honeymoon lasted till the next summer when just about every square foot of the 44 acres that wasn’t heavily shaded under mature trees – more than half – had burst forth in a fresh and flourishing crop of Wild Parsnip. It was as if someone you thought was sweet and gentle suddenly snarls and bears their teeth at you.

You’ve seen Wild Parsnip from your car window.  It grows in drifts along the roadside just about everywhere.  Its numbers have exploded in Wisconsin, probably because the seeds are spread by roadside mowing in late July and August when it goes to seed.  Wild Parsnip is a member of the carrot family.  It’s easy to recognize because it resembles its cousin, Queen Ann’s Lace, but its big, flat flower is greenish yellow instead of white.

Isn't that pretty?

DON”T try to gather a bouquet!  This stuff is armed and dangerous.  There’s something in its sap called psoralen, which is a photo carcinogen.  That means it has a destructive effect on DNA when exposed to sunlight.  Psoralen was actually used as a tanning activator in sunscreens until 1996.  (Some people suffered severe skin loss after sunbathing with psoralen-containing tanning activators according to an article in Nature.  People with lighter skin color are more prone to this damage.

According to Jerry Doll, in WeedScience, University of Wisconsin,  when psoralen gets on, and then into your skin, it is activated by uv light (on both sunny and cloudy days).  In this excited state, it binds to DNA and cell membranes, destroying cells and skin.

Psoralen takes a day or two to do its damage.  A mild case turns skin red and feels like sunburn, or in the worst case, you will feel like you have been scalded, develop blisters and will be left wearing dark red patches on your skin that won’t totally fade away for a year or more.  (I live in constant fear during Parsnip Season that I am going to get some on my face without realizing it.)

Staying out of the countryside won’t necessarily protect you.  For a horror story about an urban gardener’s run in with the stuff, click here. I need to add that just brushing against the plant won’t burn you.  You have to crush or cut it and get the sap on you.   Click here to learn about treatment.

This stuff is not kidding around!

So, of all the invasives – and the list is long – that I am working to minimize, Wild Parsnip heads the list.  We have a Zero Tolerance Zone that originally covered the whole place, but reality has whittled it down a bit.  During the last days of June and the first days of July, removing Wild Parsnip is our prime directive.  With arms and legs covered and wet wipes at the ready, we have been following the guidelines to eradicate it.  You need to cut it after it flowers but before it goes to seed.  Because of its carrot affiliations, it has a lot of energy stored in a big tap root, so it can send up another stalk and  flower again.  Beating it takes repeat cuttings and true diligence.  This year at last, we are stating to see a lot less of the stuff in all the areas we have declared Zero Tolerance.

At first, we mowed it out between the rows of trees with our walk-behind DR Brush Mower (This thing really works.  We got ours here. ) and followed up with scythe work, one plant at a time.  (American-made scythes don’t work.  We found good ones here. )

Now, facing fewer foe all we need to do is scythe, and  that we do with gusto.  A good scythe is  a beautiful instrument.  You can hook the tip of the blade around a parsnip stalk growing next to a cone flower.  Goodbye, parsnip.  Carry on, cone flower!  Since we started our acre-and-a half of prairie restoration we have walked it with scythes in hand multiple times each summer, cutting out every Wild Parsnip we see.

Last week, we walked out into the prairie to find very little parsnip to snip.  What a joy!  After the five years and countless hours that we have spent in this campaign, covered in  full-protective clothing on sweltering hot summer days, – we seem to be gaining ground.  That is energizing.  I feel almost as excited as a photoactivated carcinogen exposed to sunlight.

To follow my other adventures in Invasiveland, check out

Pass the Garlic Mustard, Please

Purple Loosestrife, a very short battle

Milfoil Mulch, turning crap into crop

My next post on Tuesday will be about a  practical resource  — The Midwest Renewable energy Association.

