The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a project that will pay no income in my lifetime, but I’ve found it extremely enjoyable and satisfying.  One of the biggest problems in a cash-based society like ours is that we want to see a return on investment sooner rather than later. 

             This need for speed in financial payback prejudices all our decisions; it keeps us on a treadmill of immediacy rather than long-term benefit.  As a result, I found this project cathartic, truly, because I had no intention of seeing financial gain in my lifetime.  It was a deliberate contrarian project.

             Do I have your interest piqued?  Okay, it was a Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) project. If that’s disappointing, please hang with me.  Back in 1989 we traded 30 acres of timber in three spots for 3 miles of all-weather road that for the first time gave us access to our entire acreage.  In the initial euphoria of that access I had the idea of re-opening the “balds” maintained by native Americans. 

             If you’ve been here, you know our farm lies partly in the Shenandoah Valley and partly along the east face of Little North Mountain, the first range of the Appalachians.  With 1,000 feet of elevation difference, we have a two-week seasonal frost difference.  In the spring, we watch the leaf green up march up the mountain; in the fall, it marches down.

             After the road went in, I chose a two-acre ridge-top to start my conversion from forest back to the pre-European pasture the Native Americans maintained with fire.  The mega-fauna would graze these mountain-top balds in the summer and come to the valleys when it was cooler—even moving between the two from day to night.  I cut the trees but realized by the time I finished that first winter’s clearing that it was too far away to ever bring cattle up there.

             Of course, when I walked away, reforestation in all its successional glory kicked in, with blackberries, then locust saplings, then oaks and lots of red maples.  Gradually the trees overtopped the brambles and now, 30 years later, it has some nice 6-8 inch oaks, dead locusts and lots of spindly red maples.  It had some good trees, but it was weedy and the good trees were being held back by all the poorer-quality red maples.

             For this project, I went through that two acres with the chain saw, selecting nice healthy trees for future timber (lumber) and cutting the junky trees.  The result is a spectacular spaced-out beautiful-tree look.  It’s still very much a forest, but each selected tree now has room to spread its canopy and fully achieve its growth potential.  As I worked, I could almost hear sighs of gratitude from those prime selected trees, freeing them from all those poor quality stems.

             The result is that the selected trees will grow much faster.  All the solar energy that site collects will go on good stems and won’t be squandered on junk.  What I cut will decompose and feed the good trees—we could call them the winner trees.  In about 40-50 years, the trees I released should be ready to harvest, which is probably 30-40 years sooner than they would have been if left to their own struggles.

             Although I will never see the financial reward of this project, I found it deeply inspiring, knowing I was investing in legacy work.  Sometimes it does a body and spirit good just to forget about payback and honor stewardship just for the sacredness of it.

             What is a project like this you have done or plan to do for the sheer joy that it ought to be done?