In this episode of Outdoor Journal Radio's Under The Canopy, follow Jerry Ouellette in all things natural and outdoors. Jerry is a chaga mushroom devotee who once held the title of Minister of Natural Resources, and Doug, an expert in forest management hailing from the lush landscapes of Omemee, Ontario. Their narratives weave through laughter and wisdom, offering a profound look into the heart and soul of those whose lives are intimately tied to nature's rhythms.
Our adventure doesn't stop there; we venture into the complex world of forestry, where the delicate dance of sustainability takes center stage. Revel in the tales of Kakabeka Falls' ancient hydroelectric turbines, and grasp the vital responsibilities of a forest plan approver in nurturing our ecosystems. We navigate through sugar bush assessments, the roles of nurse trees, and the secret underground alliances formed within mycological networks, providing a rich tapestry of knowledge for anyone intrigued by the natural world.
Join us, and let the spirit of adventure and wisdom of the wild enrich your soul.
In this episode of Outdoor Journal Radio's Under The Canopy, follow Jerry Ouellette in all things natural and outdoors. Jerry is a chaga mushroom devotee who once held the title of Minister of Natural Resources, and Doug, an expert in forest management hailing from the lush landscapes of Omemee, Ontario. Their narratives weave through laughter and wisdom, offering a profound look into the heart and soul of those whose lives are intimately tied to nature's rhythms.
Our adventure doesn't stop there; we venture into the complex world of forestry, where the delicate dance of sustainability takes center stage. Revel in the tales of Kakabeka Falls' ancient hydroelectric turbines, and grasp the vital responsibilities of a forest plan approver in nurturing our ecosystems. We navigate through sugar bush assessments, the roles of nurse trees, and the secret underground alliances formed within mycological networks, providing a rich tapestry of knowledge for anyone intrigued by the natural world.
Join us, and let the spirit of adventure and wisdom of the wild enrich your soul.
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way. Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 2:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was punching you so confidently you said hey.
Speaker 1:Pat, have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 3:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. Available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe.
Speaker 3:After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Lives under the canopy, all right. Well, doug, whereabouts are you from, doug?
Speaker 3:Well we're based out of Omimi, ontario, in the heart of the Kortha Lakes. I know Omimi A person, john Bell, who did a show with us. He's the president of the Ontario Sporting Dogs Association. His daughter, sharon, and her husband are in Omimi and I'm not sure how well you know Omimi, but they have the monster truck that's on the road leading into Omimi and they operate out there with all the reconstruction and do all their monster truck stuff. Have you ever seen that monster? I don't even know what the name of his monster truck is. Yes, no.
Speaker 4:There's a guy that there's a property when you're coming in from Lindsay on the right. He's got a bunch of different trucks up in the yard. Maybe that's the place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's one of those monster trucks and every year they head down to Vegas to book all their monster truck shows and I guess it's a. I don't know much about that industry, but it's a pretty big show industry where they go all over the provinces and the North America to take these trucks around and have a look, and that's where they operate out of Lindsay, which has a number of claims to fame, right or sorry, Omimi, yeah, so Doug right, what's that Home of Neil Young?
Speaker 3:I was just going to say that. Yeah, exactly, and did you get to the concert?
Speaker 4:My wife did. I had friends who were on the crew and a pal of mine was the artistic director. So right at about an hour before the show he called me up and it was all hush hush in town here and he said he had good news and bad news. Good news he had an extra ticket and that he was that what was going on. And the bad news was they were instructed that they bring their extra ticket had to be a girl because it was all men on the crew. Oh, I see, my wife and I took the kids and went over to the curling center and watched it online there at the curling center.
Speaker 3:Oh, very good. Yeah, that was nice of Neil to do that, and it was a free concert. I know some other people that tried to get in on it when they heard about it, but apparently it was pretty much packed. Yep, yeah, so, doug, you're a forest planner, right? A forest plan approver? Yes, a forest plan approver. So what is a forest plan approver? What is that?
Speaker 4:Under the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program, an MFPA, a Managed Forest Plan Approver. Essentially, we are a professional in the discipline around forestry, ecology and all those related disciplines. So you don't have to be an RPF to be a forest plan approver. You just have to have knowledge and experience in setting up a management plan for a forest.
Speaker 3:So what's an RPF? Just so people know who are listening to the podcast.
Speaker 4:Those are people actually who focus their studies on the specifics of forestry, silviculture, dendrology, so a very specific forestry industry.
Speaker 3:So RPF stands for registered professional forester okay, just making sure that uh people out there understand what we're talking about. So so basically, you what? What sort of things do you do in your occupation, then, doug?
Speaker 4:um, I well, I studied at the same school that people would be studying forestry at sir samford fleming college and uh, right, I need uh terrain and water resources. So it was focused on all the different aspects of ecology uh, which includes biology, forestry, fisheries and all that stuff um so soil and water and the relationships between everything. So managing my understanding the landscape and, I guess, the beginning of how to manage it, that's what I kind of ended up doing.
