After the fire - developing an action plan for a patch of burned forest in Portugal

Burra Maluca wrote: Pacing my self is so hard, and it seems that the more I look forward to doing something, the more I burn out in anticipation. Which sucks. I need to keep calm, not plan too thoroughly, and grab opportunities as they arise without getting too emotionally attached to doing certain things on certain days. It's not always easy...

I hear you! It really is *not* easy and keeping flexibility in your planning and *not* feeling guilty when something doesn't get done on schedule is really important for both your mental and physical health.

Please keep celebrating and reporting on what you *do* get done - so we can cheer you on, but please don't let our enthusiasm add stress to your need to look after yourself, pace yourself, and accept that you will get there, one acorn at a time!

Do consider your long term plans and whether some simple things like sticking a ladder up against an embankment to make it easier and safer to get to the top, would make those plans easier to accomplish. Any sorts of simple tricks that would make the job easier, like your planting dibbler, are worth doing, as they may take time up front, but make the job easier.

Jay Angler wrote:

Do consider your long term plans and whether some simple things like sticking a ladder up against an embankment to make it easier and safer to get to the top, would make those plans easier to accomplish.

Ah, well actually this whole place was designed with such things in mind. That terrace wall was cut out leaving a slope at the very end, next to the ravine, which you can walk up. I'll post some photos...



I mean, it's still steep and feels like I'm off on an adventure, but it's walkable!

Here's another photo, taken on a brighter day, without the olive tree in the way but with a better view of the ravine. Which is awesome.



I love this photo - just about to step into the actual forest bit, planting stick in hand.



It reminds me of an ancient Welsh poem Cad Goddeu, usually called Battle of the Trees. I've never studied it properly and many people have come up with completely different interpretations of what it's all about. But I've always thought it's something to do with the order of regeneration of a forest. The first in the fray, at the front of the line, is Alder. Which I find doubly amusing as I have a sprig of alder tattooed on my shoulder in memory of my husband. So marching up here with the planting stick feels like enacting an ancient 'battle of the trees' so they can reclaim their land.



More to follow - I think I need to break this into bite-sized pieces so I don't overload of lose track of everything...

The next time we went up, it was to plant chestnuts and walnuts in the lower part of the forest.

The chestnuts are a long shot as all the chestnuts on this side of the mountain were wiped out by blight nearly a hundred years ago. All, that is, except two. I found two lone survivors, beautiful big trees, which managed to scrounge a big bag of chestnuts from. Now it might be that the blight never reached that spot, or it might be that they are resistant. But I figure the only way to find out is to plant some seed and see what happens.

On the way up, we passed this strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, bursting back into life. They don't get a mention in the Battle of the Trees poem, but then they're not really a Welsh plant. I believe there are some in Ireland though. Something to do with relics pushed westwards by glaciers if my memory serves me correctly.



There are some burned out young pines that we don't really want so we are cutting some of them down then using 2ft lengths on contour to act as silt traps and mini nurse logs to plant behind. I'd persuaded my other half to bring the little battery chainsaw with us.

The line of the access track is visible going across near the top of the photo.



Mini nurse logs laid roughly on contour.

We put a chestnut and a walnut behind each one.

The chances of both growing are pretty minimal so if we end up having to thin things out it will be an awesome problem to have to solve.
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Ha - anyone read "The Man Who Planted Trees"?



We stumbled on a great big hole.

We've seen smaller ones that we couldn't decide if they were sink holes or where trees had completely burned out. But this one is definitely where a tree has burned out.

Also a great shot of the planting stick!



We couldn't pass by the perfect opportunity to re-use a good planting hole, so we dropped a couple of walnuts and a couple of chestnuts in and covered them up a bit.

Not much lost by trying!

The access track comes into our bit of forest half way up, through someone else's bit. It's cut into the rock like a little terrace and means that in theory we can get the tractor in.

The boys tried with the old blue tractor but it really wasn't safe and they gave up. The new one should be much more likely to succeed. I suspect they will try soon. I still haven't told you all about the saga of the tractor. Maybe soon...



From the access track it does look as though those pretty rocks ARE on our bit.

I'm crazy happy about this.

I have rowan berries ready to plant there next time we go up. For now I'm completely exhausted, even though Austin has been doing almost everything, and need to head back down.



That seems to be another oak bursting back into life just below the access track.

You can just make out some small terraces cut into the higher bit of forest here.

