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Building a One-Woman (or Man) Defensible Space 

by Carol Rawle

 In 1995, I started building my home on the Santa Fe Trail Ranch and the first thing I bought was a chain saw. I came fresh from a desert environment, and believe me, the desert can and does burn, but what I saw surrounding my house, while charming me, scared the daylights out of me.

 My home site is on a south-facing slope, and it’s covered in highly flammable juniper, pinion, and scrub oak, and it was growing right up to the building site. It was so thick, the deer had trouble moving through it, let alone a person. The prevailing wind is also out of the south, and it doesn’t take much imagination to understand how fast it could push a wildfire up that slope toward my house.

 So, while the contractor was building my house, I got busy with my long-handled loppers and my chain saw. I tackled the scrub oak closest to the house first. Mindful that the over-reaching goal was to create a fire break, I also wanted to see what sort of landscaping was inside all that homely gambel oak brush. Having small goals inside the larger goal kept me focused and from feeling overwhelmed. 

 It was slow-going. What did I expect? I was just one woman with a chain saw and a lopper. But after the first year, I’d managed to beat back the wilderness 100 feet on the dangerous south slope and 50 feet on the other three sides. And I’d created areas of landscaping, such as it was. I “built” a meadow by removing wall-to-wall oak brush and small junipers and pinions. I surrounded my meadow with family groupings of larger junipers by thinning and limbing them. In other words, I had cleared space, but still had islands of trees and shade. 

 I’m murder on oak brush. Some people like to leave some - I take it all out. It’s a big mountain - let it go live somewhere else. But I do leave the mahagony shrubs, strategically thinned and scattered around for my deer friends to eat. And they really do appreciate my efforts. They visit every single day, and I know it’s because it’s now easy for them to move around. They can see if a predator is trying to sneak up on them, and where there was once only oak, there’s now a meadow full of grass to eat.  

So over the years I persevered, whittling away at the dense undergrowth, limbing up trees, and getting a little bolder each year about removing trees. Sometimes I go back to previously thinned areas and take out another tree here and there. The oak regrowth was a huge challenge. If I didn’t keep it beat back, the oak would come back just as thick in just a few short years. I didn’t have the income for a big, sexy mowing machine, but I did understand herbicide.

Sunlight reaches the forest floor at Carol's property allowing grasses and forbes to thrive, which in turn provides great wildlife forage.

I spent my entire park ranger career challenging one invasive weed problem after another. At one park it was French broom, at another it was poison oak, and one of the worst was salt cedar. However, the right herbicide approach tamed them all. But I can honestly say I met my match when I encountered this stubborn, ubiquitous, devious, diabolical, and demonic gambel oak that we have here.

 It’s taken me thirteen years of persistance and cunning to finally arrive at an approach that works. The simplest is to just mow it -  if you have a few thousand dollars to buy a brush mower. Repeated mowing deprives the roots of nutrients and after several years, it’ll become quite docile. But not only couldn’t I afford a machine, I’m not quite large enough to be able to control one on these uneven slopes. So I experimented with herbicides. I even studied and took the test to get my county restricted use pesticide applicators license so I could legally buy and use the really, really nasty stuff. But all that got me was dead pinions. The oak just laughed at the highly toxic stuff and kept right on growing.

 Then I stumbled on a potent cocktail, the ingredients which anyone can buy over the counter, mix up and use. To two gallons of water in a pump sprayer, add five ounces of Roundup, three ounces of 2-4D, about half a quart of diesel fuel, and a couple squirts of Dawn dertergent. Shake well, and keep shaking everytime you pump the sprayer. Evenly wet the emergent oak leaves just after it’s turned from it’s rose color to green in spring, and spray again in late summer or the fall any regrowth before the nights get down to freezing. 

 If you’re dealing with large-diameter gambel oak, you can chain- saw it down, dig down a few inches and expose the “elbow”, take an ax and chop part-way or completely through it. Then paint or spray herbicide on the fresh cut at a 25/25/50 ratio of Roundup/2-4D/water. I keep a batch mixed up in a small spray bottle and treat as I clear. I am pleased to say there’s very little regrowth with this method. But don’t bother after the oak goes dormant in the fall and winter. It won’t phase it.

After twelve years of lopping, chain-sawing, thinning and limbing, I still hadn’t adequately been able to tackle the large south slope below my house that never stopped giving me wildfire nightmares. Not only did I not have the money for a big sexy mower, I also didn’t have money to buy an ATV to help me drag material up the long, steep slope, and I had got about as far down as I could, physically dragging the stuff up. 

 Then last year a miracle happened. A wonderful machine called a bull-hog came on the ranch and started clearing small chunks of acreage for people. I liked what it did. It worked “neat”. Not like the hydro-ax of the year before, that left huge, ragged chunks lying around. But the real “miracle” was that there was government grant money available to help property owners with the expense.

 Dave Skogberg and Diana Novacek have been working closely with CK Morey for going on three years now to get grant money for large thinning projects on the perimeter of the Santa Fe Trail Ranch. But there is also money becoming available to individual property owners to help pay for thinning.

 The most amazing thing was to discover that many of those hours I spent the previous year lopping and chain-sawing and dragging brush and chipping it could be cashed in as “in-kind”. I hadn’t kept track, but I could pretty much recall how many hours I spent each day over the spring and summer limbing and thinning and removing scrub oak. I tallied it all up and was surprised to see how much I was worth. My labor was $17.55/hr.

My chain saw worked at $4/hr. If I had any big machines like mowers, tractors or commercial chippers, they would have worked from $25/hr to $40/hr. This is all considered “in-kind” and it can be applied in lieu of matching funds toward a grant.

