For the last 14 years of his life, my father lived in a double-wide mobile home, which he bought new in 1997 and moved into a stand of old pine trees on our farm about 200 yards off the road. I still use it when I am there to cool off at lunch, rest from my orchard work, do a little reading, or when I need to spend the night at the farm or host friends and family during hunting season. For the last 14 years, since my father’s passing, it has been my goal to remove the trailer and build a more permanent small house or cabin on the same spot. I’m not there yet. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever will be. I’ve reached the age at which I feel a sense of urgency to get such things accomplished but it seems there’s always something else that needs more of my attention and cash.
Sometime in the 1950’s my great grandfather planted about 10 acres of loblolly pines between a cotton field and the hardwood bottom that runs along Limestone Creek. Over the next 70 years the pines grew tall and thick of trunk, with large plates of scaly bark and needles that softly gave shade within the little block of pines. The sun filtered through the tall trunks in golden slants of light between the trees. My first deer hunt took place in these pines in the mid-1980s. I didn’t see any deer, but that morning remains vivid in my mind. When my father moved the trailer there over a decade later these trees were the largest and oldest pines on the farm. He cut out only enough trees to move the trailer in and set it up, leaving it surrounded by towering pines. Many of them were left too close and it’s nothing short of a miracle that amid countless thunderstorms and even a couple of hurricanes, no trees fell on the trailer in a 27-year period.
This block of pines became an increasing concern to me over the years. I love big, old trees but some of the trees began to die with pine beetles, many had fusiform rust cankers, and the stand had not been burned in years because the trailer’s presence in the center of the block made doing so a risky proposition. Due to the lack of fire, hardwoods were moving in and though the remaining healthy trees were at their peak, the pine stand as a whole was headed toward decline if left unmanaged.
If I am ever to accomplish my goal of moving the trailer out and building a cabin here, the first situation that must be addressed is that of the pine trees. The trees were older and larger than when my Dad moved the trailer in and with so many large pines in the yard and lining the driveway, I doubt it could be moved out. These trees were planted over 70 years ago for the purpose of timber production. They were mature and most of the trees were large enough to produce poles or saw-timber. Their condition made it clear that if they were going to be cut, now was the time.
When it comes to pine trees, I am not so much interested in timber production as I am in wildlife habitat and care of the land. My preference was to remove all the trees within range of falling on the trailer and in the rest of the block, remove selected trees with a “plantation cut”, in which a low density of healthy, large, mature pines are left at a low basal area of about 40-60 square feet per acre. This provides dappled shade and a sparse overstory that encourage grasses and herbaceous plants, while removing much of the stand. It produces the landscape seen in countless wildlife paintings of deep south quail hunts.
But, there was a problem. A problem which stems from a series of events that occurred before my time and are out of my control. A problem generated by the industrial scale at which nearly everything in life has become subject. It is nearly impossible to find a timber crew willing to cut timber on a small acreage today. When my great grandfather planted these trees there were numerous independent timber crews and local sawmills willing and happy to take the timber at a good price. They were willing to help meet the landowner’s needs. Many other landowners planted pine trees around the time my great-grandfather did, and many more did thereafter, creating a glut on the timber market as those trees matured. This led to consolidation in many aspects of the timber business as it has other aspects of life. Today, if you can find a crew to cut timber on a small tract like mine they will call the shots on how it is cut and will set the price based on the corporate giant sawmills’ prices. The landowner has very little say in the matter except whether or not the contract is signed.
So, I did. In the summer of 2024, I finally found a timber consultant willing to cut the tract, signed a contract with him to handle the cutting of the timber and its marketing and sale to a sawmill. Comparatively speaking, the prices were not bad. I had no complaints there. But, the plantation cut I hoped for, which would have removed about half to 2/3 of the trees was not an option. It was clearcut or no deal. I had been looking for someone willing to cut the trees for so long that I felt I had no choice.
