J Grey

J Brooks wrote:

Rufus Laggren wrote: Do we have any substantial records of how past people used it over long periods of time?  

The book Sproutlands (Logan, 2019, https://www.amazon.com/Sprout-Lands-Tending-Endless-Trees-dp-0393609413/dp/0393609413 ) has a chapter, "Making Good Sticks", on the extensive use of fire by native Californians.  Through "fire coppicing", they burned patches every one to five years.  This created fresh green forage, created plenty of straight sucker shoots to harvest and use for baskets and fences and walls, cleared the land for easier movement, and killed oak moth larvae ensconced in felled acorns on the ground.  Presumably also burned ticks and other problems.

Before reading this book, I thought pollarding and coppicing maimed and killed trees.  I still don't like the look, but now I realize these techniques are essential skills, and our world and civilization were created by them.  Coppicing and pollarding were used extensively from neolithic times up until recently.  Actually, the neolithic age, the stone age, is a misnomer: it was the age of wood, but the wood rotted away, leaving the stone tools we found.  Want to have a huge supply of uniformly sized poles and sticks, just right for walls, fences, baskets, kiln fuel, etc.?  Then you want to learn coppicing and pollarding.  These techniques reliably generate mountains of clean, smooth, ready-to-use material.  Longer-term pollarding created building timbers and ship frames.

Brilliant! Bravo!
Very well said.

Coppicing and pollarding are very well known permaculture practices in Europe that have been in use for many millenia. Trees that normally would die in 40-50 years when left untended live for CENTURIES when coppiced and pollarded. The very epitome of sustainability!

Several of the farms I work and teach on are using coppicing and pollarding in their silvopastures here in the Upper MidWest.

Ed Martinaise wrote:We read somewhere that surrounding the area with a 3 ft pile of woodchips would create a barrier against them.

I can say from experience that I've picked dozens of ticks off me and my dog whilst we were in an area that is 6" deep wood chips surrounded by forested prairie. We never left the chips, yet found dozens of ticks on us each day. Therefore seriously doubting that any depth of chips will have any effect on ticks. Good Luck!

Paul Fookes wrote: A bite from a cattle tick has been known to result in an anaphylactic shock when the victim eats red meat and especially beef.  

Sadly we have Alpha-gal here in the USA.