Musick Creek Confluence - An Update from Jemmy Bluestein
Jim Michael
Trees Above All
Musick Creek Confluence Inc.
October 2022
Dear friends and supporters of Musick Creek Confluence:
Just a note to update you as to our recent activities and projects. It has been a busy time for us in our forest. We completed our grant work with the National Resource Conservation Service, using available materials to protect our 64 acres worst burned in the creek fire from excessive soil erosion. The work was grueling but we appreciated the support and felt we were doing the most loving thing possible for our land. The grant was intended to pay half the cost of the job, but we worked so efficiently we were able to deposit a portion of the grant into our corporate bank account. Then NRCS was so encouraging of our work they awarded us an extra $18k above the contract amount. This windfall has been earmarked for a payment of half of our remaining land purchase debt, to be made in a few months.
(Musick Creek property line, shaded areas show 64 acres treated with NRCS grant.)
Salvaged Logs
In the process of the above mentioned post fire treatment, we salvaged a massive trove of millable logs from trees killed but not consumed by the fire. We have used some of our net cash gains from the grant work to deck up these logs so they can be protected until needed and used. I would encourage you to please check the website musickcreek.org for pics and story on these activities. I also try to keep the Musick Creek Confluence facebook page up to date (I know, I also hate FB but it is easy for me to operate and I hope you will stay tuned!).
Milling at Musick
With some more of our little stash of cash, we have been milling some of our logs into some beautiful lumber and again I will refer you to the FB page. The quality and quantity are such that we can supply ourselves with first class material for generations. We would love to continue milling operations, and again, though we work super cheap, there are expenses and we are out of cash. So we will focus our energy on making sure the logs are protected from the elements until we can get back to them, or someone has a specific need for lumber.
Seedlings
As we clamber over our land we are always keeping an eye on the several thousand tree seedlings we have planted since the '20 fire. Many are growing prodigiously and we flag them, weed them, mulch them and encourage them. If we get significant early fall rains we anticipate another fall planting. We dream often of ways to make the land hospitable and enticing for purposes of recreation, music, art, education and overall health and connection into the future.
Pine Pitch
We also spend a fair amount of time lately trying to amplify the knowledge and experience we have gained through our decades of forest management and fire prevention. What follows below this newsletter is the latest iteration of a proposal we have generated which we are using to solicit grants and cooperation from organizations and agencies. I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas around this critical issue which is so dear to our hearts.
We are grateful for your interest and support so please stay with us in our life commitment to our forests and land! If you have spare cash and/or could use a tax write-off please go to https://musickcreek.org/donate and help us out, and please pass this opportunity to anyone you may know who shares our concerns. We know that in this day and time, in this global predicament we all find ourselves in, many folks all around the world would like to do something truly helpful. At Musick Creek Confluence we are pleased to offer our commitment to acting directly, to research and actively show the world what works, what is necessary to save our forests and specifically how it is done and what the results can be! In this way we offer everyone a way to participate in meaningful work. Although we have energy and plans, right now we are scraping the bottom. Here are a few projects which we offer you a chance to support:
- We feel a need to honor and preserve the gift of saw logs that the forest has given us. Our decades of careful forest thinning has led us to salvaging hundreds of beautiful logs which were not consumed in the Creek Fire. We have gathered and decked them up for milling, whether sooner or later according to our resources and needs, now or in the future. To protect this material, we need twenty large tarps. We do not want to buy new plastic but we can buy salvage vinyl banners for around $100 a pop. $2,000 to protect our logs/lumber from the elements.
- Our creek crossing is dangerous to impossible for wetter periods in the spring. In more manageable times, we drive over the granite bedrock through Musick Creek. This is not really acceptable or respectful of the waterway. A fifty foot long railroad flatcar would span the crossing perfectly and protect our access and our creek. Approx $25,000 to purchase and install.
