Post #22 A partnership...with the dead

Once upon a time, Westchester County's land was cleared and trees were the exception, not the rule.  Trees were sparsely sprinkled across the landscape and grew reliably in only a few locations: shading the farm house, lining the prominent road, marking the property's corner, bordering the swamp.

A painting of 1830's New England.  

If trees were the exception, farms were the rule.  Specifically, sheep farms.  Oh yes – most of the old rock walls you drive past were erected to keep in place big, silly looking Merino sheep.  During the late 1700's and early 1800's wool was one of New England's biggest inland industries. With the opening of the American West by mid-century, the cold rocky soils of New England were abandoned for the cold prairie soils west of the Mississippi.  Some eastern farmland was simply abandoned...and thus began the trend of reforesting New England. Starting then, trees became more of the rule and less of the exception.               

A Merino sheep in need of a hair cut.  

As an abandoned farm grows into a forest we can expect to see a certain pattern in the plants.  At first, fields of flowers and shrubs dominate.  Soon after, fast growing and short lived, 'weedy' trees – like birch, black locust, and eastern red cedar – take over.  Eventually, slower growing and longer lived trees – like the white oak – assume their position on the old farmland.  Across New England,  when farms were left to revert back to forests, the eastern red cedar became a very common tree.

An old field naturally dominated by eastern red cedar trees.  As forests in southern New England regrow from cleared land, they often pass through this stage, which remains evident even after the trees die.   

At the Armstrong House Education Center you can still see this early stage of reforestation.  Here, like in many other forested parts of southern New England, you will see hundreds of eastern red cedar trees standing dead or dying in the shadows of larger trees.  These trees thrived in open, full-light conditions but were slowly killed by the surrounding forest as they were shaded out.  Their naturally rot and insect-resistant wood allows them to persist in the forest as dead trees for over a decade.  Currently, living cedars are not very common; most of the cedars you will run across in Northern Westchester County take the form of fence post, gates, benches or hand rails.

The Pound Ridge Land Conservancy has entered into a partnership with this tree.  The cedar is rot resistant and strong, making it ideal as a long lasting, outdoor building material.  Here at the Armstrong House Education Center we use eastern red cedar posts to hold up our garden fence, prop up our mailbox, keep up the shed wall, strengthen the chicken coop and support the hanging branch of an old gray dogwood tree.  To say the least, we think very highly of its usefulness.

Strong cedar posts hold up our garden fence.

Four cedar posts act as the central support system to our chicken coop, seen here in progress.

A cedar helping to hold up our outdoor work shed

A slender cedar post holding up a very old dogwood branch

So what about this resource in the future?  Will our forests provide us with eastern red cedar to build with in twenty years?  Not unless we plant some new ones today.  And that is exactly what we are doing on the Armstrong Preserve.

Why isn't eastern red cedar growing in the forests of Northern Westchester County today?

Two reasons:

1) These trees require abundant light to get started, which the forest floor does not provide.  Much of Northern Westchester County is forested and the few places that are not forested are typically mowed.

2)  White tailed deer destroy the trees that have managed to find an appropriately sunny location.  In this respect, the eastern red cedar is like all the other trees in the area – the deer are keeping them from growing.  Without a change, our forests will look a lot different in the future.   

To ensure that there will be red cedar for the future we grow it in the following sunny places:
1)  Our tree nursery, a well-lit fenced area attached to our garden.
2) The Armstrong Preserve's cliff face.  This bedrock cliff is bathed in sunlight and is out of reach from deer.
3) And coming soon, eastern red cedar will grow in our meadow.  As part of the Armstrong Meadow Management Plan, we will be establishing a zone of small trees and shrubs around the meadow's perimeter, which is currently occupied by Japanese Barberry.    

Eastern red cedar growing on a rock cliff at the Armstrong Preserve

How does using eastern red cedar as a building material help us Live Lighter on the Land?

By using wood that is produced in our forests we don't have to import wood from overseas.  This means we use less fuel for shipping.  Also, by being intimately involved in the production and harvest of the wood, we can better understand and appreciate the impact of our actions.  In other words, we can clearly see the ecological impact that our building projects have on our landscape.      

Can you form a partnership with the eastern red cedar?

You sure can.  Just pick a sunny spot on your property and plant a few eastern red cedars.  While they are growing you can actively harvest some dead cedars from your property and you won't be exhausting your supply.  The goal is to always have some new trees growing for future building projects. 

Remember, you need to keep them safe from deer until they are big enough to protect themselves.  You can simply fence them in, or spray them with a deer repellent.  You can buy very cheap saplings from the state here.    

*The introductory paragraph to this post is a generalization of New England's landscape history.  For more information on this interesting topic see here and here.