 So that was how I was able to afford to finally get that murderous south slope cleared. That was last June. The bull-hog did a marvelous job, but I still needed to go back and limb up trees and clear out brush from under trees, and gather up the larger debris that the machine didn’t shred.

 The final result is a beautiful, park-like slope, with nicely spaced tree groups, and no flammable understory. If a wildfire comes galloping up that slope, there is nothing to support either a ground fire or a crown fire. And the best thing of all - it was  accomplished in a day what would have taken me a couple of years and untold physical effort.

 Dave Skogberg is currently working on securing grants for this year and next year. These grants will fund both the continuing shaded fuel break thinning project around the perimeter of the ranch as well as smaller amounts of money to be given to individual property owners for their own thinning projects.

 In order to meet the requirements of matching funds to qualify for the grants, Dave needs all of us to tally up the hours we’ve worked clearing around our homes since last spring. It’s all “money in the bank” and, added up, will be used in lieu of actual money as the matching funds. At $17.55/hr, it turns out those hours you spent lopping away at scrub oak add up to quite a lot of money. It will help fund the large fuel breaks that will protect our ranch from catastrophic wildfire. And in turn, it may help you qualify for some grant money of your own to pull off your own small miracle.

 

Wildland Fire Preparedness

by Dave Skogberg

As a property owner, the responsibility for wildland fire preparation is yours and yours alone.  It is not the federal government’s responsibility (FEMA or the United States Forest Service).  It is not the state or local governments’ responsibility (Colorado State Forest Service, the local Fisher’s Peak Fire Protection District or even SFTR Forest Health/Wildfire Mitigation Committee).  All of these departments and agencies, as well as others, are there to help you and can provide you with some level of assistance – either technical or financial – in your endeavor to prepare yourself and your property for a fire event.  One of the primary goals of the Forest Health/Wildfire Mitigation Committee (FH/WMC) is to help you learn what you can do and how to get assistance, but the ultimate responsibility is yours.

So, if the responsibility is mine, what do I do and where do I start?

 This is a four-part process (at least):

EDUCATION  --  DO YOUR HOMEWORK!  Learn about what can be done.  For a more comprehensive evaluation, each property owner should refer to the “FireWise” educational materials provide by the National Interagency Wildland/Urban Interface Fire Program (http://www.firewise.org/) and the Colorado State Forest Service (http://www.firewise.org/co/). Both sites provide techniques to help you better prepare your property for a wildfire event.

 

The following links provide information on several pertinent topics. (The first takes awhile to download but is worth the effort; the others are smaller documents):

Site Selection, Building Design and Materials  --  http://www.firewise.org/co/construction.html

Defensible Space around Structures  --  http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06302.pdf

FireWise Landscaping  --  http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06303.pdf

FireWise Plants  --  http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06305.pdf

Evaluation List  --  http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06304.pdf

This is a very brief list of some of the information available; please take the time to explore these websites for more information.

 

IMPLEMENTATION  --  DO THE WORK!! After learning about “FireWise” apply the knowledge that applies to your land, your structures and your goals and priorities. 

 

Develop a plan for your property. Remember, all of our properties are different and what works for your neighbor may not be appropriate for you.  Think about

1) what you want to remove –  amount of trees, understory and slash;

2) how are you going to remove it – hand cutting, mechanical work, etc.;

3) how much material do you want to take off the land and in what form will it be removed – saw logs, firewood, small diameter post & pole material, slash and chips;

4) what this will cost vs. what materials are to be left on the land;

5) how do you want the finished land to look; and

6) how much finish work is required to achieve your final goal. 

Share your plan and get input from others – they may see things you have overlooked. 

 

Technical and financial assistance may be available to help you with your project. Check with the FH/WM committee –  maybe we can put you in touch with the right people. 

Financial assistance may well require plan approval by a professional associated with the granting agency.  Be prepared to discuss your plan and modify it appropriately. 

Find contractors to help with your project. Again, the FH/WM committee may be able to help.

GO OUT AND GET ‘ER DONE

Please, share your experiences with others.  New information about contractors, new or different techniques, or sources of technical or financial assistance may be helpful to others.

EVALUATION  --  DO THE CRITIQUE!!!  A post-project evaluation may be required if you receive financial assistance with your project, and it’s probably not a bad idea even if you don’t.  What went right and wrong with your project?  What would you do differently?

 

maintenance  --  KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!!   Even after completion of your project periodic work is required to keep the brush from re-encroaching on the landscape and choking out the grasses and small plants.  Think about how to re-growth will be removed and how often it will need to be done to maintain the wildfire mitigation effect, the health of the understory, and the desired look of the land.

 

For your consideration:

The Goal is to restore the forest to its historical density with a balance of different tree, shrub and grass species, and a diversity of tree ages.  Remember thinning, limbing, and removal of the dense understory not only makes the forest less prone to catastrophic fire, it improves overall forest vitality by reducing competition for water and nutrients. Remaining plants are healthier and more resistant to infestations of insects and diseases.  These treatments improve wildlife habitat by creating open spaces, and provide for a more ecologically diverse ecosystem – more grasses and small plants will grow where they were previously choked out by the overgrowth of larger vegetation.  Another positive result of thinning and removing understory is that it has been shown to increase the resale value and marketability of the property.

 

While wildfire may cause the loss of your home, a home fire could also cause the loss of your forest and the homes of many of your neighbors.  Do you want to be responsible for such an event?  Investigate how you can lessen these risks.

 

We are all in this together.  We all have our own work to do, but if we plan and work together, the outcome we achieve as a community can be more than the sum of our individual efforts.

 

Dave Skogberg