Speaker 3:So how did you? How did you just? You just had a passion to do this.
Speaker 4:I was. When I was young I was a landscaper and went tree planting and after I came back from tree planting and getting into some landscape work and stuff like that and some stonemasonry work, I acquired a passion just for nature, camping, survival skills, plants and animals and stuff and was taking some uh night courses at the local schools and colleges in the evening, just in regards to plant id, tree id. And then a friend of mine had gone up to fleming in september and he came back on his october break and he's like you got to check out this place. This is like what you've been doing on your own, trying to figure out, but in a more, you know, academic, professional setting. I never even heard of the school at the time. That that was uh fall of 1999 and uh, by december I was signed up, had a student loan set up and I rented a cottage up there and was gone so you did some tree planting.
Speaker 3:Was that with the ministry you did?
Speaker 4:uh no, it was through private company um the ministry, like the old 80s ministry planting programs. They've been gone for a long time, um, but it was through a company I planted out of cacabeca falls, outside of thunder bay, with a tiny little small fly-by-night company, apparently so yeah.
Speaker 3:So a little thing about cacabeca falls. If you're ever at the falls again and anybody listening to the podcast, if you go to, if you're at cacabeca falls, you can see the spirit of the falls and this is going to sound really weird until you do it and it's just like you'll go oh my god, how did that happen? Okay, so you know, when you're standing at the rails looking at the falls, when you pull into the parking lot of cacabaca falls, do you know what I'm talking about? Doug? Yep, okay, so if and the falls are to the right, if you look and stare at the falls for at least 60 seconds and just go into a complete stare and, after a minimum of 60 seconds, look to the left and you'll see this unbelievable thing. That's just like this spirit coming out of the rocks and it's so strange and hard to explain, but it's just the way it operates and it is rather phenomenal to see. But Kekabeka Falls has quite a long history of water generation and a bunch of stuff through there, if you know it at all.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it wasn't long after, around 2002, I ended up back up that way. I was up there going up to Thunder Bay for a job interview and I was staying at a friend's place and we ended up going winter camping instead of Cacabeca, Right instead of Cacabeca Right?
Speaker 3:And I know I happened to be in at the generating station at Cacabeca Falls when they were redoing the turbines, because they needed to be redone because the turbines that were in there and working had only been operating for 100 years. Oh, that's it, without any upgrades or fixes and things like that, and it was time that they redid it after 100 years and hydro generation just has that kind of longevity in the materials that are in there. So Cacabeca Falls is kind of an interesting spot and has some really unique things about it. Like I said, the spirit of the falls, yeah, I would not mind going back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for anybody up Cacabeca Falls ways. Just like I said, if you stare to the right of the falls for at least 60 seconds and then look to the rock cliff to the left of the falls, you'll see something that'll just be hard to explain and every single person that I've shown to it's just like how did that happen? What is that?
Speaker 4:I might have to Google it.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you can, because it's something that I discovered that was really unique and I just started showing people. I don't know how much it's caught on, but it's very interesting. So, Doug, so you went to Sir Stanford and you took the forestry planning. So you're a forest planner approver. So what does that mean and what does that entail and what do you do and how do you do it?
Speaker 4:Well, I became a forest plan approver when I was working at the conservation authority. Um, ironically, the the conservation authority, they own properties and the properties are all enlisted into the uh managed forest tax incentive program. Um, right, and because I was working there, um, you, in those specific cases, you don't have to be a forest plan approver to develop a plan, because it was being developed by a professional conservation agency. So I ended up more like just renewing the current ones and it gave me some insight in what was going on with them and there's something about it. When I did those, I went and looked into becoming an actual forest plan approver. And then you have to go take an exam, study for it, take an exam, and that's how I got started into it.
Speaker 4:But, uh, right, the benefits like, uh, um, like the benefits of it all and how it works is essentially you have to have 10 acres of land. That's treed minimum. So if you own 10 acres of land, no house and it's all trees, then it qualifies for the program. Um, if there's a house, then, uh, you have to add another acre on there because you always have to pay one acre residential property tax right so that's how, that how and the exact number is actually 9.88 acres okay, so so a minimum of 10 acres, uh, in order to get this.
Speaker 3:But we will get into the managed forest tax incentive plan program. But what does a forest planner do when you go into the forest? What are you doing and what are you looking at and what are you trying to determine? Is this like a lot management kind of program, is it? What are we talking about here?
Speaker 4:Well, it's a pretty basic data collection of what's on the landscape. It's an incentive program, so it's not mandatory, and essentially you go out and you meet with a landowner and it's a landowner objective geared right. So the forester generally doesn't go there and say this is what we're going to do with your property. The main objective is you need to find out what the objectives of the landowner are and how they want to manage it, and then you guide them through the process of how they can do it sustainably. And it's got to follow the Forestry Act. Any landowner with forest in Ontario has to manage their forest under the Forestry Act, whether they're in the plan or not. So you work with the landowner and develop strategies based on their objectives. That's the main priority.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you essentially do an inventory, you go into a minimum of 10 acres of land, correct, and there's no maximum, I'm assuming.