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10 Ways to Cut Gas Costs and Save the Planet

With gas prices creeping back up, wouldn’t you love to have a more fuel efficient car? Did you know you have one in your driveway? I thought I was a pretty green driver, but I learned we can all squeeze a little more gas out of each tank and cut down on exhaust emissions at the same time.

At the Midwest Renewable Energy Association’s 20th Annual Energy Fair last Saturday, Francis Vogel, executive director of Wisconsin Clean Cities opened my eyes. Check out these 10 tips. You probably know some of them, but I’ll bet you don’t know them all. I didn’t.

1. Slow Down. What’s your hurry — Late for Global Warming? Go the speed limit, you not only can – you should. Gas mileage decreases rapidly at speeds above 55 mph. Each 5 mph you drive over 55 is like paying an additional 10 cents for each gallon of gas.

2. Be Smooth. Ease up to that red light. It takes 20 percent less gas to accelerate from 5 mph than from a full stop.

3. Back off. Tailgating is not only dangerous , it requires extra braking and acceleration that can cut your fuel economy by 5 to 10 percent.

4. Sweat can be sweet. Turn off your air conditioner unless you are roasting. The A/C guzzles nearly a gallon of gas per tankful.

5. Window Wise. Roll up your windows and turn on the fresh air vents at speeds over 40 mph. The drag caused by open windows eats up more gas than operating the A/C.

6. Made in the shade. Try not to park in the sun. Keep a sunshade in your car to reflect heat away from the passenger compartment when you park.

7. Stay pumped. Check your tire pressure every few weeks. You may notice that the recommended pressure in your auto manual or the door panel sticker is lower than the maximum printed on the side of the tire. Go with the higher figure on the tire. It’s a harder ride, but more efficient. (This is what I learned at the workshop, but since then (Oct5) I have been told that running tires at their maximum will cause them to wear quicker.  This seems valid.  So I would modify my advice to say use your judgement here, but don’t let your tires get low — that seems like a safe compromise.)

8. Idle Not. You save money and pollute less if you turn off the car whenever you expect to idle for more than 30 seconds. And don’t always choose the drive through window. Stretch your legs. Walk into that fast food emporium or bank. Excessive idling can damage engine parts, and idling gets 0 miles per gallon. You can learn a LOT more about idling (to not to — as Mater said in the poignant Pixar film, Car) at this post, Idle Thoughts.

9. Haul Less. Keep your anvil collection in the garage. Get rid of all that extra junk in your trunk. You get 4 percent less gas mileage for every 100 pounds of excess weight in your car. And if you have a choice of putting cargo on top of the car or inside, cram it inside to decrease wind drag.

10. Plan Ahead. When you first start your car after it has been sitting for more than an hour, it pollutes up to five times more than when the engine is warm, and several short trips taken from a cold start can use twice as much fuel as a longer, multi-purpose trip covering the same distance when the engine is warm — so combine errands into one trip.

You just fattened your wallet and reduced your carbon footprint.

My next post on Friday will be on  my personal arch enemy — the vibrant and vindictive Wild Parsnip.

A Locavore Loaf plus 6 Great Bread Blogs from Around the World

Every time I sprinkle baker’s yeast into warm water and honey, then see it bloom and rise to the surface like foam on a rich beer, I feel like I am witnessing life begin in a primordial sea.  I am a farmer watching my microcosmic crop ripen in the space of a moment.

I wish you could smell this earthy aroma! (I was going to say heavenly aroma, but fresh-baked bread is all about here and now!)

Pushing my palms into dough bonds me to all those who have baked bread before me.  It is a connection I didn’t always have.  As a child, I thought bread was the perfectly machined object that my mother bought, four loaves at a time, to fill her hungry family.  My brothers and I loved its airy compactability.  We pinched whole slices of Wonder Bread down into tiny pellets and called it “space food.”

