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About Applegater. (Jacksonville, OR) 2008-current | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2021)
12 Summer 2021 Applegater Fire hazard? Take away all those ‘ladder fuels’ BY TOM CARSTENS There I was, sitting in an Oregon State University Extension class for landowners. We were discussing the degrees of drought tolerance for tree species in our area. Douglas “Doug” fir wasn’t high on the list. Suddenly everything became clear: this must be why my Doug fir trees keep dying! All my other trees do just fine. Sound familiar? It should—we can see large clumps of dead and dying Doug fir trees all over the Applegate Valley. Even now, when I look across the valley at Ferris Gulch, it makes my heart sick. When they go up in flames—and they will—it’s not going to be pretty. Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and Applegate District fire crews will have their hands full protecting homes. Just after that class, Aaron Krikava published an article in this paper offering help to private property owners who might want to do some controlled burning to remove unwanted forest undergrowth— so-called ladder fuels. I’d only heard of this being done on large public land tracts, so I was interested to see how this could work on a smaller private parcel. As it happened, the US Forest Service was offering a field trip to examine the results of a prescribed burn in the Upper Applegate, so I signed up. What I saw was not forest destruction, but a clearing of hazard fuels between the trunks of thriving, established trees. The forest canopy remained intact and healthy. The added bonus was that it mimicked the natural restorative process of periodic wildfire. Okay, I thought, this is what I want to do. But first I had to get rid of all those beetle-infested fir trees before I introduced fire on my property, which hadn’t seen a flame in over 90 years. A neighbor put me in touch with a local logger. In exchange What makes us different? Customized personal service! Example: We answer our customer hotline from 6 am - 10 pm, 7 days a week. Try it now! 541-973-9185 1000 Morton Road (2 miles outside Jacksonville) • • • • 285 private Johns Peak view acres with 3 homes 3,500 sq ft multilevel 3/2.5 home with in-ground pool 2 additional approx. 1,000 sq ft homes and 40’ x 60’ insulated shop Own your own private mountaintop retreat! $1,900,000 446 Bonnie Lane, Grants Pass • • • • Gorgeous 4,650 sq ft home on 4.29 acres with in-ground pool Totally rebuilt in 2011 with a 1,100 sq ft apartment over the garage Creative landscaping with fenced vegetable garden and small orchard Private retreat but close to Grants Pass and the Rogue River $989,000 Over $30 MILLION in Sales Since 2013 for a couple of truckloads of millable logs, he agreed to help me thin my forest and pile the slash. Some of my neighbors were able to gather some of the smaller logs for firewood. For a lighter touch, we brought in a team of large Percheron horses to skid the Doug fir logs. Now—how to deal with all those slash piles? I asked Biomass One if they’d be interested in chipping the waste for energy. Tom Carstens brought in Percheron draft horses to They were, but they couldn’t move logs while thinning fuel from his property. negotiate my steep drive. So Photo: Tom Carstens. I contacted Josh Weber, the owner of Greenpath Landscape, to help me burn those piles. On burn days, we gradually worked through the slash. Afterwards, the property looked much more open. Taking advantage of the pandemic slowdown, I continued to manually thin my property of more fuel hazards. I dug out troublesome blackberry patches, removed buckbrush overgrowth, cut and piled smaller dead trees, limbed others, and burned the Tom Carstens scrapes a fire line around his house. waste. Once this was done, I felt Photo: Kathy Carstens. confident and ready to finish the job with a controlled burn. Aaron and Mel Wann of the Applegate Partnership drafted a 69-page burn plan and put me in contact with Grayback Forestry, a local company with a lot of experience managing burns on large public tracts. I began talking to my neighbors to let them know what was going to happen. I dug a protective hand line around my house. Josh and a neighbor helped me put in more fire lines where needed. Greenpath Landscape helps burn slash piles to reduce ODF looked over the plan, fuel load on the property. Photo: Tom Carstens. inspected the lines, and issued a burn permit. When the weather conditions met ODF guidelines, we notified Applegate Drought-tolerant trees Fire District. Grayback Forestry brought in southwest Oregon out a couple of fire engines, a water tender, and a crew of 24, who ringed the entire Ranked highest to lowest property with charged fire hose. Small, controlled flames slowly licked up the Oregon White Oak ground litter and duff. Five hours after California Black Oak light-off, it was done. I had a clean, fire- Ponderosa Pine resistant forest floor. Incense Cedar, Pacific Madrone Expecting another bad fire season, I feel Douglas Fir about as protected as possible. Collectively, Port Orford Cedar there are enough of us Applegaters who White Fir own a sizable quantity of dry forest land; maybe we can contribute to reducing On sites where these species co-occur, expect greater loss of the less drought-tolerant the fire hazard for all of us. Controlled species (e.g., loss of Douglas fir on sites with burning can help. Douglas fir and oak). It’s worth considering. Courtesy Oregon State University Tom Carstens Extension Service 541-846-1025