Chestnuts

As the fall leaves start dropping from the trees, so do the chestnuts.

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) once comprised one-quarter of the east coast hardwoods and was valued for construction of barns and homes. Some of the beams in our old barn are chestnut. Starting in 1904 a blight fungus on some imported Asian chestnut trees nearly wiped out the American chestnut trees. The chestnut trees in our lawn are Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) and are immune to the blight.

Prior to the chestnut blight, the American chestnut was a major wildlife food source for deer, turkeys, bears and squirrels. The nut is contained in a spiny (very sharp) "burr". The freshly dropped green burrs can be handled with gloves, but once the burr dries out and hardens the burrs can penetrate leather gloves.

We were able to collect some of this year's chestnut crop which will be used to propagate new trees for the local wildlife. This container of chestnuts will be placed in a refrigerator until spring to stratify the chestnuts for planting. The stratification process will simulate winter to break dormancy so they can germinate. Next spring the nuts will start sprouting in the container and then will be planted.

Fall Color

We've had some warm weather lately, but it's easy to detect a seasonal change is coming by the color of the leaves on the trees. Within a day of taking these photos heavy rains and wind moved into the area and now many of the brightly colored leaves are on the ground. Some views from our cabin property.

A view of our barn property from the cabin property.

A view of our barn showing stacks of firewood ready for the change to cooler weather.

Archery Hunting

The Fall archery season started on October 3rd and allows hunters to take deer and bear with the correct hunting tags. Our son Matt is an archery hunter and came here do some hunting over the 3 day Columbus Day holiday weekend. Matt's plan was to look for an early big buck, but for the last 20 years had gotten the bear tag just in case he would see a bear. This year the bear showed up Saturday in the afternoon. Matt took a shot and hit the bear. The bear traveled just over 100 yards before piling up next to a fallen tree. Matt checked the bear and it wasn't dead yet but figured it would expire by the time I arrived to help remove the bear.

When I arrived, with his son Reed, we went to check on the bear and it was gone! We then tracked it to this new location about 100 yards away. By now daylight was fading in the deep woods and the bear and was still able to move its head. We were able to get within 25 feet of the bear, Matt took another shot and the bear ran into the dark woods, out of sight. We then heard a couple of crashes and assumed the bear would be piled up against another dead tree. We searched for an hour and a half for a blood trail in the darkness with no luck. At this point we decided to wait until day break to look for the blood trail before the forecast 9:00AM rain storm.

The scheduled 9:00AM rain started at 2:00AM and continued all day, delivering almost 1 inch of rain. We hunted all day Sunday in the rain for the bear with no luck. On Monday morning Matt was able to find one bear paw sticking out of a large tree blow-down. The bear was found! The next task was getting the bear out of the blow-down and the steep wooded hillside.

We needed to open a road to the blow-down with my front end loader and then remove some of the blow-down just to get to the bear.

Now lift the bear out with the loader bucket. The bear was tagged and the Game Commission was called to report the kill. With instructions from the Game Commission, we started processing the bear. The Game Commission was here today, Oct. 14th, to check the bear.

Matt and Reed with the bear.

The bear had ear tags in each ear. By using the ear tag numbers we found that this warden was the person that tagged the bear last year. The bear was estimated to be 2.5 years old, with a weight of about 200 pounds.

I have multiple game cameras in this area and got this photo of a bear with ear tags. The game camera photo was taken about 130 yards from where Matt first shot the bear.

Walnuts

The annual bombardment of round green spheres from our black walnut trees has started. Being round, the green nut spheres will roll down hill and collect in locations a short distance from the tree, such as my garden.

The local squirrels will collect and store walnuts for their winter meals. It's nice to have the squirrels help with the walnut removal, but they tend to store all these walnuts in all areas of our barn and then leave the walnut hulls and shells in the barn. To reduce the amount of walnuts stored in the barn I've removed two loader buckets of walnuts, so far. I've hauled these walnut to a brushy field a half mile away and hope to start some black walnut trees in this new location. I'm also removing some of the walnut trees around the barn.

Big Green Caterpillar

I was doing some tree removal near our barn when I found this 3 inch long green caterpillar. After some on-line research I determined it was a Luna moth (Actias luna) caterpillar.