Wonder Bread was one of the very first things to go when I set up my own kitchen.  I prided myself on baking loaves that might have come from a pioneer’s hearth, but my recipes expanded.  Soon I was searching farther back for grains like spelt, a relic of Bronze Age Europe, and amaranth, a staple of pre-Columbian Aztecs.  Then I began looking forward, gleaning from research on amino acid composition about how to combine grains to increase their protein content.  Bread bowl as both laboratory and playground.

I have baked hundreds and hundreds of hearty loaves for friends and family, but recently I take a special pleasure in the process because I can combine this tactile, tasty practice with my new passion – eating foods grown close to home.

One Saturday, while wandering among the heaps of tomatoes, chard, beets and broccoli at my local farmers market, I almost missed a table lined with brown paper bags folded shut around freshly-ground wheat.  Farmer Tom Brantmeier’s modest parcels of speckled, tan whole-grain goodness opened up new vistas to me.

I often daydream, while kneading flours into an elastic globe.  I’ve dreamed of milling my grains just before mixing them together.  Those hard-case little seeds protect their nutrients faithfully up until, but not long after the moment they are ground.  I have also idly dreamt of sowing and harvesting those seeds.  So, when I scooped up and cradled those bags of grain that had been freshly grown and milled just miles from Madison, my fantasy expanded like dough brimming over its bowl.  If Tom grows his own grain here in Wisconsin – why can’t I?

Picture a painting of a sun drenched field by Van Gogh.  There’s a woman in that field I wish was me.  She has her long skirt pulled up and tucked into her waistband so she can scythe that amber grain.  O.K., I don’t wear a long skirt, but I do swing a mean scythe.  I’ve been wielding it with deadly accuracy for years in a battle against invasive plants on my 44 acres.  Now I’d like to hone my skills as well as my blade and sweep through shafts of grain destined for bread bowl.

I want to grow and gather grain to feed my community.  Since Van Gogh painted his sunny fields, so much has changed.  Our petroleum-saturated system of agriculture has its foot pressed hard on the climate change accelerator, but don’t expect to see food marketers adding the label, “Caution, this method of feeding humans adds tons of greenhouse gasses and may be hazardous to the planet.”

A food revolution is growing, and where else should it rise but from the bread bowl?  I hear the call, and like peasants before me, I press my palms into fresh dough  and do my part.

SOME REALLY GREAT BREAD BLOGS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Bake My Day This is a great blog from the Netherlands about things cooks and baked and much more.

Wild Yeast She brings out the wild and amazing aspects of baking – and she knows her stuff.

Ye olde bread blogge This one comes from Germany, and if you’ve ever been there – you know they can bake incredible bread.

Sourdough companion  http://sourdough.com/ This is the place for beginners which will take you to the limit with bread risen naturally using wild yeasts.

Bread Cetera http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=185#more-185 An obsessive’s Quest for professional-quality baked goods from a home kitchen with great quotes on the beauty of bread.

The Fresh Loaf  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/ A massive compendium of recipes, lessons, community forum and baker blogs.

I’m going to the Midwest Renewable Energy Association’s 20th Annual Energy Fair this weekend, and my next post on Tuesday will fill you in on what I learn there.

Global Warming and Our Woods

Half of our 44 acres are filled with rows of strapping, teenage White Spruce and Red Pine planted by the previous owner.  These trees grow naturally in Northern Wisconsin, but usually exist only by human intervention in the southern part of the state, where we live.

Teenage Red Pines ready to party!

The Red Pines in our southeast corner had a close call when we bought the land.  We almost cut them when they were spindly five-foot saplings to recreate prairie in that area because we thought they were not native, and we were eager to restore native habitat.   Tough-barked oak species and deep-rooted prairie plants were all that could survive here till European pioneers put their foot down on prairie fires.

When we learned we would basically have to nuke that spot back to the Stone Age and replant in prairie,  the scope of the project overwhelmed us, so we confined our prairie restoration to the acre and a half of land where prairie plants were already making a determined comeback despite the spruce planted on top of them.