- As a first structure, we are envisioning a 20’x60’ pole barn which could serve many functions, such as safe storage for equipment and materials, protected work space, shelter for volunteers/visitors, dance or performance space, and also a rooftop for solar installation. Costs would include permitting, expenses for milling lumber, expenses for hardware materials and labor. Estimated total: $25,000
- A masticator/mulcher head for Randall’s mini excavator (he shares his unit with us for cheap) would allow us to control the brush which is already engulfing our seedlings. As quickly as our trees are growing, the brush is quicker! Many plantations and agencies spray toxic weedkillers around their trees, a practice we will not be engaged in. Handwork would be impossible without hundreds of volunteers! This unit would allow us to roam the 134 acres like a roomba and carefully encourage our native species while growing our forest, protecting all surrounding lands with our living fuel break. Approx $15,000
- As mentioned above, we have put away $18,000 for a payment on our land purchase loans. This will leave us another $17,000 to pay off subsequently.
- We have certain riparian rights to water from our year-round creek. I probably don’t have to tell you this is more valuable than gold. Around these parts, they say “Whiskey is for drinkin’; water is for fightin’ over!” Well we don’t have to fight over it. We also have many productive springs. We should have water storage tanks and at least a rudimentary delivery system for purposes of drinking, nursery production and various agricultural purposes, as well as emergency fire suppression. Tanks, lines, solar pump… $10,000 could be a good start.
Of course we have many dreams beyond this list. We are continually seeking grants and other support from various organizations and agencies. We will stay with the land no matter what, since our hearts tell us the work is essential and because we love it. We offer you the opportunity to work with us and to help in the global imperative to save, grow and enjoy our forests.
We thank you and hope to hear from you and see you at Musick when you feel like dropping in. In the meantime we send you best wishes for the best of luck going forward into this maelstrom (femaelstrom?)--I think we're gonna need it. If we stick together we can do amazing things.
Thanks from your friends at Musick Creek Confluence.
(Music Creek wildflowers, June 2022)
Jem Bluestein, President
Musick Creek Confluence
PO Box 17072
Fresno, CA 93744-7072
URGENT FORESTRY REPORT (PINE PITCH?)
This is based on our 50 years of forestry work, most recently on 134 acres of the non-profit Musick Creek Confluence, east of Shaver Lake in western Fresno Co., on Musick Creek, where we have focused our work for the past 20 years. The fire hazard just above Jose Basin was as bad as anything around, so with the help of federal, state prop 40 and CFIP funds we cleaned up our forest to the safe, open, park-like condition that the first white people in the area observed. Then came the bark beetle infestation which took most of our maturing trees. We cleaned up again. Then came the Creek Fire of 2020, in which our work saved much of our own forest land and also created what I call a green fan extending upstream and laterally, saving neighbors, the town of Shaver Lake and several hundred square miles of private and public forest lands beyond!
Introduction
What follows is a potential world carbon revolution and legacy, in under three pages, from the perspective of our continuing forestry work which is going on 50 years now.
· To paraphrase a former president, let’s just say “It’s about the carbon balance, people!” It is incumbent on the people of our planet, if we are to survive, that we all successfully manage the carbon resources in our own backyards.
· In the light of recent (long predicted) conflagrations, many actions will be taken—much of what is coming will only increase the catastrophic predicament and consequences.
· Many people and agencies are beginning to understand some of the circumstances and imperative actions but in general are missing important factors.
· The following report puts together important and frequently misunderstood aspects of the big picture, including origins of the problems, basis of the solution and a specific protocol.
· Our current disaster scenarios can be transformed into extraordinary opportunity for all of humanity if we do this properly and without undue delay.Deliverables of this protocol include: slowing carbon release, increasing volume and longevity of carbon sequestration, massive production of water for downstream usage, decreased air pollution, increased oxygen production, salvage and production of forest products, massive employment opportunities in myriad areas, great savings of human life, property, and firefighting costs as well as (perhaps best of all) the creation of a large segment of our population devoted, into future generations, to sustainable management of our forest resources.