Speaker 4:No, no, there's no maximum. Okay, so what I do is I'll talk to the landowner and you have to quickly determine is this going to be conservation, naturalization, is it going to be for harvest, a commercial or personal harvest, and the size of the property and the location of the property is going to help you vet that pretty quickly. Right, like 10 acres and 20 acres, there's no real commercial value on the property that size. And even when you're getting into 40 and 50, depending what's on the property, uh, you have to determine if there's any commercial value to it at all.
Speaker 3:And right, I'd say, 95 of the properties in south central ontario are for conservation naturalization yeah, okay, so you go in and do an inventory and then you determine with the landowner what they would like to do with that property. That's right, yeah.
Speaker 4:So your baseline inventory includes species and the groups that they're in, right, so we'll call them compartments. So say, they have a sugar bush and then down by the creek or in a wetland area there's a cedar swamp, sugar bush and then down by the creek or in a wetland area there's a cedar swamp, and then they might have a? Uh, an old abandoned field that is now pop, that's got poplar coming up in it, right? So you identify those by their species, your composition, um and their age groups, and then, if there's, and all the other types of species that are coming up in it, and then you break it up into that.
Speaker 4:You bring that information and the landowner generally the landowner will come walk with you because it's a, it's a, it's a good time, you're right there hiking in the forest and checking things out. So then you talk about that, tell them what's going on in the property and and just identify some of the, the benefits, what's going on and and some different uh strategies on how to manage it, if they want to manage it at all. Um, under the forestry act, management includes doing nothing. Right, so you can leave it for conservation and naturalization. You can harvest for firewood, you can manage maple syrup. You can uh take out. You can thin out a plantation and then replant right.
Speaker 3:so if you want to, so if you're going to do an assessment and it's a sugar bush that somebody wants to tap sugar the maples for making maple syrup, and you've got your primary mature maple trees but then in the secondary growth you've got a lot of beech or birch or whichever are popular coming up, do you advise them on how to harvest or to eliminate those and just promote maples, so that it still falls into the guidelines of getting a managed forage stacks incentive.
Speaker 4:I could get into those kind of details with them. It all depends on the circumstance of it, sometimes different. Like I can guide them to what kind of objective they want. Sometimes it's better to refer them to a specialist in a specific discipline. So if they wanted to do some harvesting I can connect them with an RPF who does actual timber appraisals. Sometimes it's better to just refer off to somebody who's doing that specific service all the time. So if somebody develops maple sugarbush on large scales, I can guide them through ways to manage it.
Speaker 4:But it's better and more value for the landowner to be connected with someone who's doing that specifically. There's no one forester or ecologist who could do all of those different disciplines well. So the referral basis I really rely on referral basis too. So there's the things I can refer, I can help them with and consider myself an expert in and well-practiced. And then there's other things that you know I'm knowledgeable and I would manage mine quite well. But I wouldn't want to be taking people's money giving advice on that because it's just not my main specific specialty right.
Speaker 3:Right, right. So we have 10 acres that somebody looks at that we have. We want to move forward with a managed plan or not managed, or just leaving it, and somebody wants to take, basically firewood out of it and there's a lot of trees that are marginal, that that should be coming down. It's not a problem for them to harvest these trees and take them out, or even, for example, with the emerald ash borer beetle going through and killing all the ash trees, taking those trees down is not problematic at all.
Speaker 4:It's not problematic at all like taking trees down. It's not problematic at all. Like taking trees down, um, isn't problematic at all. Uh, selecting which ones to take down, that's where the skill is Right. Uh, just because you've got 10 acres or a hundred acres of forest doesn't mean it's wise to go in there and just start cutting trees down because you think they're dead or you think they might die in the future, cause they still provide. A tree provides more value at times as a dead tree in the forest than it does as a living tree right.
Speaker 3:What's examples of that then?
Speaker 4:doug that a tree would have better value as a dead tree well as a dead tree will provide a lot of different options in regards to food, because all the the decomposers and the insects that like to live in dead decomposing structure, hollow trees, things like that. You'll get hollow trees and whatnot also in living trees as well as habitat trees. But when it's in the air it's a mast, it's a perching, it's good for viewing food source, but when it's also on the ground it's going back into the nutrient cycle right through decomposing, right. Right, it's just as productive dead than it is alive. Just because a tree is dead doesn't mean you should take it down. But that's words from a person with an ecological perspective to forestry. If you ask an arborist the same question, you're going to get a different answer. And if you ask a forester the same question, you're going to get a different answer. And if you ask a forester the same question, you're going to get a different answer. They're not wrong answers, they're just different answers.