Not sure if this is from when pines were originally planted, or if they are much older and go back to when there were vines up here.



I spotted a round pottery thing in the path and suspected it might be an old lost pine resin collecting thing.

I tried to dig it out with my fingers, and then with a bit of rock, and then with the point of the planting stick. But to no avail.

Must remember to take my hori hori with me next time...

The next time we went up, I had two main aims in mind.

First, to excavate that bit of pottery. And second, to reach those rocks!

We left the planting stick behind because I wanted to concentrate on getting up as high as possible, but we took the hori hori with us and I snuck some sweet acorns into my bag. Just in case...

We found the bit of pottery, and Austin started to dig it out while I took a quick video.

 https://youtube.com/shorts/YudNei5f1Ko?si=nNdD9-rOIQoFFKqE  

It took longer than we expected, so I went to sit down to try to get my breath back. After a few minutes he turned up with a rather old but intact resin collecting pot!

I'm so happy about this.

There was one in the house when we bought it and I was devastated when we managed to break it. Finding an intact one buried on the land is just perfect.



I decided to forge ahead, onwards and upwards, and finally Rock and I made it to the rocky bit!



Always did have a soft spot for rocks...



We're still not certain if this is the top boundary of our land or not. But there is a sort of path crossing the top of the ravine here, so this might be the boundary. Then we own a very narrow strip just along the top of the ravine down the other side.

I threw a load of rowan berries all around this area. I have a thing about rocky bits of mountain with rowans growing all around them. Memories of all those years living in Wales I guess.

"The alder at the front line foraged first.
Then, late for the fray,
came the willow and the rowan-tree."



That bit looks fascinating too. Though I suspect not ours.



I wonder how the trees got that curly...



View down the ravine.



Rock, with Rock for scale.



Not certain what that is...



I needed another breather by now, so Austin got busy with the acorns and the hori hori.



I'm into forests. Austin is a trainspotter.

This video pretty well sums up why we love this place so much...



Broom starting to grow back.

"bracken's swell, broom heading for battle
in the furrows of wounding."



Another pine-resin collecting pot. Broken, unfortunately.



There's a patch of eucalyptus up there. Again, probably not ours but not absolutely certain.

It's busy bursting into life.

If that patch is ours I think it gets removed!

"I pierced a scaly monster.
A hundred heads it had"



And then we headed back down, exhausted. And with black stripes all over our arms where we'd been pushing through the burned trees, and clutching the resin pot. Which I brushed clean a bit and filled with tree seeds that need planting.



And then we stopped planting for a while as heavy rains were due. Time to rest a bit and write the adventures up!

Well the rains came.

We were warned that after a fire there are often floods, which had proved to be the case. And we knew about all the silt washing down and clogging the place up. We'd even attempted to use nurse logs to catch the silt and provide shelter to some of the seeds we'd been planting.

But there was one aspect we'd never even thought of.

The railway.

Our track passes under the railway bridge, and after this spell of rain came, we noticed that a load of stones had appeared under the railway bridge. On closer inspection, they looked very like railway ballast. So Austin climbed up to have a look.

And found this...



A big hole just before the bridge, a load of gaps where the ballast that supports the rails had washed away, and another hole by the side of the bridge.



It seems as though the drains that carry water under the railway had blocked and water had been gushing along the line, found a way to escape down the side of the bridge, and been busy washing the ballast along, down the hole, and dumping it on our track instead.







The problem seemed to stem from around this area, where water was draining and dropping a load of silt off and changing the water flow.



We were somewhat freaked out by all this and I pushed myself through my near total phobia of phones and called the helpline for the Portuguese Railways to attempt to inform them. Unfortunately I went into a bit of a panic, forgot almost all my Portuguese words, and got someone who seemed more used to dealing with avoiding issuing ticket refunds than responding to pleas of "STOP THE TRAINS!!!". She did, however, pass my message on to a different company who deal with Infrastructures of Portugal, and a much more clued up man phoned me back (yes, by now I'm close to a total sensory overwhelm and freaking out because another train just went by so the trains had obviously NOT been stopped!) and seemed to think I wanted to report rocks on the track. At this point I realised that I simply did not have the words to say that the culverts were blocked with silt because of the floods after the fire and the water had diverted itself along the track and had washed out a load of ballast from under the rails. I managed to mention floods, water, rain, blocked drains, and all-the-little-stones-have-run-away. Then I got completely frustrated because he didn't seem to understand the system of markers on the railway and I kept giving him a number he didn't seem to understand. But he did stop the trains and send someone out have a look.