Meanwhile, the White Spruce and Red Pines  continued to shoot up into handsome, vital trees  towering over our heads, and I had to look up to them.  Also, we learned that amazingly, only a few miles away there is a truly rare ecosystem, the Ridgeway Pine Natural Area, where ancient pines  cling to sandstone cliffs and rocky outcroppings in an area that managed to escape the fires that maintained this entire part of the state as prairie and savanna when Native Americans lived here.

10,000 year hideout

A pine forest has persisted just a few miles from us since the last glacier receded.  Click here to learn more.   Unlike the vast northern pine forests, these protected relics combine plants and animals of Southern Wisconsin in a northern pine woods.  That relic gave us hope that we could nurture a similar environment.

This spring, we attended a 9-seminar series at UW-Madison by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) called “Bracing for Impact: Climate Change Adaptation in Wisconsin.”  You can watch the entire series online at the UW Biotech Auditorium website by clicking here.

The final seminar explored what climate change is going to mean to Wisconsin forests.  (Their findings also apply to the entire Upper Midwest and many mid-latitude locations in both the U.S. and Europe.)  The best estimate is a 5.2 to 7.2 °F increase in the next 100 years.  That is more than our climate has changed since the last glacier!  Dr. John Williams in the UW-Madison Department of Geography’s Center for Climatic Research has studied the response of plant communities in the past 20,000 years to climate change, and he said one of the big lessons from the geological record is that even small temperature changes can have large ecological effects.  Spruce trees (to pick tree I care for) moved half way across the continent in response to about 3 degrees of warming.

Rapid climate change versus slow growing trees – guess who looses?  Even in Northern Wisconsin many tree species are likely to be driven north into Canada and disappear from this state.  The list includes Jack Pine, Balsam Fir, Paper Birch, Red Pine and White Spruce.

So how are we to manage our currently very happy teenage trees?  It feels a little like watching a class of hopeful high school students graduate in a town where the supporting industry is about to shut down.  For starters, we plan to harvest all the  trees growing on our two south-facing slopes as soon as they are mature enough for pulp.  Then we are going to try to keep the trees growing on the cooler, more protected northern slopes of our hilly land, and manage them as  sustainable forest — if climate change permits.

Hopefully the amazing relic near by that has survived in the same spot for 10,000 years can withstand the changes that are coming.   And hopefully our optimistic young evergreens will get the opportunity to grow up and shelter barred owls, pileated woodpeckers, scarlet tanagers and warblers, the way their aged neighbors do now.

My next post Friday will be about the ideas that can rise in a bowl of bread dough.

Slow Architecture or a House Built of Weed Trees

Building a house is a big frigging deal!  The Real Estate Blog says that 2.1 million houses were built in the U.S. last year, and that half of them are now sitting empty.  I don’t even want to think about the cost to the environment and the boost in our national carbon footprint that this created. Why would anyone want to add to this waste and bloat?  Why do I?

Because there has got to be a better way to create shelter, and I want to help discover and promote the methods that get us all under roofs that are not held up by toothpick two-by-fours and ticky-tacky.  I want to sculpt a living space that lets me breathe and grow without breaking the bank to heat and cool. (I’m talking about Mother Nature’s bank book as well as my own here.) When you think about it, we humans have a very narrow temperature range that we thrive in – and what we are doing to the planet to maintain that tiny margin in our buildings is not sustainable.  Not even close.

So, Doug and I have spent several years trolling everything we can find on green building, and stockpiling ideas.

A recent addition to Roald Gundersen's own workspace.

I just about jumped out of my skin when I opened up my November/December issue of 2007 Natural Home and flipped to the featured home.  I loved its gentle curves and was thrilled to see that it got that shape from whole, unmilled trees – not the kings of the forest, but “Charlie Brown” trees – the smaller trees that are crowding every woods.  Small whole trees, I learned are much stronger than milled boards, which have had their complex pattern of fibers slashed into interchangeable building units.