· A pilot program to dial in methods and hardware will allow us to spread the practice far and wide.
THE PROTOCOL
FOR QUICK REFERENCE
We need funding for a pilot crew, to dial in best available hardware and practices and ramp up to full integrated function in order to then replicate (always refining) the template widely with thousands of crews. The crew, for present purposes consists of:
·Chain saw hand crews thinning forest, trained in local biodiversity, removing majority of material less than 10" in diameter, for the survival and advantage of the returning canopy of maturing trees. In general trees greater than 10" diameter would be limbed up to 16' and retained, though some may be removed/thinned as needed according to prescription.
·Mini excavator with masticator and grapple, small skidsteer with grapple, tub grinder, mobile dimension sawmill for salvage milling of some material on site. Slash will be safely piled or windrowed to cure and here is where it gets interesting.
· A mobile pyrolyzer unit will appear at each site in due time to consume the chipped slash. No trucking out of slash with carbon and road and other resource consequences. The 3 products of pyrolysis and their use are:
o syngas: can run project equipment, or can run generator to feed into nearest electric grid-tie, or (best case) can be converted on site into hydrogen. Here is how to use this hydrogen along with the H2 you make from your PV arrays on site and your portable small hydro generators: You fill an H2 transport blimp bag, with drone guidance, and use it to float in all your equipment (no forest roads made or used!), float out your lumber and other products, ferry equipment and HR, and when your blimps are too full you drop them off at the H2 station in the valley.
o sludge condensate: render onsite into biodiesel to run equipment, generators, or to fire pyrolyzer (though solar concentrator-powered pyrolyzer also possible)
o biochar: some should stay on the forest floor. Meanwhile the farmers are lining up for it in the valley--not enough available to supply demand. Also increasingly in demand as carbon source for high tech manufacturing, such as graphene or batteries. Chinese carbon is not as clean and is increasingly difficult to source.
The H2 aspect may sound far-fetched but I will refer you to the state's clear mandate in this direction and Biden's Energy Secretary's recent statements. This is the clean way to harvest perpetually sustainable clean energy while restoring and protecting our forests.
Power companies should license and buy up this energy. The floating pyrolyzer-to-fuel plant would also make regular stops at logging decks, ag waste sites and municipal wood waste piles, even neighborhood sites, consuming cellulose waste, leaving clean fuels/energy behind.
PYROLYSIS TO HYDROGEN FOREST PILOT
This is an urgent proposal regarding the protection of forests in California and beyond. First of all, to the existing condition of the forest and its causes: since the killing/removal of the native caretakers of the land, we have established practices exactly contrary to sustainable management. Mature canopy trees were mowed down and this process was repeated with the regrowth of the successive generations of trees. This caused damage to the soils and watersheds and also led to choking regrowth of brush and tree thicket. Combined with a century plus of suppression of natural fire occurrence (which previously resulted in frequent, “cool” fires and the safe reduction of forest fuels), these activities led to fuel loads and growth densities of unprecedented magnitude. Mix with rising temperatures and shifting precipitation effects and we have now arrived at the serious ongoing losses which have been predicted in connection with climate disruption. The following is a prescription for turning around this cataclysm and reaping great benefits of sustainable forestry for future generations.
The prescription: The typical position of the “tree hugger” faction has been represented as “hands off,” or no cutting or thinning permitted. The typical position of the loggers has been more along the lines of “Sure, we’ll thin the forest, but we’ll cut down the big trees for lumber in order to pay for the thinning.” Both positions contribute to the problem. The necessary prescription at this point is that most of the trees and brush of less than 10” in diameter must be thinned (removed) as well as the huge amount of fuel on the ground (dead material) and all remaining trees limbed up to 16’ feet of hanging dead branches.This eliminates what is referred to as the “fuel ladder,” which transfers the fire from a slow, creeping tidying affair on the ground to a destructive crown fire or fire tornado. The correct prescription will clear the ground, allow diverse species to grow, wildlife to move about, protects and encourages maturing trees, sequestering great amounts of carbon in soil and forest. It encourages genetic diversity which in turn leads to ecosystem stability. The wrong prescription leads to a firestorm which destroys all in its path, releases carbon into the atmosphere, and destroys carbon capturing capability, which is what mature forests do best.
