ENHS Nature Trails Dec 98 Article 3

Tales From The Farm- Three Success Stories- Sort Of
by Reida Kimmel

Five or more years ago, when the ENHS purchased a selection of wild plants for Alton Baker Park's natural area, Dave Wagner made it possible for me to purchase two cattail plants from the same wholesale nursery. I have always wanted to hear the song of red winged blackbirds coming from my pond in the morning, and knowing that they liked cattails, I thought to attract them. It was two years before there was a big enough stand of cattails to attract even the humblest blackbird, but at last we were rewarded by the springtime song of a very lonely blackbird. No ladies came to see him. The next year, the male blackbird who sang at our pond attracted ladies, but they did not stay. The incessant calling was getting us depressed. In the spring of 1997 we were overjoyed to have a nesting pair. No fledglings ever appeared. So it was with little enthusiasm that we greeted the 1998 nesting season, but we were happily surprised to see four or more blackbird young. Of course they went away in mid summer. Then in November, one dryish morning, there was a blackbird [our blackbird?] singing in the ratty "winterized" cattail patch. That afternoon he called down eight other blackbirds, and the next evening I saw fifteen birds come down from the sky. I was anticipating a very noisy winter, but the flock moved on. One bird stayed with us until after Thanksgiving, and we hope he is in the neighborhood to visit when the weather improves.

We have a very vigorous population of Ambystoma gracile breeding in our pond. The young guys love to hang out in the back vegetable garden, especially in the well mulched potato patch. Charles transplanted ambystomid larvae from a pond in Yachats in the 1970s. That was long before we knew it was a bad thing to transplant native populations, because it destroys the integrity of the local gene pools. We just knew we had a good habitat for salamanders, and that ambystomids had lived in our area historically, but had been wiped out by logging and farming over the past century. Well, as the ambystomids thrived and we became more politically correct, they were a bit of an embarrassment. We stopped talking about them. We rarely go to Yachats, but his summer we went looking for our salamander pond. Where our ambystomid pond had been, there was dry land and a huge condo or hotel. Suddenly we felt that we had done the right thing saving that little population of salamanders. After all, displaced seems much better than extinct!

Have you ever planted a live Christmas tree in January only to watch it die in the summer? Are you tired of killing trees for Christmas? Well, try our new solution to the Christmas tree guilt problem. For years we have cut our own young firs for Christmas. We cut the tree very high leaving a few large branches on the remaining trunk. The trees live. We like to take friends on walks and point out trees of Christmases past. This year we will be cutting the same tree for a second time. Usually Charles disapproves of "killing a tree twice", but this perfect specimen, and two others, grow right under a Lane Electric Cooperative power pole, and will never be allowed to grow to maturity. In a few weeks we will "pollard" the little fir. That term refers to the European forestry practice of cutting off a tree high up so that it will provide lumber, and then live and grow to produce another lumber crop much faster than a planted seedling could. Our practice of cutting the fir high up also makes a new Christmas tree faster than the commercial tree farms can. The tree we are cutting has grown at least eight feet in the 7 years since we last harvested it, and this in the poorest and shallowest of soils. Have we stumbled on a better, greener, way to provide the world with Christmas trees? Peace.

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