What Came Home from the Forest

End view of bark stripped all in one piece

For two weekends in March a small crew of people worked together to build a small diameter pole addition onto the back of a garage at MendoDragon Community in Boonville.  It is likely destined to be a greenhouse but we are going to allow ourselves to "sit" with it a while before determining our next steps.

Our friends, George and Kate, invited us to come to their property in the hills above Philo to thin Douglas Fir poles out of a densely growing patch of trees mixed in with Redwoods and native hazelnut.  We cut down 7 or so very tall doug firs and afterwards you could feel the remaining standing trees breathe in the space and light.  We learned that it is not necessarily planting new trees that sequesters carbon but giving the space to old trees allows them to sequester more than a new tree is able.

This next shot shows Lucy, Janet, Nic, Tom and Corey and Marco unloading poles from our trusty workhorse, Warren, the '66 Ford F100.

We found the sap just beneath the cambium layer of the bark to be quite juicy enabling us to strip the bark in no time. Below we see Tom and Corey having just carefully stripped the whole bark intact.

This is only the beginning of the story.  Please bear with me. More to come!

Practicing Reciprocity