The negative feedback relationship of carbon imbalance feeding climate shift, causing accelerating carbon release (from forest fires, permafrost/polar ice melt methane release, oceanic carbon absorption decline due to temperature rise, etc.) is clearly racing several steps ahead of our detection or understanding. At any given moment our predicament is probably more serious than we know. Every region must manage and restore its carbon balance if we are going to survive. Prior to the recent bark-beetle pine tree die-offs in the central Sierra Nevada, government agencies were becoming aware of the disastrous condition that the last century of upside-down forestry has wrought. Panic had set in with no plan or budget to address it. Climate shift has brought a decade of mild winters allowing beetle populations to thrive unchecked and decimate uncontrollably. The die-offs, the kiln-dry conditions, the choking growth and fuel accumulations are now flaming out of control in an ever-accelerating cycle. Here, as directly as I can put it and based on our documented experience, is how to immediately turn around the situation with maximum benefit to economy and world humanity.
We have to create many small conservation crews.(I will be somewhat specific in some of these descriptions, yet step one is immediate pilot contracts to dial in best hardware and practices for ramping-up of magnitude and then global export of the complete protocol.) Crews will move through the forests with light mechanical back-up. They will be small and many to lighten impact on natural systems and expedite compliance with all environmental restrictions and concerns.Large-tired vehicles and light crawlers minimize disturbance and maximize access. Hand/chainsaw crews maximize employment and decrease reliance on big equipment purchase/maintenance and fuel costs. Combined with small excavator crawler with masticator head and grapples, and a tub grinder, all thick terrains can be thinned and weeded like grandma’s rose bed. Compared to a larger mechanical approach, this crew is trained to encourage maximum species diversity by selecting species to be left growing in optimal density and location. (This benefit alone is huge, compared to the big outlay and high fail rate of replanting efforts after fire, or after major mechanical thinning or logging. A young tree, self seeded, left growing in optimal location is golden. Similarly for species of all kinds. Replanting is expensive and notoriously difficult and unreliable.) Portable pyrolysis or other cogeneration equipment will create virtually endless supplies of renewable green fuel. The crew brings biomass/fuel conversion into the forest; fuel from forestry is chipped and converted onsite. This maximizes value and minimizes transport of raw material.Fuels can be used by project equipment directly or transported in liquid or other form (electricity, even hydrogen has some tantalizing tie-in possibilities) to communities or the nearest grid connection. Although the prescription calls for leaving most maturing trees to grow (since we need to recover our forest canopy for best possible atmospheric carbon absorption and general stability)the crew will include portable mobile dimension sawmill to produce building materials salvaged from the unfathomable quantity of dead trees.
The clean capture of this perpetual source of energy (chipped forest debris harvested on an ongoing basis in perpetuity) can be made into hydrogen on site, in the forest, bagged up and tethered to units of milled lumber or other forest product so as to be lifted and floated (towed along by a little air tractor up there) out of the forest and into town where the lumber builds shelter for the homeless and the hydrogen enters the growing hydrogen stream for fuel cell or vehicular use. Roads in the forest would not be required to move people, equipment or materials. All areas will be safely accessible.Imagine the resource and compliance advantages!
