I had this post just about done. And then my web browser locked up. I restarted and the only remnants of my post were from hours before. Thanks, WordPress autosave. Grr.
So, here’s the short version: I wrote about the cultural use of fire by the Native Americans here in the Willamette Valley, about silvopasture, about oak habitat loss, and about how oaks in North America are vital to more species of plants, animals, and fungi that just about any other tree. (All of which you can Google to learn more..)
And I wrote about how oaks had a “mast year” last year, resulting in a massive amount of acorns, and about how we gathered thousands of acorns last fall and planted them for silvopasture after we plowed and replanted the hayfields.
And then I wrote about how we waited and waited and had pretty much given up until Monday when James spotted an oak seedling while we were raking hay you hand due to a fiasco of equipment and weather problems.
Then we found more and more seedlings. It looks like we got about 70% germination. It will take another 5-10 years for them to be as tall as me, and decades more for them to become mature oak trees. It’s a start, though, right?