2019 Valentine Festival Bonus Song! I Can't Help Falling In Love With You, Arlo Guthrie

2019 Valentine Festival! Everybody Loves Somebody, Dean Martin

It Might Come Back!

An acquaintance of W. C. Fields saw some of his liquor stash and remarked that Prohibition was over.  Fields replied something like, "Yes, but it might come back!  I am not a climate change naysayer; climate has been changing since Earth was a cooling ball of gas.  These Canadian granite boulders came south to Illinois during the Illinoisan glacier, some 300,000 to 125,000 years ago.  That ice made the edges nice and round so you can tell them easily from exposed bedrock that they might be sitting on.  Someday that ice will come back, no matter whether you drive  a Chevy  or a Prius.  Maybe it will make little pebbles out of whatever is left of Chicago.  That will solve the crime problem up there!  Back To The Old Grind!

2019 Valentine Festival! Diggy Liggy Lo, Doug Kershaw

One Is Not Enough!

A Legend Has Passed; Bob Einstein aka Super Dave Osborne

Super Dave passed away on January 2 of this year.  I didn't see it in the news, and just stumbled across it a few days ago.  He was sure good at what he did.

Language Barrier No Problem; Barberchairs Kill!

Svante Hansson does a mighty fine job of showing the dangers of barberchairs.  We get negative comments regularly about borecutting and safety rules for chainsaws.  Pay no attention to the naysayers.  Cutting plans, borecutting, safety gear, and following chainsaw safety rules will save you from injury and death.




Hi, John: Thanks for the comment question. Here is a video I shot many years ago of chainsaw instructor Joe Glenn demonstrating the use of the bore cut to make a hinge, plus setting the dogs and rotating to make the hinge the proper thickness. His tree is an elm. The student in the latter part of the video is cutting a heavily leaning hackberry, and the same technique is used. At the end of that segment you will see the hackberry domino a red-cedar that has been set up with an undercut to the backstrap.

Weekend Steam: Steam Trains Galore #5

Merle's pick this week includes some nice shots of a Heisler loco.  Pretty rare, and really neat!  Thanks, Merle!

Tree Planters Are Troublemakers

At least that is how I was treated by many.  Farmers often don't like the idea that neighbors are planting trees.  Federal agency people did not necessarily like landowners getting assistance for eliminating farm ground by converting back to trees.  (Most were enthusiastic, but the troublemakers could cause trouble!) Prairie enthusiasts hated me!  Illinois is supposed to be the Prairie State, after all!  We persisted, though, and made a real difference.  Here is a post from ten years ago.  I would like to visit these fields again and see how these sites look today.

One year old bottomland hardwood planting project.

A similar project; ten years later.

The Conservation Reserve Program created a ton of work for the District Foresters in Illinois, and every one of us had to come up with strategies to use in our counties.  One of the keys to cranking out plans quickly was this list of species that is pretty well tailored to the soils and sites of my district.

Upland Sites:  black cherry, red-cedar, white pine, red pine, white oak, black oak, persimmon, tulip-poplar, dogwood, redbud, plum, elderberry, hawthorn, smooth/shining/staghorn sumac; plus all bottomland species.

Side Slopes:  Upland species; bottomland species; and if the slope is north or east facing, northern red oak, Shumard oak, and black walnut.

Riparian Zones:  Bottomland species; and black walnut, Shumard oak, cherrybark oak.

Bottomland Sites:  Pecan, hackberry, bur oak, shellbark hickory, baldcypress, sweetgum, pin oak, persimmon, river birch, sycamore, swamp white oak, nuttal oak, overcup oak,  swamp chestnut oak, willow oak, red maple, and cottonwood. 

Ash species are no longer recommended because of the Emerald Ash Borer.  Use cypress, sweetgum, birch, sycamore, cottonwood, silver maple, and red maple for spacer/trainer trees instead of ash.

Black walnut will grow on uplands, but will not always perform well for timber production.  The wildlife value of walnut remains on less-than-ideal sites.

When we started out with CRP, lots of people wanted all walnut on their ground.  Walnut is very site specific, and after a few years, the Federal agency people had the landowners educated about picking the right trees before I had their paperwork.  All that tree planting made for exciting times.  We made a great difference to the landscape with some of the projects.  The thick ten year old planting shown above actually stopped the Little Wabash river from blowing out into an old channel, which would have destroyed many farm fields.  We had a similar situation along the big Wabash, and with a series of tree plantings on a peninsula we stopped serious erosion to farm fields that was occurring during flood events.  The prairie people still don't like me. 

Holster Hack

I've been using Hawg Holsters for  carrying and I really like them.   I like to drop the LCP II in a pocket, but the Ulti Clip stood out a bit too much for my liking and was too prominent.  I often drop the S & W in a coat pocket and noticed that the clip was visibly printing.  The clip is easy to remove, so this week I stuck both of them in a vise and made the bends you see in the photo.  The holsters are still shirt-tuckable, but now they do not print noticeably when I carry in a pocket.  I don't know if the folks at Ulti Clip would approve, but it works for me.

Timber Harvest and Taxes Workshop, Coming Up At John A. Logan College!

Most timber owners in Illinois are not making the income they should from timber sales.  Jay Hayek, from the University of Illinois will provide all the knowledge you need to have a good experience selling timber and maximize your income.  Be in charge of managing your timber and make the most possible from your investment.  CLICK HERE to register.  This workshop will be held on January 26, 2019 at John A Logan College from 9 AM 'til Noon.  John A. Logan is located at Carterville, (Williamson County) Illinois, on the north side of Illinois Hwy 13.

                      Click Poster To Enlarge.