Speaker 4:Right yeah they have different applications so if you're working in the bush, that's right. I have an analogy An arborist and a forester and an ecologist. If they're all standing around the same large old gnarly maple, the arborist is going to say that tree is over mature and it needs to come down. The forester might say something like oh, there's a lot of board length in that or a lot of bush cord in that tree. It needs to come down. The ecologist is going to say well, that's a really beautiful, strong, healthy tree. It's got great genetics. It survived fire, survived drought, it survived storms. You should leave it standing so it can continue to produce seed and babies. Right, all the same tree, nobody's wrong. So those are all different management objectives and ideas from three different people, but the same tree.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:And that can be applied to the forest.
Speaker 3:So when you're looking at you know managing a forest making, because because I had, I put up, gave your name to some people on Saturday last and they specifically asked but I'm putting trails so I can get through the. He's got 200 acres of wood forested area up in the Canberra area and he asked about putting trails in and I said, as far as I know, it's not problematic because you're accessing to get into the forest so that you can manage it properly. And am I incorrect or am I correct from your perspective?
Speaker 4:Absolutely Like anthropocentric actions. Like building a trail, you have to clear trees, you might have to fill in a few wet spots here and there and there is going to be a disturbance right. There's nothing wrong with a disturbance that creates change, it creates edge and it creates diversity. Right, it's when your disturbance changes the function of the area. Then that's where a larger impact is on something. So if you're clearing out a whole stand of something so you can make access into the next one, that's a pretty significant impact. But building or managing trails is totally acceptable within the Forestry Act. You need them so you can access part of the properties, so you can carry your management objectives Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then I find some of the places that I've assisted in and helping my son were areas that I sent you in and they got an approved plan and there's a lot of Chico has a lot of dead trees in there, but when you're in working and taking out the dead ash, for example, that they'd like removed, you want to make sure that you're working in a safe environment, because when you've got a large, tall canopy and that's what I tell my son is when you're in the bush and you've got to look at the tree, the canopy up top is where the branches or even the small branches come down. It can be problematic when you're taking out like dead ash or other trees that have matured out as well.
Speaker 4:And those hangups up there those are the ones you got to watch.
Speaker 3:Those are the ones that cause widowmakers.
Speaker 4:That's right. So I guess when you're taking, if you're going to choose a tree to take down, there's a few things you always consider. You know, is it going to be easy to take down? Is there any standing dead timber in the area? You know, if there's things to consider, like I might even consider myself, is taking this tree down If I have to remove a bunch of other stuff just to get to this tree, is that a viable choice? Yeah Right, so like what am I trying to get out of taking this tree down? Am I going to take down a bunch of other good things that are considered habitat or a food source for other trees, or a mash tree?
Speaker 3:Or, you know, you just got to weigh your options right, yeah, and there's some things as well, like there's nurse trees as well, correct? So that when you have new growth coming up, they don't want the direct sun right away. What they prefer is to reach a height before they can kind of open up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, that's a classic sugar maple condition.
Speaker 3:And because I know I had Ron, a friend of ours, who got a tree and planted it right out in the front yard, right in the sun, and it wasn't growing and I said, ron, it needs to be shaded. You need a nurse tree around that, and that's why you get some of those, for example, the poplars, or the ones that don't have the life expand of the sugar maples, as you just mentioned, or the oaks, or whatever the case may be, the trees that last a lot longer. They need those nurse trees in order to provide the shade or the. They need those nurse trees in order to provide the shade or what they need, in order to get to a height that then, all of a sudden, they can start to blossom and grow like weeds, as we say.
Speaker 4:Exactly and I'm glad you brought that up industry planting trees and developing forestry restoration plans and whatnot. In the beginning you start off as passionate and pure and then, as time goes by, you start to see the reality of the planet and how it works and how it changes and where opportunities there are in nature. Years ago I was working on a project that lasted 10 years of monitoring, so I was lucky enough to be on the site and returning to the site for 10 years. We planted, you know, about 1500, 2000 trees on that property and it was barren, brand new site, barren rock with very thin soil placed into it. The problem was is the general contractor had brought in soil from another location and it brought in black locust. There were seed and root, probably root fragments in the soil from a black locust location and, uh, they quickly started to colonize on the property in and around where we're planting.
Speaker 4:And the conventional way of thinking is black locust is an invasive species. You, you got to manage it, get rid of it. So I was younger then and you know I just practiced what I was taught and practiced what I learned. And it's pretty much futile unless you decimate the place to get rid of black locust Excavation herbicides, you're killing many other things. It's just causing more and more stress to the landscape and you're trying to heal the landscape Exactly, and it's very fast and if you're not on it you can't keep up with it.
Speaker 4:Well, several years go by in that 10-year monitoring and a couple of the spots we started to let go just to see what would happen right, do some adaptive management to this project and what I learned was everywhere the black locust was allowed to colonize, the plantings thrived, and everywhere else that we kept an open landscape and to reduce competition for our plantings, the plantings suffered significantly, to the point where we were asked to put in fertilizer and do watering and just really aggressive tending to get these plantings to grow. Meanwhile, the ones that were in the black locust colonies had no problem at all and they were thriving, just like you mentioned, as a nurse crop. And black locust is a native species to North America and it may have been native up into this northern range prior to glaciation and then pushed down south. It's just it's just coming back north and and some of those.
