A lot of people like to talk about planting trees, its really fun, feels good and makes it seem like you are doing something for the planet. We have had a great time doing this too, and when we were getting started, we were probably as gung ho about planting trees as anyone else.
But once you plant them, what do you do next? Unfortunately, in my experience, what happens most of the time to most people is that they forget about them, and they die. Whether by being choked out by 'weeds' or grasses, eaten or stepped on by cows or other animals, or baked in the direct sunlight or dehydrated by drought, tiny trees don't automatically get to level up into a forest. That's not the way nature works.
Adding a long stick or flag as a market can help, especially when the 'weeds' can be taller than the trees by the time you get back around. In this area, a few months ago we ran through here and did an activity called 'platear', which is to clean a collar around the trees. Its slightly faster than cleaning the whole area and keeps the weeds, although they do get tall, off of the trees we have planted.
Its way better than cutting down native trees to plant secondary forest trees, then forgetting about them and letting them die. Its been working for us!
After two days of weedwacking, where I moved ahead once again collaring around the trees, especially the smaller ones - the whole area down by the river is looking really good. We put in a lot of Colombian Pines (Pino Romerón; Retrophyllum rospigliosii) here among other native species. These native pines are classified as a 'vulnerable' species (not quite endangered) and have peanut sized seeds wrapped in fruit that are a favorite for local fauna like bats and squirrels.
We also include other native species, including the local favorite, endangered Andean Walnut (Juglans Neotropica), prized for its beautiful wood.
These beautiful specimens will be starting to climb freely now that they are taller than us!
I can only struggle to put into words, how much this type of work means to us, how wonderful and valuable it can feel to watch your plants grow up, over what was once a wasted grassland filled with invasive bracharia and erosion prone. What amount of money could this be worth? The simple answer is that somethings are worth more than money.
Another fun thing happened, as we worked around saving the world from our very local and very own mountain, we found a new mushroom! I have never seen this type before, and while I don't know if it is new for everyone or new for the world, it is indeed new for me.
We found this coming out of a berm that I had built up, by piling up branches and biomass rubbish for about two years, I stopped stacking there almost 2 years ago now and it has become a bit of a garden bed. Now it has this very interesting mushroom coming up, two fruits on this side and one on the other side of the berm.
How cool!
I know that most of my value in the last few years has come from my fund management, dcity play and other activities involving pushing tokens around better than other participants, working around the farm has been a great joy lately, our plant and our land is maturing, and much of the work we have put in over the last 10 years seems to be really paying off.
Its fun, fulfilling, and someday soon may even be quite profitable.