A man with a shiny coat and a blue umbrella was left on guard duty. He seemed a bit nervous of me and I suspect he'd been told about the angry sounding English woman, but he decided to stop the heavy trains but let lighter ones pass very very slowly until they could sort something out. He also showed me the numbers painted on the electric catenary poles which are the current system of giving precise location. I'd used the outdated one, because the old concrete posts are still in place and there was one right next to the hole so I'd used that. No wonder the poor man in the office couldn't understand me...



By nightfall, this poor man was sitting outside on a little camping stool with his umbrella and a flashlight, studying each train as it went past at a snail's pace, and presumably deciding each time if it was going to be safe to allow the next one through.

Shortly afterwards, when I was tucked up in bed, more vehicles arrived and a team of men with shovels and helmet lights appeared making noises as though they were shovelling up gravel. Then a big machine that sounded like a giant vacuum cleaner. And eventually they all went home again. By morning the passenger trains were running again.

This photo was taken in the same place that we thought was the origin of the problem. It seems that there was a drain right there but it was silted up and tons of silt deposited on top of it.



They'd filled in that hole as best they could, replaced the missing ballast from under the railway sleepers, and put a speed limit in place.



The next morning I received a phone call (aaaargghhhh! that's three in as many days!!! my poor nerves...) thanking me for contacting them, and praising me for explaining the problem so accurately and identifying the location so well.

and then a team of men appeared on the track and I went out to see what was happening. And, being me, I managed to scrounge the old abandoned level crossing sign so I can paint it up and have it as a souvenir.

I know this post isn't much about forests or permaculture. But it does illustrate how things are connected. And how it pays to see the interconnections between systems.

Burra Maluca wrote:

We put a chestnut and a walnut behind each one.
The chances of both growing are pretty minimal so if we end up having to thin things out it will be an awesome problem to have to solve.

Even if they just start to grow and don't make it, any roots they put down will help prepare the soil for future trees. Maybe the chestnut will be resistant to the blight and you will have a difficult decision to make, but that could be years from now!

The picture there looks like water has been washing down there - will that be a problem?

Good job on getting someone out to the tracks *before* a train got hurt (not to mention any people on the train). My husband occasionally goes down to the US to help as a volunteer with a railway museum. The area got the remnants of the hurricane that hit southern California and they had a number of washouts on their track that had to get fixed before any trains could be run.

Hi Burra, have you thought of Medrohnos strawberry trees, they are good fire retardant barriers. They also grow back easy. Im about to take out many and the root stock is what you want to plant. If interested let me know. Best of love on the recovery, its never easy

Larry Miranda wrote: have you thought of Medrohnos strawberry trees, they are good fire retardant barriers. They also grow back easy.

The really silly thing is that I have a nice young medronho on the terrace up behind the house and I was all set to take a load of cuttings from it for planting out and for giving to people to replant after fires.

And then it burned...



The irony was almost painful!

It is, however, putting out a load of new shoots from the base and I will probably end up snipping a load of them off as cuttings. I do have a couple of other young ones in pots to go out. And I'm also finding them up in the burned out forest area as they are indeed ones that grow back easily after a fire. This is a lovely big one above the silted up watermine at the very edge of the forest.



And it looks like there are more appearing almost spontaneously up there. I suspect my job will be to put seed down and then manage things to allow things I want to grow, like medronho strawberry trees and oaks and chestnuts and whatever else shows up that looks good, then allow enough bracken to grow to act as a bit of a cover crop, and then remove surplus pines and the cistus that tends to take over absolutely everything. I don't expect it to be easy, but I think it will be fun and very much worthwhile.

Thats the beauty of medronhos, just cut it right back to the base it will grow right back. Fruits take time but its pretty all stages. I heard best way to be productive is to take root stalk. There are other ways but thats the best way.

Time for an update!

One thing that became apparent during the fire was that we had minimal means to put fires out behind the house, because the water mine is on the same level as that terrace so there is no way to gravity feed water from it.

We decided that something needed to be done, ideally not involving having to pump water as very often the electricity supply goes down during a fire.

So, after consultation with the neighbours, we have a solution!