Speaker 3:I'd love to hear what anybody, some of those, those trees, and that they they have herbuscular mycological relationships. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 4:yeah, you have a very a very small, a very large network of small things.
Speaker 3:Yes, Essentially what we're talking about is the fungi growing in the soil which connects kind of like a nerve to talk to the other trees, and you have mother trees and actually there's a professor and I think it's U of BC who's come up with quite a bit of research on that that shows that there's two main types of it where trees actually communicate and share nutrients through this, this mycological relationship in the soil, which is really fascinating.
Speaker 4:The interweb, the interweb of trees.
Speaker 3:Well, exactly, and in some of the things now I don't recall offhand but know locusts as a general species is actually one of the preferred tree target trees species to be used when building cribbing or docks and things like that, because their water resistance is rather extreme and has a long longevity and can take a lot of punishment from a lot of along the docks, and I understood from the East Coast that's one of the ones they use when they're building all these huge docks where all the large boats come in, because they can take the pounding and the water resistance is quite large. So I have been trying to look for some locusts that I can use to actually build some cribbing with, because I got to replace some cribbing in one area. From what I understand, it's actually a very good tree to be able to use that for.
Speaker 4:I imagine. So it's very, very hard. It doesn't grow that straight, but it does have a bit of a corkscrew to it as it grows up a little bit. I can imagine that would be quite helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess if you're talking corkscrew, it'd kind of be like an elm tree, which have that huge corkscrew inside the material and hard as hell to split when you first bring them down. But I found that the secret when splitting elm was let them freeze, and once they're froze then it's easier to split if you're using an axe. What I'm hearing. It's the same with the black locust as well. Oh, wow, yeah, so there's quite a few and actually, if you look, what we used for a lot of the cribbing that we've built in the past was hemlock, which is very strong, water-resistant. Well, the hemlock is basically four by four, six by six, as we used in the past 22 years ago, of still holding up very well.
Speaker 3:It's just a lot of the other stuff. Things are kind of starting to fall apart inside, but those are some of the things, and you find that different trees have different applications that work very well for some causes, and here we're mentioning black locust or locust as a general use for cribbing and dock work, and other trees, whether it's a basswood that's used for carving, or butternut as well that's used for carving that has a dark grain to it as well. There's a lot of different trees that can be used for different purposes, and you can kind of with your expertise, you can kind of plan your forest to accommodate a lot of that, can you?
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Black locust is an extremely fast grower. So if you're looking for someone who wants to be able to harvest and reap the reward of their work within their lifetime and while they're still young relatively, then black locust is a pretty good choice, because it grows several feet a year.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, but I don't know if there's a lot of markets for black locust.
Speaker 3:You know, because I used to sell birch land and once upon a time I ran a cutter skitter operation for about five years and we used to sell a lot of the lumber companies but I don't ever recall anybody ever having a demand for black locusts. You know, you had your poplar and your aspens and your oaks and your maples and your birch and it was quite surprising that we started the. It was called the South Central Ontario Forest Advisory Committee and these are people who had been in the forestry industry for 20 and 30 years and I was only into it for about three years. And all of a sudden these guys are coming to me and said Jerry, where do I sell whatever? It was a specific thing birch. I said what do you mean? Where do you sell your birch? You've been in this for 25 years. I'm only three years into this. He said yeah, but we're cutters. He said what happens with us is we got a stand to cut, the ministry goes in and marks it for us and then we cut it and we sell it to the same guys we've always sold. He said they were getting $850,000. That's so that people understand it's $150 for a thousand board feet of birch. He said you're getting $2,200 for a thousand board feet. Like, where are you selling this stuff? And I said well, and I'd give them all the contacts.
Speaker 3:And so we saw a lot of different trees and species that were out there and there was actually one place in Orangeville that would take all the small stuff that was left over. So if you didn't have a full truckload of aspen, poplar or a full truckload of birch or oak or anything else, but you had maybe a full truckload of mix so it'd be birch, maple, oak, aspen, everything he would come in and buy the whole thing at a very reasonable price for these guys pay them right at the roadside. So that was a good way to get in that industry, get paid. But point being was, I don't ever recall anybody ever having a demand for locusts. One of the other ones was walnut.
Speaker 3:I actually had a guy, art Radke, up near Renfrew, ontario, that ended up buying a truckload of walnut, but he was using it for different reasons.
Speaker 3:He wanted all the roots and everything else because he was a gunstock maker and it was something that he was using and so there was a five-ton truck that used to drive from basically the Oshawa area up to Renfrew on the weekends and he would fill up his five-ton dump truck with firewood and bring it back from his place up there. And I worked it out with him to deliver all these root clumps to Art Radke, who would take a pressure washer, wash all the dirt out of them and then cut them into what would be called blanks and let them air dry. And because all the knurlies and the knots and the figuration come in the root stuff, so you find different reasons or different things that people use wood for. It's kind of interesting and those are some of the things that I found quite surprising when you're in there. So it's kind of interesting and those are some of the things that I found quite surprising when you're in there. So it's kind of good.
