The occasional early morning frost, not a trace of humidity, and temperatures that now struggle to reach seventy degrees can mean only one thing. Autumn is finally here. After dealing with a brutally hot and wet summer, these beautiful days are a great change of pace. Leaves are filling with color rapidly now as flocks of geese and ducks are starting to move into lakes and ponds that haven’t seen them in quite some time.
This fall HRF is busily working away at some really great projects. Two mechanical shearing projects have been focused on the removal and hopeful eradication of eastern red cedar, honey locust, and Russian olive. Countless hours were spent behind the controls of a compact track loader equipped with HRF’s tree shear and then with the grapple attachment. This woody vegetation was cut, sprayed (aside from the cedar), and piled for later consumption using prescribed fire. The main goal of these projects is to open up these natural areas, return fire to the equation, and hopefully over time help restore these properties to native prairie.
The end of October and early November has Hickory Ridge Forestry at Hitchcock Nature Center near Honey Creek, IA for a very nice savanna restoration project followed by some timber stand improvement. HRF is proud and honored to be a part of the amazing restoration, reclamation, and renovation of this incredible landscape. The loess hills in western Iowa are unique, but the intensive management that is occurring at Hitchcock is creating a large site unlike anything in the hills. It will be incredible to watch the land evolve as more conservation efforts take place to restore the sensitive landscape back to a high quality healthy state.