Things didn’t get off to a great start. After the timber was marked for cutting I took a walk through the woods and inspected the marking. We had agreed that they would stop cutting 90 feet from the road, leaving a buffer of protection from road noise and prying eyes. As I walked the perimeter of the marked timber I noticed that along the driveway they kept to the 90 foot buffer. As I moved deeper into the woods, the little strips of pink plastic flagging tape dangling from tree branches and tied to trunks angled outward to only about 60 feet from the road. I removed the flags and moved them back, bringing the perimeter of the cut inward to accommodate the agreed upon 90 foot buffer.
The timber crew moved in to start cutting on September 23rd. I watched as the feller-buncher grabbed a pine around the trunk, cut it off at the base, and moved it to a certain position, its top swaying back and forth in the sky, before laying it down. The loader was set up in the middle of the cleared stand, 50 yards to the SE of the trailer. The skidder with a big grapple drug the trees to the loader. The tops of the trees were cut off and left in big piles scattered everywhere and the loader stacked logs—about 16 or so per load—onto the log trucks. They cut for 2 days and clearcut about 2/3 of the pines, leaving the trees standing near the trailer, which were the impetus for going down this path to begin with. On September 25th Hurricane Helene ripped much of the state to the east of our farm apart.
We had some wind but thankfully the storm was far enough away that we were spared any serious damage. The trailer somehow made it through again without any trees falling on it. Understandably, the timber crew pulled out and moved to eastern Georgia to help people cut their way out of the disaster and to salvage what timber they could in that part of the state before the dreaded blue stain fungus set in. I understood the situation but after some of the nightmare stories I had heard about timber crews pulling off a job, I figured they’d never be back. To my utter surprise, they returned in May of 2025 and finished the job. Looking around at the mess they left, I found myself wishing they hadn’t. It was a catastrophe.
The sandy to loamy sand soils found on the southern Coastal Plain uplands in my part of the world are naturally suited to grow pine trees. Before clearing for farming, most of this areas was covered in a particular species, longleaf pine. The tall, stately trees dominated the southeastern upland landscape of this region from extreme southeastern Virginia to the eastern edge of Texas. The longleaf pine achieved this dominance through a long association with fire and water. The tree’s taproot reaches deep into the course, sandy soil, deeper than any other tree, to find soil moisture in a land that receives 40-60” of rain per year, much of which is leached away through the sandy surface soils like liquid through a strainer, slowly draining it into the shallow, limestone aquifer below. As a result, these sandy soils can dry out quickly. That taproot is saturated with a dense sap called oleoresin that is highly flammable, burning long and slow. For this reason, when longleafs die and rot, the stump left behind is highly prized by those familiar with it, as “fat-lighter”, which has been used in many a fireplace and stove over the years as kindling.
After five to seven years of growing this taproot, during which the tree’s bud rests in a clump of needles known as the “grass stage”, the tree begins to rapidly grow upward. In the grass stage it is protected from fire by the dense profusion of needles covering the bud. Once enough top growth takes place and the tree’s primary bud reaches a certain height and its scaly bark gets thick enough to protect it from fire once more, the longleaf pine thrives amid flames.
The southern Coastal Plain covers 90 million acres. Sixty three percent of that was once longleaf pine. The native landscape of the region, though dominated by longleaf pine was a mosaic of upland woodlands, hardwood bottomlands, and transitional areas, as well as relatively small, open clearings made by native Americans, all blending together at the edges. It is primarily fire and soil characteristics that kept each habitat in its place. Lightning once served as the primary fire starter that maintained the longleaf pine woodlands but it was infrequent. The Native Americans, and later European settlers, increasingly used fire to maintain this landscape until the early 1900s. This allowed for the development of an entire ecosystem of remarkable diversity in which the longleaf overstory was underlain by a mixture of grasses and forbs—wiregrass, little bluestem, broomsedge, trefoils, milk peas, bush clovers, and partridge peas to name a few—which supported a unique fauna of animals, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, gopher tortoise, indigo snake, and Bachman’s sparrow, that were themselves adapted to fire and the resulting vegetation of this system.