Speaker 4:But the artist community is where you're going to find the places for all those individual niches Black walnut, black locust, like ash for axe handles and things like that that people are, you know, shovel handles nice straight grains. It's, you know, having those individual communities that you can find people who want slabs and live edge right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and live edge. And I know cause. And I was dealing with some. Somebody told me oh, there's all kinds of money to be made in in burls. Well, I have burls, that would be. You would need a a minimum of a five-ton truck and a crane to lift some of these burrows up where I go up north on my uncle's property, up that way. They're so huge. But find a market for them.
Speaker 3:I found one eventually in Toronto and it was very hard to find. But he said look, I don't have a lot of demand for birch. But he says, if you get some maple burls, that would be great, I could use some of those. But when you cut them cut through the entire tree. So you take that you don't just cut the burl off, it's the that section where the burl goes through as you get all this kind of gnarly wood. And he said now, if you find one that have little shoots coming off in the springtime, so if you find your burls, go out and look for them in the springtime. And he says, because those ones have bird's eye burls in them.
Speaker 3:And for those that know what bird's eye looks like it's pretty high in demand. But he said that's how you can identify it. But the big thing there was the moisture content and when to harvest. You got to harvest in November when there's no sap in the trees, so the moisture content was the lowest. And the list goes on and on and on. But these are all just different things about wood that people don't really realize and they're a little bit hard to find some of those markets. But he wanted. He said I got a big demand for black ash burls. If you know where any black ash burls are, I said couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 4:To be honest, I have not seen a black ash pearl anywhere, but I'll ask around.
Speaker 3:They grow pretty good and straight, yep, yeah, and with the emerald ash borer beetle going through, we're losing so many ash trees it's sad to see. I don't know what the baseball industry is going to do, because it's mostly baseball bats, for the industry is all ash, from what I understand. So they'll be looking for a replacement, or there'll be some people harvesting ash just to put away for years for baseball bats.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so. We'll see. There's going to be, the market's going to be flooded for a while. There'll probably be a lot of baseball bats for a little while.
Speaker 3:Well, you mentioned about market flooding. I recall what happened when it was a pine beetle going through all the pine forests in BC and Alberta and you talk about flooding the market. What happened was they realized that all those trees were being killed by this pine beetle that was going in and killing out in Western Canada. So the governments there allowed forest companies to harvest those trees at a substantially reduced stumpage fee before they totally had no value at all because the bugs had gone through and you get that sawdust basically. And what that did was it flooded the market in North America and it was actually cheaper to buy plywood shipped from BC to Ontario than it was to buy Ontario plywood, simply because of the cost. And so it flooded the market there. And you get these kind of things over a period of time, but I don't know during COVID, the price of plywood, it was just shot through the roof unbelievably.
Speaker 4:Oh yes, I experienced a $95 sheet of plywood.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got a good one. Mind you, you're probably only buying a quarter inch at that rate. You get three quarter and it's like $120 a sheet.
Speaker 5:But I think it's come down.
Speaker 3:I haven't checked lately, but I'm only kidding about the quarter inch we were building at the farm during that time and it definitely made a dent in the bill. Yes.
Speaker 5:Back in 2016,. Frank and I had a vision To amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
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Speaker 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. For another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, here we are in Lindsay with Bill, who's actually? This gentleman has given blood over 230 times 233. 233, and that's amazing, and you've had some success with Chaga. Tell us what you're dealing with and what you did and what you used.
Speaker 2:Well, I had mild high blood pressure. It wasn't very really high, but I was on medication for a few years. And then I quit drinking coffee and started drinking this tea, the combination tea, the green and the shaga Right, and my medication was gone.
Speaker 3:Your medication's gone gone and you couldn't give blood during the other times yeah, I could, oh, you could, I could.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so, but uh, a few times the machine kicked me out.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, so, but now it doesn't anymore so you think uh the, the green tea and the chaga was uh helped normalize your blood pressures.
Speaker 2:oh yeah, oh very good, because it wouldn't be just stopping coffee, it would have to be something else.
Speaker 3:And that's the only thing. You did different Yep.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much for that. My blood pressure is probably that of a 40-year-old man, and I'm 71. Oh, very good.
Speaker 3:Well, that's good to hear. Thank you very much for that, no problem. Okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY, c-a-n-o-p-y.
Speaker 3:If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode. So what are the benefits to having a forest planner come in and review the property other than just kind of some of the assessments? I mean, do you work with stuff like the ground materials as well, so wild leeks, ramps or golden seal or ginseng and all those kind of things in the forest? Do you take those into consideration when you're looking and doing a plan?
Speaker 4:To do. The plan. The basic minimum of the plan does not take that into consideration. Uh, based on the requirements, right, so um.
