Category Archives: Silviculture

Turpentine cup on fallen cat face 2022-01-06

Update 2022-03-20: McCoy turpentine cup 2022-03-20.

It’s been 80 or 90 years since turpentining paid off the farm during the Great Depression. Yet we still find turpentine cups, and sometimes cat faces.

[Downed catface with Carolina dog, closeup of turpentine cup]
Downed catface with Carolina dog, closeup of turpentine cup

Blondie is a Carolina Dog, which is a native landrace breed, as in they bred themselves. Carolina Dogs were discovered in South Carolina in the 1970s, thus the name. They were living in longleaf pine forests and cypress swamps, just like where Blondie and Arrow (and Honeybun) live now in Georgia. Continue reading →

Planting fruit trees 2021-03-30

Citrus: lemon, satsuma, blood orange, and grapefruit, two of each.

[Gretchen planting fruit trees]
Gretchen planting fruit trees

Better than the invasive chinaberry trees that used to be there. Getting rid of those took a bulldozer and years of mowing and harrowing. Continue reading →

Fire in wood stove 2020-11-17

It’s that time of year.

[Heat and light]
Heat and light

Plenty of dead oaks to cut up for firewood.

That’s good, but also troubling: too many dead trees due to spells of drought and heat.

Here’s a brief video: Continue reading →

Beautyberry, boats, bananas, fire 2020-10-04

Around Okra Paradise Farms this morning.

[Beautyberry with boats, bananas, and wood fire]
Beautyberry with boats, bananas, and wood fire

Also grapevine. And I keep pulling up Continue reading →

Cat face, beaver pond 2020-06-16

Back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, my father and grandfather paid off the mortgage on the farm through income from turpentine. This is a catface, where the bark was scraped off a pine tree so its sap would ooze out, to be caught in a metal cup nailed below on the tree.

[Catface and beaver pond]
Catface and beaver pond

The rest of the tree long ago was logged.

Behind the pine tree stump and the adjoining oak tree, you can see a beaver pond. Continue reading →

Phoenix bird 2020-05-10

The firebird appears to be a Carolina wren.

[Carolina wren]
Carolina wren

This Thryothorus ludovicianus didn’t seem to mind that I was three feet from it. Continue reading →

Swamp boat burn 2020-03-02

Dogs like water more than fire.

[Yellow Dog and camouflaged Brown Dog]
Yellow Dog and camouflaged Brown Dog

And yes, Gretchen was putting out fires with a coffee cup and swamp water.

But she found something unexpected. Continue reading →

Blooming pear tree 2020-03-02

Gretchen and the LeConte Pear tree.

[Sniff]
Sniff

We might get some pears this year.

[Smile]
Smile

Thanks to the cousin who gave this tree to us.

And the nineteenth century cousin who found it. Here’s a story about that. Margie Love, Coastal Courier, originally 16 September 2007, updated 26 September 2011, Liberty’s LeConte pear was once famous.

-jsq