When I read that Roald Gundersen,  who designed and built this house, lives outside LaCrosse just two hours from Madison, I whooped so loud that I woke my aged golden retriever.

Weeding the woods and leaving it in better health than before while building a beautiful house using slow architecture.   How win-win is that?  (Check out a You-tube video of Roald explaining here.)

Harnessing the inherent power and beauty in "Charlie Brown" trees.

Last year we visited Roald at his home and workplace,  tucked at the end of a winding road.  He just completed a site visit of our land this spring, and will incorporate trees that need to be thinned from our own 44 acres into our house.  The time table is:  plan in 2009, prepare in 2010-2011 and build in 2012.  The slow architecture gears are turning.  See more about this in my May blog, When.

Note:   I am changing my posting schedule from Monday-Wednesday-Friday to Tuesdays and Fridays so I can give each post enough time.  My next post on Tuesday will be about how what we have learned about climate change is influencing our own woods management.

Happy Ending for Yellow Lady Slippers But What Direction Will the Compass Plants Go?

Cinderella couldn’t miss her glass slipper anymore than I longed for my Yellow Lady Slipper, and I’m glad to report that the Case of the Missing Lady Slipper has a fairy tale ending.  Check out my earlier post, The Case of the Missing Lady Slipper.  After several seasons of deer devouring our precious golden booty, we finally got wise and hauled a double layer of tomato cages up to the glade to protect her.

Thriving in captivity

At first I disliked seeing a wire tower jutting up in the glade, our most dynamic natural area.  Not a very artistic frame for its glorious picture, however the artwork within did not seem phased.

We were also worried that if the deer didn’t get her, the sunlight would.  We expanded the glade last winter with a grant from the Prairie Enthusiasts, turning the slipper’s woodland-edge environment into a sunnier spot.  But she seems tickled by her new terrain.  She put out more flowers than ever before and each one glowed deep yellow as though it were lit from within.  So, now I am marking next year’s calendar and will have cages at the ready in late March.

The jury is still out on the two compass plants we caged at the same time.  They also seem to be in the deer’s cross hairs.  The compass plant was the tallest stalk in the entire prairie when we first discovered it.  They can grow to 12 feet and send out six to 24 flowers in midsummer that look like sweet little sunflowers.

Not our compass plant, but it could be.

Although not so rare as the Lady Slipper, only two have reappeared in our prairie restoration after years of field cropping and a short stint in pines and spruce.  One lonely sentinel towered in the center of the 1-1/2 acres.  When we discovered a single baby compass in another part of the prairie two years later, we thrilled to think we might be on the verge of a compass plant breakout.   But if more compass plants are out there, they have not managed to make it above the other vegetation — probably because the deer nip off their tender buds.  Its resin is supposed to be chewy and sort of sweet.  In the past, people have used it like a kind of chewing gum. Do not try this at home – especially not my home!

Pioneers called it compass plant because the broad leaves at its base point generally north-south.   I find it about as accurate as the compass I got in a Cracker Jack box once.  But whether or not it can actually guide lost wanderers, this is a major plant!  Its tap root can sink 15 feet, and it can live for a 100 years.  A hundred years!

Behind bars for his own good.

This year, the deer beat us to both compass plants.  When we found them, their flower stalks were cut cruelly short.  So far, they have not sent up any more flowering stalks, but we keep checking, and hope lives on.  I resisted buying more compass plants at the annual UWArboretum Plant Sale because I want the compass plants in our prairie to be from the original seed bank in our soil.  If only we can keep the deer from making so many withdrawals.

My next post on Friday will be about how we selected our architect.

Putting Pines in their Place or Tips on Transferring Evergreens

If you made your living telling fortunes for evergreen trees, you would not read their palms, you would read the little brown nubs overwintering on the end of each branch.  In spring those nubs stretch out to become the tree’s yearly growth.  How long they will get is anyone’s guess, but how many needles they are going to unfurl was decided last summer.

The number of needles on these branches was decided many moons ago.

