WHERE I HAVE BEEN

For the past 12 days I have been working as a contract inspector for a contract to seed 17,155 acres of land burned in 2012 by wildfires. I struggle a little with uploading photos onto blogger so these are exactly backwards from how I wanted them. I am very happy that the Forest Service still calls me to do these kinds of jobs. I love doing them and really like to see the recovery after a year or two.

In my experience all fires recover. In three to five years most of them are fully recovered and the worst (those that burned the hottest) of them recover in ten years. I am not saying the same type of vegetation will be growing there. What I am saying is that the area will be fully occupied by the roots of the vegetation that is there and the soil erosion will have ended. Where the areas are seeded the recovery is complete in three years and the managers have some choice in what vegetation is growing there.

These projects are very effective and save thousands of tons of sediment from getting into our stream courses.

Photos of the helicopter picking up a load and heading out for the area where it will be spread.

Camera phone shots where you can see the helicopters returning for another load. There are two helicopters in one of the photos but you can't see the second one unless you know exactly where it is. It looked a lot better on the phone.

This is the building where I spent most of my time monitoring the helicopters seeding the areas from flying seeders.

The seeders are like the little hand held seeders you use on your yard to spot plant grass or to fertilize but they hold 400 or 900 pounds (or more) of seed at one time. This will seed from 10-20 acres for the little bucket and 45 to 90 acres with the big bucket. The acres seeded depends on pounds per acre of seed that is to be put on the sites. The buckets are calibrated to spread the desired pounds per acre at a fixed rate of speed. My Grandpa used to tell me all the time that "Nothing is as easy as it appears at first glance." These prop jocks know what they are doing or they would never be successful with these types of projects.

IT IS FUN FOR ME TO PARTICIPATE IN THESE PROJECTS AND I LOVE TO SEE THE RECOVERY A COUPLE OF YEARS DOWN THE ROAD!!! I WOULD PROBABLY DO THIS FOR NOTHING IF THEY ASKED ME TO.