Once the land was cleared of the old growth longleaf forests, uplands not kept in row crop agriculture or stocked with cattle, were allowed to naturally regenerate. Many settlers used fire to stimulate the growth of new grazing for livestock and to control the six-legged pests like ticks and chiggers found in this rough land. The frequent use of fire allowed the longleaf system to regenerate and continue to flourish for a while longer in an unlikely and rare confluence of human preference and ecological function. During this time the new settlers tapped the longleaf pine for its dense sap, around which the turpentine industry was developed. Much of it was also used to seal and waterproof ships, which lent the trade the term, “naval stores”.
After World War II, once the old growth timber was gone, the remaining naval stores were beginning to tap out, and as new technologies were developed, the timber industry came up with a new plan. In the absence of fire, midstory plants and hardwoods will eventually choke out the initial succession of pines, grasses, and legumes that pop up on a piece of abandoned field or cleared ground in the first ten to fifteen years. As this proceeds, the land will develop along a specific progression of vegetative states composed of certain species over time. Without a disturbance like fire, this process will continue until it reaches a “climax” state. Here, in southern Georgia, that climax state is a mixed hardwood community usually composed of American beech, southern magnolia, spruce and loblolly pine, tulip poplar, various oaks, and hickories. The timber industry wanted pure stands of pine for lumber and for the development of paper products, but longleaf pines grew too slowly. They needed something faster. So, they turned to slash and loblolly pine.
Because so many large tracts wound up in the public domain as a result of unpaid taxes, timber companies moved in and acquired large tracts of land. Interestingly, they began to manage these second growth forests with the intent of eliminating one of the key tools needed—fire. The first pine species to establish on many cleared upland sites are loblolly and slash. In areas where loggers had removed only the oldest and straightest longleaf trees, smaller trees were left behind to provide a longleaf seedstock. Burning exposed the bare mineral soil needed for the longleaf seed to germinate and at the same time, suppressed the less fire-resistant loblolly and slash along with hardwoods, encouraging the re-growth of longleaf. But, where all the longleaf where removed, foresters began to see that fire killed the only young pines that seemed to be re-establishing themselves, loblolly and slash. This led to a misunderstanding about the value of fire for the management and health of pine woodlands in general, so the official position of the U.S. Forestry Service and state foresters became fire exclusion.
It is true that young loblolly and slash pines are not tolerant of fire, but once they reach 10-15 years of age, they also benefit from it, though it took years to convince people that this was the case. With age the bark grows thick enough to resist fire and the terminal bud rises above the flames. At this point, even loblolly and slash benefit from the release fire provides from the competing vegetation, just as longleaf does. Many foresters on the ground recognized the benefits of fire even for loblolly and slash, but once set in motion, government policy is hard to change. As a result, dense tangles of loblolly, slash, and hardwood developed throughout the Coastal Plain. When wildfires broke out, rather than burning slowly through the lower understory vegetation of the longleaf system at ground level, the flames grew hot and large in the dense tangles of vegetation and quickly jumped into the slash and loblolly tree canopies, where it was hard to control. Many fires broke loose, damaging property and further inciting a fear of fire as a forestry tool. Loblolly and slash grow faster than longleaf as well and become large enough for a first thinning in 13-16 years or so, whereas longleaf is typically thinned for the first time around year 18.
Anyone who attempts to manage and care for land long enough is bound to make a mistake or two along the way. These are sorely won learning experiences. As I looked around at the devastation left behind by the timber crew—pine tops, bent and broken culled logs, chewed up, rutted land, I felt I had made the worst mistake I had ever made where land was concerned.
I don’t know to what extent I can accomplish it, but I have a vision to recreate this small tract wedged between the cotton field and hardwood bottoms of my great grandfather into something better than it was. Something more permanent, more beautiful, healthy, and good than it was before I set my hand to it. I have caused damage here. It is up to me to repair it.