It’s easy to misread your Conifer.  If a tree finds itself a few needles short, it can make allowances in the length of its branches and the size of its needles.  When the needles are spaced far apart, we might think they look spindly while actually the tree is having a better year that it expected.  Conversely, in a bad year, they will fine tune by growing shorter branches with the needles that are tighter and shorter, which we mistakenly see as thick and lush.

Conifers are operating on a different time frame than you and me.  If you fertilize them — don’t expect to see the results till at least next year.  And if you relocate a tree, you will not know how the tree is taking to its new digs for several years while transplant shock works its way slowly through the tree’s deliberate processes.

Keeping the tree’s timetable in mind, the best time to transplant a big tree is at the end of the summer after the growth for the next year has been determined, but while there is still plenty of time to make new roots.  Root growth doesn’t shut up shop till early winter.

On our 44 acres, more than 22 of them were planted into a pine,  spruce and oak tree farm by the previous owner, and as we have restored a prairie where some of those trees were growing, and cut in a driveway through other rows, we have been transplanting dozens of trees standing in the way of “progress.”   Doug and I have really come up the learning curve on this subject over the past few years.

An early transplant that I know would be doing better if we had kept the roots moist during its wheelbarrow ride.

Here is what works for us.
1.  Try to transplant in late summer, taking advantage of that period when the tree has stopped growing, but is still packing it away for winter.

2.  Keep the roots wet with a sprayer, and get them transferred as fast as possible.  Those trees whose roots we sprayed and wrapped in plastic till we could cart them to their new home are doing remarkably better than our first efforts where we just levered the root ball into the wheel barrow and hauled it bare.  A mere 15 minutes out in the open air – probably even a minute of two – can fry those delicate root hairs where the major drinking action takes place.

3.  Mulch them well and keep them moist for the rest of the fall and be prepared to haul water the next spring, if Mother Nature is stingy with rain.  You are going to need 3-5 gallons a week to establish each planting.

4.  Cross your fingers, and set your watch to Conifer Standard Time.

My next post on Wednesday will be an update on The Mystery of the Missing Lady Slipper.

Sex among the Pines

I didn’t learn about Conifer sex till it smacked me in the face.  Our land has 22 acres of teenage pines and spruces as part of a certified tree farm, so how did I fail to  notice what was going on sooner?  I have been walking among them, cutting out double trunks and trying to keep the vicious Wild Parsnip at bay for years.  The things I noticed were that

1. They were zooming up and out almost two feet  every year.
2. They did it by shooting out fresh, soft green growth in spring as cute as a kitten.
3. Some of them had a lot of cones that were rosy red in spring.

A male pine cone ready to party

Now that their branches require pushing through to cross the rows,  I found out that those cute little red cones can envelope you in a cloud of vivid yellow powder if you tap them this time of year.  I suspected  my yellow coating was pollen.  Next day, back to town, I biked off to the Biology Library at UW-Madison to find out how Conifers grow, and I realized that I had interrupted a very slow and quiet orgy when I knocked into their branches.

As plant sex goes, it’s sort of  kinky.  Conifers are  gymnosperms, which means naked seed, an ancient plant form.  (Seeds didn’t put their clothes on and start to say it with flowers till 150 million years ago.) while gymnosperms were making merry 245 million years ago, in an era we know as the Age of Dinosaurs.

Passing up palm trees in search of tasty pines. (photo by Catchpenny on Flickr)

You may picture those  Megalosaurus munching giant ferns, but they were no doubt packing away primeval conifers too

Though the Iguanadons are long gone, their preferred greenery is still going at it.

They do it with cones, which come in both boy and girl models – usually on the same tree.  The young male cones produce yellow pollen that I was knocking loose in colorful clouds.  When that pollen lands on ovules, which are waiting open to the air on the female cones, the pollen grains make their way into the ovule and tenderly fuse their nuclei.