Speaker 4:Once you start stepping outside of the, the, the basic raw data of the data collection, now you're just getting into more scoped management objective for the landowner, right so um the. The benefit of that having that plan approver is they're going to connect you with different types of information, because to teach somebody and to inventory all that it's costly, it's timely, takes more time to go through all the property and go through all that stuff, and at different times of year you have spring ephemerals, then you're going to have your summer flowers and grasses and things like that, right, things like that, right? So if you wanted a full 365 inventory of a property, when you're getting into wildlife and perennial flowers and trees and shrubs, that's a bit more scoped project. Generally, a forest plan approver is going to go into the property once and do the baseline data to get it collected. After that, though, that's when they connect with the forest plan approver and we're essentially their hub, their resource.
Speaker 4:Like I mentioned before, if they wanted to get into specifics in regards to maple syrup, I can connect them with certain people in the industry that can provide better quality service. If they wanted to do more inventories on the property wildlife and and different uh shrubs and flowers and plants on the property I could work with them on that as well. I could also get resources so they can also learn to do that on their own too. So essentially, we're their plan hub, we're their guy, their network right or their girl.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and some of it is some of the other things that take place. I recall and I don't know if you knew this gentleman, bob Penwell, bless his soul. He used to be the chief forester for the and he was a basically at a 322 ken street in lindsey and then when they amalgamated and moved over to to peterborough, he was the chief forester in that area. And bob was an interesting guy because he would go in and mark the ganaraska forest, which is where about uh 12 500 I'm not sure if that's hectares or acres, I think it's acres of forest that's been established for decades. And Bob was telling me because he would go in and mark forests and they'd have the forest marked and so they would come in and do whether it was a pine harvest or an oak harvest and things like that, and companies would come in and tender.
Speaker 3:And I worked with Bob and did a bunch of stuff, tendered on quite a few, not only tendered on them, but also I helped Bob in a number of ways because, as I mentioned before, when a company comes in, if they've only got like a quarter of a truckload of material left after, it's not worth their while to bring it in. So Bob and I worked out a deal where I go in and clean it up and take care of it and he gets his landing sites cleaned up. But one of the things that Bob kind of told me, he said you know something? We never considered that when we were doing our forest harvesting and taking all these into consideration, but it was the bird nesting aspects about what type of birds were nesting at what time of the year, and they'd never considered that until it was brought to their attention. And after that then they started to take have specific times to harvest to make sure you weren't interfering with migratory birds that were coming up and nesting in certain tree types to make sure that they continued on.
Speaker 3:And of course, the stick nest, which is usually raptors and hawks and owls and things like that. That, um, they wanted they monitor and watch out. If there's a stick nest in the area, then they make sure that those areas and around that is cleared up. But those are some of the things that we're not taking into consideration, but we're seeing a big change in the way a lot of forest planning takes place, which is good.
Speaker 4:The same practice that happens in the water, working in water. If you're going to do any type of work in the water, it has to be outside of the spawning seasons, and so then you have to take into consideration your warm water species and cold water species. So there's absolutely no reason why we should be treating the terrestrial landscape any different, and that has been like development for permits and things like that. So when they're working in and around a forest or they're going to be working in the forest, that a lot of different firms will put in the recommendations that they have to work in and around, the different bird migratory season and all the different needs that they do require.
Speaker 5:And so such as delayed hay.
Speaker 4:Working like farmers have an opportunity in this province to do delayed hay. If they hay their fields after july 15th, there's programs to get compensation for that by holding off until july 15th because they're allowing uh, metal, lark and bobolink and those species to fledge at least grow to the level maturity they can get out of the way of equipment, so that that practice is is happening all over the the place and it shouldn't be frowned upon. I don't buy the argument with grunts and guys who are just in there because they think it's a man's job to go cut wood. They need to take into consideration it's a human's job to do it well, but also to take in all those considerations that's happening around it. Do you want to do a great job at cutting wood or do you want to do a great job at managing a forest? Right yeah.
Speaker 4:I'm glad you brought that point up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so yeah, and there's. I didn't know that there was an incentive program for that, because I know there was a lot of different species that are out there and I can recall one in the Armosa karst, which is up Kirkfield way, where I can't think it was a shrike that was in the area that they would actually impale insects on a like a hawthorn thorn and let them die, but they would breed inside the ground and they want to make sure that those animals continue on because they're endangered and things like that. That's right.
Speaker 3:The loggerhead shrike yeah, the loggerhead, shrike yeah.
Speaker 4:And for many years farmers have been farming that landscape in partnership with the loggerhead shrike. It's been, you know it's been, you know it's a it's. It's where we find it in this general area and it is an endangered species. And but a lot of fear in regards to being asked to take that into consideration was created and farmers actually started to go clear their land even more than they needed to, just to eliminate the habitat, and that way they wouldn't have to be so scared. But the cattle were doing fine when the shrike were there. Now, now that they know about the shrike, they got scared.
