April is an exciting month as we watch the world come alive while veering between cold, hot, rain, dry, sun and clouds. We have been watching the change in bird life, welcoming red breasted grosbeaks, whip poor wills, phoebes, redstarts, towhees, hummingbirds, chipping and fox sparrows, orioles, obnoxious brown headed cowbirds and many, many others. We have been working harder to identify the “little brown things” and getting better at it. We have also been working on matching songs to birds more than we have in the past. We found that the titmice are quite vocal and one of the loudest and most persistent calls we hear.

Due to a lot of construction in our house, we have not been able to get out in the woods as much as we like. Krystaleigh and I went out and took pictures of our campsites to post on the website that hosts our camping reservations. We found that the vernal pool at the top of the ridge had dried up and the frog eggs there were gone. The next pool further down had water and lots of tadpoles as does the one by the garden near the house. We pulled the trail camera overlooking the old deer carcass which is nothing but bones now. We found that the only pictures over the last month had been of us and David hiking or driving by along with one of our dogs following us. Absolutely no wildlife tripped the camera for a month.

The skunk cabbage is up, the spicebush is in bloom, a fall planting of peas survived the winter in our raised beds and are flowering. We expect the earliest crop of peas ever, though we had not planned it that way. Along the road into the property there are patches of mountain phlox on the bank above the road. We have tried to find a similar flower online with no luck, however we are fairly certain we are looking at mountain phlox there each year. Most of our tree plantings from last year are showing green which is encouraging after the dry summer last year. The paw paws I planted are all doing well and we have more we started from seed last year to put out this year.

The construction we have been enduring besides a lot of plumbing work involved installation, finally, of the floorboards we had made from trees harvested in our golden winged warbler cut and elsewhere on the property. From forest to floor, the lumber we used was never more than 5 miles from our home. The logs were sawed at the local mill on our road. They were dried on our property during the dry summer last year. I hauled them to a local mill to be milled into floorboards and then hauled them back to the house where they were stacked in my garage for most of the winter. We moved them into the house and let them acclimate for a month and then paid some good Amish friends install them. Expecting to have a large amount of loss we only planned to do our entrance hall and living room floor. After they were done, we had enough to do the upstairs hall. After that, we still had enough to do our kitchen. I told Nathan Stoltzfus that he was doing a great job with the loaves and fishes. Though we must still sand and finish the floors, they look great already. We mixed ash, red oak, chestnut oak, walnut, and Chinese chestnut to get a unique look on the floors.

The start of April found me representing PFA in testimony before the PA House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. I was given 4 days to prepare testimony and submit a written version. On April 7th I travelled to Harrisburg where I joined Wes Miller to present live testimony. Norm Steffy and Jon Geyer presented remote testimony. Represented were PA Forest Products Association (Norm and Wes), The PA Hardwood Development Council (Jon) and the PA Forestry Association (myself). We all presented a united front with information on threats to our forests and forest industry, what is going well, programs that need support and the benefits of sustainably well managed forests. I believe we managed to bridge the political divide which was palpable in the room. Our subject and concerns affect everyone and taking care of our forests is something that most people can understand and get behind. Overall, with short notice, we presented a good deal of pertinent information.

PFA itself has been working to further gel plans for the Annual Symposium, move forward the various projects of the Forest Heritage Committee, working on a slate of Board members and officers for the elections this fall, and working on the magazine (look for the spring issue shortly, depending on the mail service). The third video in the Forest Heritage Series has been posted to YouTube and the link is available elsewhere in this newsletter. Tree Farm is working on a strategic plan to chart the future of the program in PA for the next 5 years. There is a lot of work being done to meet our mission to promote the sustainability of our forests.  I thank all the people and committees that work behind the scenes to help move the association forward.

Enjoy the spring weather. Be safe.

Mark Ott