Forest
Forest is our land’s flesh and blood.
Like most of Vermont, our land was entirely forested, then almost entirely cleared, and is now mostly forested again. In the nineteenth century our land was open hay fields and pasture, but these were abandoned in the early 1900s. Trees now cover forty-five of our fifty acres. Our oldest trees are generally around eighty years old, although a few remnant sugar maples are likely over two hundred.
Our woods are mostly mixed northern hardwood forest: sugar maple, red maple, white ash, yellow and paper birch, white pine and red spruce. Atop Butternut Hill we have a few acres of rich hardwood forest, with sugar maple and white ash joined by hop-hornbeam, basswood, and butternut. Sadly, though, the butternuts are all dying from an introduced canker. Downslope from Butternut Hill, balsam fir grow in cooler frost pockets, but they are stressed by climate change and I fear their days are numbered.
Though wildflower-covered Butternut Hill is only a few hundred feet from our groves of balsam fir, they feel like they could be hundreds of miles apart.
Our forest to be
Since moving here in 2019, we have planted hundreds of trees. Our goal is to build our land’s resilience and diversity through the assisted migration of tree species native to the Southern Appalachians. To that end we’re turning an acre of old hay field into Appalachian cove forest and replacing a few acres of white pines with native oaks, hickories and walnuts.
To protect our baby trees from deer we use plastic tree tubes. Some neighbors call us the “tube people.” We now have almost three-hundred-and-fifty tubed trees. We’ve grown almost all our trees from seed—half from purchased seed, and half from seed collected across New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
Target Species Planted and Tubed as of 9/2024
white oak — 64
shagbark hickory — 55
bitternut hickory — 39
black walnut — 37
tulip tree — 36
red oak — 34
flowering dogwood — 20
yellow buckeye — 16
sweet birch — 13
eastern redbud — 8
