27 Jul, 2014 Author: Evan
Flats snuggly positioned in truck
The restoration plan at Tidmarsh is composed of many moving parts. One of them is the planting of 8,000 Atlantic White Cedars ("AWC") which is scheduled for 2016 and 2017.
But we don't have 8,000 AWC: so on the 1st of November last year the trio of Davenport, Hackman and Schulman went to Eel River and collected seed cones from the recently planted AWC at that restoration site. At home, the seed popped out of the drying cones, and spent the winter in our refrigerators. Talk about a long, dark winter. This spring Glorianna germinated several batches of the seeds giving us more than 5,000 seedlings.
The plan, as it was revealed to me, was to move these small treelets to Northeast Native Habitats ("NNH") run by Tony Reiber, a professional grower in western Massachusetts. Tony would care for them until they were ready to plant in the 2016 time frame . By the time we were ready to move them, each seedling was in its own little cubicle in a flat of 50 such compartments. Each flat was approximately 21 inches by 11 inches. We could not stack them, so we needed a truck with 160 square feet of shelf or floor space. We could not find trucks with secure shelves for rent: we ended up with a monster truck 26 feet long and 13 feet high. Understand, the biggest machine I have driven for some time is an old pickup truck.
On the 23rd of July I retrieved our rental: Glorianna, Evan, Henry Eshbaugh & some interns from Mount Holyoke College loaded it with the flats in roughly 30 minutes. Glorianna & I then set off for Montague Massachusetts, some 150 miles distant.
Evan drives
With pick-up and return, the trip was almost an eight hour continuous adrenaline rush. After I got somewhat comfortable with the machine, we motored on the highways at roughly the 65 mile speed limit. We passed very few cars or trucks, but we were passed by everyone else, even 18-wheelers, some at great speed, others just inching by us. I now feel very strongly that they do not make the lanes on our highways wide enough.
We arrived at NNH: Tony helped us unload and sent us on the return trip.
Unloading flats at Tony's
Thought for the day: maybe we can get Mr. Putin to drive a big truck: it is hard to feel overly aggressive after eight hours on the road.