One 1000 litre (250-ish gallon...) water tank, in black to reduce growth of algae, placed on the terrace ABOVE the water mine.



That terrace isn't ours but we do own the terrace wall and a narrow (metre?) strip along the very edge. We do, however, have the most awesome neighbours on the planet and they told us we could set it a bit further back than that so it would be secure, and also that they could use their water system to fill it up for us as needed. The idea is to keep it full and only use it in an emergency, flushing it out and changing the water maybe once a year.  

Austin bought some fittings for it, and we cobbled together enough bits of pipe to rig up a tap that is easily accessible.

Here's a bit of pipe that got itself mangled somehow and was donated to the project.



We ran the pipe down the terrace wall and along to a post fitted with a tap. Maybe one day we'll bury the pipe too, but for now at least it's there and usable in case of emergency.



Austin said...

If we find another IBC tank going cheap, we might add a second one. The point is to have water immediately available and not reliant on mains power, as that can get killed by the fire too.

I will get and fit a 25m delivery hose to the newly installed tap which will reach around the back side of the house and along that terrace quite a way. Might manage to bury the pipe that leads to the tap but that will be easier after it rains.

If I enlarge that last photo, you can see the bit of forest we own, roughly the bit edged in green.



That bit of land had been cleared of pines about a decade before we bought it but never officially replanted or managed since then. There were a lot of young pines, which burned in the fire, but also more than usual cork oak, which is growing back nicely. Our patch does look a bit greener than most of the surrounding forest. Which I think is very encouraging.

Time to haul ourselves up there for a proper look I think. Watch this space...

We managed to get ourselves together enough to go for a morning walk up the mountain to see how things are recovering.

The path up by the ravine is very overgrown with bracken. And brambles.

The wild boar have been using it though, so there's a sort of pig-sized tunnel along it which makes it much easier than it would otherwise be to navigate. Still not terribly easy though...



Not quite so apocalyptic as some of the photos I took up here last year.



This is our dear little apricot tree that was burned. It has grown back from the roots until it's as tall as Austin.

Which is quite impressive!

This is a STUN tree, grown from seed saved an apricot grown at my last place. It gets zero care whatsoever.

There may be more growing along the terrace but today we want to go right up into the forest, what's left of it, to see what's happening up there.



Dead pine trees, and a regenerating oak tree.



Signs of life in an old cork oak.

Not so much on the pine. Even the bark is beginning to fall away.

I think harvesting some for firewood is in order.



Aha - a new baby pine tree!

I was hoping for signs of baby oak and chestnut and some of other things we'd sown seeds of up there. But we got pine...



On the slope in the distance it's very easy to see the oaks bursting back into life.

The eucalyptus in the foreground is busy re-growing too.



In the foreground is the burned remains of a young oak, which is busy re-growing from the base.

In the background is a stand of eucalyptus, which I don't believe are ours but we aren't quite sure, which are all growing from the base. Nasty, inflammable stuff...

We really must find the legal boundaries so we know for sure what we can get rid of and what we have no control over.



The medronho (strawberry tree) is growing back brilliantly.



I really should know what that plant is.

Only I don't...

Impressive looking thing whatever it is, growing up above the top water mine.



View down to the valley below.



Fig tree busy regenerating.



I was hoping to spot some seedlings from the seeds we planted last year, but the undergrowth is a bit dense to be able to tell.

Oh well, just give it time and see what happens.



The light was all wrong so it's difficult to make out, but that black thing is one of the little nurse logs we put down, with a chestnut and walnut seed planted behind it.

No sign of any baby tree, and the water washed right underneath the nurse log making a little channel, so we probably lost the seed and have also failed to capture any silt as it washed away underneath.

So that one was a bit of a fail...



This one at least managed to capture a bit of the silt that would otherwise have washed down the mountain.

No sign of baby trees there though.



Plenty of dead standing wood still up there for us to collect for the rocket mass heater.

Even if it is a bit sooty still...



Lots of dead pine to harvest.

Lots of oak regenerating in the background.



A baby eucalyptus.

Just what we need...



Eucalyptus.

Dead at the top, all bushy and green and highly flammable at the bottom...



The bark on those cork-oaks looks rather sooty still.



A strawberry tree, regenerating well.



This is somewhere around the boundary of our land. There's a fairly distinct line beyond which there are more mature pine trees.

Really must figure out exactly where all the boundaries are one day...