Pyrolysis conversion process yields fuels and also bio-char, a stable and concentrated form of carbon considered valuable (marketable) for farm and forest soils. The hundreds or thousands of crews will also have on-the-spot fire response capability. They will also gather seeds and grow local trees and plants in onsite forest nurseries, planting out as needed to maintain health and diversity. They will work equally through public and private lands. The spread of this substantial crew activity throughout the region (and beyond) will protect and restore our forests and their ability to absorb and sequester carbon while decreasing wildfires and carbon producing petro-based activities of all kinds. It will also produce great volumes of water downstream through processes which are becoming increasingly understood and appreciated. Deliverables clearly would include employment opportunities in labor, training, sciences, education, operators, engineering, transport, energy, water, fuels, infrastructure, building, marketing, services, etc.To immediately finance this WPA-scaled initiative, consider first the current explosive costs of wildfire response and the ultimate losses of economy and human life and of property. Next, look to the billions currently sequestered in the state surplus from the carbon trading program. Add all the income-generating aspects described above (energy, wood products, water, employment, etc.) and then compare with the inconceivable cost of not responding quickly and effectively. The advantages in physical and emotional health from working in the forest are also significant and currently subject to much rediscovery. The goal of having whole segments of our society trained and devoted to sustainable, beneficial interaction with nature for generations into the future cannot be overstated. A pilot program incorporating these methods and dialing in specific activities and hardware will allow the spread of these crews in abundance throughout our forest, our country and the world. We need to do it immediately and show the world how!
We must also recognize that much of the land in most desperate need of thinning for human and natural benefits is oak scrubland with no conventional commercial recovery potential; there is no timber to be harvested or salvaged by common standards. This is foothill country though and peppered with human communities, our most critically vulnerable lands, often virtually impenetrable through abandonment, often former forest lands that never recovered from previous conflagrations, both public and privately owned. Enter the local, well equipped thinning crew with floating pyrolyzer and light equipment capability, cleaning, planting and converting without roads, on a massive scale! There is certainly no time to lose on this initiative.
Finally, a few words about current policy directions which are contraindicated for effective forestry at this time and for greater purposes of human survival:
Open burning of forests was an integral part of forest management and health for tens of thousands of years, prior to the killing and removal of the native forest managers and the removal of the forest canopy (several times). At this point (50 years too late) it is becoming fashionable to assert that the forest has to burn. At this point, in general, the forest does not have to burn.The atmosphere does not need the carbon. The soil doesneed the carbon.If we clean up the forests manually we can pyrolize the material for fuel and retain the carbon and return it to the forest for its chemical benefits. Subsequently, after major fuel reduction, the forests can be burned in safe and limited manner for a variety of benefits.
I still hear people say logging is essential for forest health. Again, the native foresters managed very successfully without it for at least 30 thousand years. (Just think about that for a moment. And in 150 years our extraction and abandonment has levelled a giant forest literally down to bedrock!) There is massive salvage logging and milling opportunity at this time but it should be done locally, on site with mobile mills and local workers for local and regional use primarily. We need not build giant computerized mills and then massively truck material in and out of them and then dispose of the “waste.” More effective, efficient, safe, clean and sustaining to keep it on site and local. Good for the local economy rather than the extractive corporate destruction model that got us here.
Decreasing or otherwise interrupting environmental regulation is also unwise. The corporate model likes to blame environmental regulation (and environmentalists) for the current predicament and devastation, on the grounds that logging and thinning were stopped by regulatory compliance challenges. This is inaccurate. Our non-profit (Musick Creek Confluence) has done the necessary work to thin, salvage and render fireproof our central Sierra acreage entirely under a declaration of negative adverse impact (obviating all environmental compliance concerns.) In the process of doing so we have saved hundreds of additional square miles of private and public forest lands. If you do it wrong (destructive major mechanical model) it causes all manner of havoc. If you do it right (many hand crews with light mechanical component) compliance is cheap and easy and the benefits to economy, substrate, wildlife, forest and human communities are exponential.
As Robin Kimmerer points out in Braiding Sweetgrass, “Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.” And I would add, for us humans as well.
Jem Bluestein is a forester and musician. Thanks for reading, and please contact me with your questions/response. Jem.bl...@gmail.com 559 765 1909
"All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice." - Joy Harjo from "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky"
Jim Michael
I sent this message earlier this month, but it is not clear whether it was distributed. Trying again! My apologies if you get this twice!