Musick Creek Confluence - July 2024 Update from Jemmy Bluestein
Jim Michael
Trees Above All
Musick Creek Confluence Inc.
July 2024
(Not bad for late July!)
Welcome back everyone!
Here is the latest from Musick Creek Confluence:
In October of 2025, the National Resource Conservation Service (US Dept of Ag) will pay us $100,000 for completing a yearlong understory planting project which we will begin this fall. In the midst of a few hundred thousand acres of post-fire devastation, the former forest might never reestablish itself without our help. Quite aside from what we can learn and teach the world about this process, our growing island of native genetic diversity can be like an ark which will radiate this diversity in all directions. This Conservation Stewardship Program will pay us once it is done. It is a quirk of the CSP that we will need front money, “bridge loan(s)” totaling about $70,000, repayable November of 2025. This is a service we are pleased to offer: if there is cash you would like to see used in a helpful and effective manner, we will do this. (We have considered applying for carbon offset money from some dealers in such programs but for one thing we are pretty small acreage and for another, many consider such activity to be somewhere between questionable and bullshit… this bridge loan concept for our current project otoh is a true carbon offset investment opportunity that can pay real forest dividends for thousands of years…) 5,000 starts of a couple dozen understory species are already being grown for us to plant. We will plant them with protective cages, and all the care and advantages possible, greatly increasing their prospects for survival and growth. We will share this future forest.
If you have $10k or more which we could use to plant this forest and then return to you in November of ‘25, please chime, message us. Your forest thanks you, and we do too.
Meanwhile, we are currently wrapping up the current “maintenance” phase of this Conservation Stewardship Program. We have continued our post-fire tree planting: nine thousand seedlings planted this spring, about a dozen canopy (overstory) species! We have also crisscrossed the property, finding and caring for surviving seedlings of our previous plantings, clearing and mulching around them, and staking and flagging each one. Now we are nearly done pruning up all of our resprouting black oaks, transforming them from dense stump sprouting shrubberies into main trunks reaching for the sky and recreating our lost canopy in a hurry.
You can come play, we will be at it off and on starting in the fall. You know where to find us. We would love to talk to you about the bridge loan business or any other contribution you might like to offer. Also please see our web page or keep current on Facebook.Thank you all for your encouragement, from your friends at Musick Creek Confluence.
Jem Bluestein, President
Musick Creek Confluence
PO Box 17072
Fresno, CA 93744-7072
(We will be planting some Carpenteria and some Fremontia!)