Lots of live oak, and dead pine.



Heading back down, the 'easy' way.

Off our property now, but the track is at least relatively well defined here.



So that's the current state of it all up there. I have no idea how many of the seeds I planted have begun to grow, but I think all we can do is wait to see if anything gradually emerges out of the undergrowth. And hopefully we can get up there often enough to keep a few paths clear, which doesn't seem especially likely but it will give me something to aim at.  

More updates in a few months. Unless there is anything of interest to report before that. Maybe I'll get up there again and scour the top terrace for signs of prickly pear or more apricot trees.

Good things growing back... and bad things which might be worth whacking down as mulch when you feel you can?

I read an interesting book about how forests recover from fire, and one thing the fellow was really clear about was how important it is to leave as many standing dead trees as you can. They are critical for insects and birds and diversity, so if you're cutting firewood, I'd focus on the non-native trees before the native ones if you can.

I'm glad, but not terribly surprised at your neighbour's cooperativeness. I'm betting that fire scared everyone, and knowing there's some water at hand to put out a small fire before it gets bigger, or try to redirect the fire away from the most valuable assets, might end up helping them as much as you! Yes, a second IBC would be good. It takes a lot of water to slow down a serious fire.

Jay Angler wrote:I'm glad, but not terribly surprised at your neighbour's cooperativeness. I'm betting that fire scared everyone, and knowing there's some water at hand to put out a small fire before it gets bigger, or try to redirect the fire away from the most valuable assets, might end up helping them as much as you! Yes, a second IBC would be good. It takes a lot of water to slow down a serious fire.

He was raised somewhere very rural and 'basic' and told me straight out once that he was raised to believe that it was vital to always help your neighbours because you never know when your life may depend on them.  He has also shown up every single time there has been a major construction job going on that needs lots of hands, and helped us lifting roof sheets or whatever was needed. And any time there has been any sort of emergency he has gladly stepped up to help. In return I think we've rescued his wife once when their vehicle broke down, and we feed the cat if they go away. Everyone was working side by side fighting the fire though - that was a major undertaking. Except for me, I was working below the house with a watering can while everyone else was working with hose pipes up above where the worst fire was. My son's place was closer to the source of the fire and there were helicopters working on that one.

I was surprised how effective a watering can with a rose was to put out smaller outbreaks. I had rushed out to dampen the area around the house down, grabbed the hose pipe and used it to put out one outbreak, then Austin got back when the fire hit someone's fuel stash and went ballistic (literally shooting burning embers up which were blowing downwind), took the hosepipe off me to fight behind the house, and left me with a watering can putting out small outbreaks in my garden as they happened. The firefighters showed up soon each with a backpack of water and a spray gun and it was amazing how effective that was if you could catch them fast enough, but there were simply too many outbreaks to put all of them out like that. It saved our house and my neighbours' house though, even if helicopters were needed to save my son's.

I read an interesting book about how forests recover from fire, and one thing the fellow was really clear about was how important it is to leave as many standing dead trees as you can. They are critical for insects and birds and diversity, so if you're cutting firewood, I'd focus on the non-native trees before the native ones if you can.

We will certainly take the eucalyptus before anything else, and then harvest just enough to keep the rocket mass heater fed. And let's face it, this is Portugal not Montana and it should be possible to keep warm without denuding acres of burned out forest! At the moment there are still plenty to harvest from near my son's house, which would certainly be better cleared for fire safety.

We have noticed that there have been very few owls around this year.

Do you know the name of the book? I suspect I should probably read it...

Burra Maluca wrote: Do you know the name of the book? I suspect I should probably read it...

Smokescreen : debunking wildfire myths to save our forests and our climate  by Chad T. Hanson.

It was available in our public library, but I don't know if libraries near you have English books. It may be available in an electronic version, but I'm old-school!

The book is very USA-centric due to some of their laws and policies, but underlying those are, as often is, greed for money, which isn't always what's best for the planet, and is by no means isolated to that one country. We are all told that "tree planting is good" - but the truth isn't that simple! What tree, where tree, alone or with friends tree - all those subtle aspects matter hugely.

In far too many countries, "forests" are too often monoculture plantations to make money. Our planet needs more *real* forests, such as the Miyaki Method promotes, but even food forests are an improvement as they are usually grown as polycultures along with plants that support both the trees, and all the other creatures from reptiles to insects and beyond.