After being pollinated, the female cones take their time to ripen and become woody.   Then they open and release the next generation.  Some pines hold onto their cones for up to 20 years, which will only open after a forest fire.  They cleverly let their seeds fly when all the competition has been reduced to ashes.  (This is probably the kind of trick they used to outlive the dinosaurs.)

Photo of female cone from foxypar4’s photostream on Flickr

We won’t see Pine sex by staring at a tree.  All the magic is happening at the microscopic level.  But you can still  see for yourself!  I came across the most amazing animated video that plays out the Conifer courtship dance  in breath-taking detail.   It’s a series of six short You Tubes. I skipped the first, it’s not as neat.  You have GOT to check them out, and I guarantee that you will never look at a Pine or Spruce the same way again.

My next post on Monday will look at the best time to transplant Conifers.

Lesson in Carr Repair or Listening to Your Land

Doomed by deafness

As we fill in our mental map of this 44 acres, we tend toward descriptive names that don’t take too long to say:  High Pines, Windward Spruces, Lloyd’s Lane, Westfallia, the Prairie, the Glade, Turkey Track Trail, Ridgeway.  Most of these names came immediately to mind and stuck like glue.

But one area was first called That Low Spot by the Road.  Last year after the torrential June rains that washed away houses perched by Lake Delton , it became That Land under Water.  For a very short time it was called New Netherlands because of its location below “sea level”.  By last fall it was That Place Where the Trees All Died.

The Windward Spruces just a smidge up the valley and on the cool north side of the slope are thriving.

When that name got shortened to fen, which is a kind of wetland,  I felt sure it would stick. There is something so elemental about one-syllable, three-letter words.  Then Doug discovered it is actually a carr – a shrub carr, to be precise.

a wetland community dominated by tall shrubs.  Shrub carr genrally gets an undeserved bad rap.  Even marshes don’t get drained as often as shrub carrs get “improved”.  They don’t make the cut as natural wonders in human eyes, and that’s our loss.

The previous owners planted all the farm fields (including carr) in trees.  Most of the trees were about three feet tall when we took ownership, and those thousands of bright-eyed toddler trees stretching their new branches joyously skyward was a large part of the appeal of this place.  If you have read Lord of the Rings (or, sigh, seen the movie), and you loved Treebeard — then you know where I am coming from.

Such proud parents, we watched those rows of spruce grow for four years until they were strapping young fellows taller than us.  Then last summer we watched the spruce in New Netherlands yellow in standing water.  This spring their remaining brown needles rained to the ground.

If that had happened our first year, I would have sat among them and cried while I seriously contemplated taping the needles back on the branches, but I’m learning that you have to listen to the land before you plunk down your plants.  Spruce cannot endure in a carr.

So what does love a brush carr?  According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, tall shrubs such as dogwood, meadowsweet, and various willows.  Well, guess what has been coming up there spontaneously since we stopped mowing – sandbar willows!

Carry on, Sandbar Willows! Carr repair in progress.

In our first years of ownership, we drove up into the property across the much abused shrub carr.  Had we not moved our access to higher ground two years ago, last summer we would have been parking by the road and wading across the wetland.  Meanwhile, returning willow have begun to blur that old truck trail, creeping in from both sides and shooting up between the tire tracks.  The tire tracks remain too compacted even for those hearty willows just yet.  It’s going to take a while for this carr car scar to heal.

Before white settlement, this area was prairie/savanna as far as the eye could see, and shrub carrs were  moist oases in that landscape.  This little carr endured many years of being plowed and planted in corn and soybeans (probably with minimal success in wet years) and then it bided its time as thousands of spruce twigs cut across it in tidy rows.   Last year, it said, “Enough is enough!”

So, we are listening.  I personally love the soft, green sandbar willows that have been cropping up and spreading out, and so might Rusty Blackbirds, Willow Flycatchers, Wood Turtles, Four-toed Salamanders and Eastern Red Bats.  The list goes on, and so will our carr.