Once the trees were removed, I was left with the daunting task of piling and burning the old pine tops, limbs, and bent, damaged or discarded logs, and other debris in preparing the land for re-planting. I didn’t have the equipment required to clean up the mess left by the loggers, so I had to find someone to which I could hire out this job. I called a friend of mine who has done some large equipment work for me on various jobs in the past but after looking at it, he was concerned that the remaining stumps would make it nearly impossible for him to do the job. The stumps needed shearing and he didn’t have the equipment for that. But, he put me in touch with someone who did.
My original vision was to enlarge the yard a little and, rather than plant pine trees back to the entire 10 acres, keep an acre or so more open to sunlight and plant various hardwoods for shade, fruit trees, and beds of pollinator plants in the yard instead. Safely away from the homesite, I would plant the 5 or so acres of higher ground on each side and behind the trailer to longleaf because the ground is well drained, upland soil. The remaining 4 acres or so in the wetter, more shallow soil closer to the creek bottom, I would plant in improved loblolly.
Upon setting up the cleanup and site prep, I learned that the contractor whose name I was given is a forestry consultant who also plants trees. His price for the whole process from cleanup to planting was less than I anticipated for the cleanup alone. From our conversations I gathered that the longleaf, in this situation, may be too challenging and expensive on this particular site. Once a site is mechanically cleared, the resulting vegetation regrowth is extremely aggressive and after a couple years, often requires chemical release of the pines. I’m not a fan of doing that but I have seen enough pine plantings to know that in our part of the world the vigor of early successional plants can be so aggressive that young longleaf pines are quickly choked out. I could scrape off a few inches of topsoil prior to planting as they do for longleafs planted in agricultural fields, and then burn the regrowth while the longleafs are in the grass stage but that would be expensive and logistically difficult given my full time job and orchard work. So, I made the decision to plant improved loblolly back on the upland (excluding the yard) as well as the lower land. I’ll get to watch the land heal and know that I did what I could for it.
My vision for this place is up against the forces of scale and a culture and economy that do not value things like beauty, permanence, stewardship, and a healthy relationship between people and land. I am swimming upstream. But I will do the best I can. As much as we would like to live independently from the economic forces of scale thrust upon us, for each of us, there is likely some level at which we all find ourselves participating or giving in to it. That level is often determined by circumstances, necessity, and personal choices. It may require compromise. But, we don’t have to give in completely. Not if we don’t want to do so. It may require somewhat of a shift in goals, but we can each still hold on to as much of a vision of the world as we would like it to be, as we choose to. We can each preserve enough of it as we are able. Perhaps together, it will be enough to keep the darkness required to create a synthetic society and economy without conscience at bay.
I am fortunate to have seen the old pines swaying in the sky at their peak and to have the opportunity to plant new ones and for a while, watch them grow. With a little luck, it’s not impossible that I will see them grow to maturity, even start to exert their mass and to filter sunlight below to the undergrowth that holds life to this place. The clear cut is not the end of a thing so much as it is a new beginning. My goal is to now try and create as much of an oasis from the economies of scale as I can. I still envision moving that trailer out, building a cabin here, using some of the limestone rocks cropping out of the ground on the farm to build a rock wall or garden beds, planting the yard in trees, shrubs, and vines that produce fruit for myself and the animals I share the place with, flowers for pollinators. In my old age, I’d like to watch that kind of world at work, while the pines I plant grow tall around me and become home to blue grosbeaks, pine warblers, brown headed nuthatches, and a covey of bobwhite quail to which I will call back and forth from the shade of my porch. I’ll look out upon the hardwood bottom below, where deer bed down, turkeys roost, warblers forage from tree to tree, barred owls call, and wood ducks paddle silently in the waters of Limestone Creek that will continue to flow into Lake Blackshear where it will mix into the Flint River and journey on to the sea.
Thoughts From The Orchard 