ACF Update 10/26/20
Andrews
Community Forest Update
While the wet weather continues to slow us
down, we’ve been able to continue to slowly make progress where and when we can
find dry soils and dry weather. To date, we have shipped 16 cords of firewood
and two truckloads of logs off the site, one each to Canopy Timber Alternatives
in Middlebury and LaBranche Lumber in Coventry. We’re not “setting the world on
fire,” but we are making progress and we’re not compromising our values to do
it.
The
new finding of the Emerald Ash Borer in Richmond is less than 1 mile from the
ACF, meaning that if EAB is not in the ACF already, it will be shortly.
Luckily, there is not much ash on the Andrews Community Forest, but there is
some ash firewood and some ash sawlogs that we’ll be cutting. Because we are
outside of the flight season of EAB, we can ship ash logs to markets (mills,
log yards) with a “compliance agreement” – where they will process logs prior
to the beginning of the flight season next year. This means that even if we
unknowingly ship ash logs that are infested with EAB, the larvae in the tree
will be killed before they are able to hatch and spread. Ash firewood is a
little more tricky – unless we’re heat-treating it (which we won’t be at
Andrews), we need to keep it as local as possible. This will mean making a
separate pile of any ash firewood and only shipping it very locally.
I’m continuing to post short update videos on
the project on my YouTube channel. My most recent one can be found here: https://youtu.be/4O0TYGnzcPY. Stay tuned for more video updates and recordings of
the virtual events we do about the work at the ACF on the Andrews Community
Forest playlist on the Chittenden County Forester YouTube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWk3DKdWmNIb5VOql7MqxJ09GqXg0kPVl, including recordings of our past virtual events. Follow
along throughout the project on Front Porch Forum, ACF's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AndrewsCommunityForest), by joining my email list (send an email to ethan.tapper@vermont.gov to join) and attending some of the many virtual
events from our upcoming events series this fall.
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