Speaker 4:So education education is important.
Speaker 3:So what are the benefits or what's the? Is there an incentive for having a forest planner come in and do an assessment on one's property? Why would somebody want to do that? Is there any financial incentive other than talking and having a properly managed woodlot in your area? But what are the financial incentives?
Speaker 4:Well, absolutely, there's the incentive because it is an incentive program, right? Okay, so the landowner will receive 75% off their property tax.
Speaker 3:Whoa whoa whoa 75% off property tax. Yes, so you come in, and if they're paying 75% on whatever the rate may be, it could be so it's 75% what the rate they pay, whatever rate they pay, that's right.
Speaker 4:So um, all the different regions and municipalities have different tax rates, right? Oh, 100 acres of forest in uxbridge, ontario, versus 100 acres of forest in bancroft, ontario, will have completely different tax rate. Yes, I was speaking with someone. They're paying $17,000 because they built a custom home within a hundred acres. $17,000 in property tax. But they're also in a highly desirable area outside of Toronto, in the rural area of Uxbridge. So, versus I live in city of Kawartha Lakes. If you have the same hundred acre, you can have the same 100 acres with a custom house on it. You're probably going to pay $5,000 or $7,000 in property tax, right?
Speaker 4:So, with that being said, after the plan is developed it goes through a two-stage approval life cycle through the summer and into the fall. First it goes to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests to approve the plan as an actual qualified forestry management plan. Then it'll go to MPAC so they can do their tax-based assessment. So it's approved, based on the taxes, and they can revalue the land. And then, after that, the following tax year, you go into the program and you receive your tax benefit. So, for an example, if you had a property, it was $5,000 a year in property tax.
Speaker 4:So you're probably living closer into the Kortha Lakes or more rurally, like where I live. Right, you broadcast nationally, so I live to the northeast of Toronto about an hour and a half. So if you're paying $5,000 in property tax in one house on 100 acres, you'll probably get about $2,500 applied to the house. I'm just throwing that number out there, but it's pretty, you know, ballpark average. And then the other 25 will go to the land. Well, then they'll take the 75% off the remaining 99 acres. Really, yeah, and that's a significant savings and that's for 20 years 20 years.
Speaker 4:It lasts for 20 years and as 20 years goes by and your taxes go up, it's 75% off of that current tax rate, not what it was in, say, 2024, but in 2034, 2044, it will be based on that current tax rate and assuming the plan is still there 20 years from from then, is it something you can redo at that that point and redo it after 20 years?
Speaker 4:oh, absolutely five years in, the landowner has to sign a form and kind of, you have to fill out a log, kind of like your little, your action plan, as the years go by annually, um, there's a blank section in the report that, uh, you just fill out. So this year we like in, say 2024, we cut down, um, some tree, hazard trees, and we, we bucked it up and we got a bunch of firewood and you might have a quantity so immeasurable. And then 2025, you might have cleared some trails and you just log that through the years. And at year five you sign a one-page form and send it back with that section that you filled out. That's, that's a landowner responsibility.
Speaker 4:At 10 years the landowner has to meet back with their forest plan approver, the author of the report, and they do the same thing again, but the forest plan approver, the author of the report, and they do the same thing again. But the forest plan approver is required just to verify that that landowner has been doing that, just to make sure everything's all good. And then at year 15, just like year five, you just sign the one page and send back in your log. And at year 20, you start over again. So you might just continue doing what you're doing, but you start over again.
Speaker 3:So what happens if the same forest planter is not available? Can you use somebody else and just show them the plan that you receive?
Speaker 4:That happens quite frequently these days because there's a lot of foresters from the 80s and the 90s who are retiring and they did everything in pencil, sketched it all out high quality report, high quality data but it was all handwritten.
Speaker 4:You're not allowed to do that anymore, so a lot of them are retiring, so they need a new author and, as a professional in the industry, I'll only approve my plans because it's just ethics, it's my quality assurance, my plans because it's just ethics, it's my quality assurance. If somebody else writes a plan, um, it's, then they need to be qualified to write the plan. A landowner is allowed to write a plan, but you still have to get a forest plan approver to come walk the land and verify all the information and the data is correct, right, right. So that that's part of that's part of the whole exercise is doing all that. So if I'm already going to be walking the property, uh, to verify someone else's work or another forest plan approvers work or another ecologist work, I might as well just be doing it myself anyways, right? So I generally do not approve other people's plans because they should be approving their plan and, uh, you know, or or become a forest plan approver, because you have to have a forest plant approver, approve all plants.
Speaker 3:Right, I just wonder what happens because, like you said, a lot of people retire or age out of the industry in other fashions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so they would just pass off their customers to other forest plant approvers as a referral and then just carry on from there. So you can use the old report as data, but the new approver should be writing a new plan as the new author. And current information. Okay, when you're doing renewals, anyways, you have to come if you provide pictures or if you're providing air photo in your reports. You got to provide current stuff anyways, right?
Speaker 4:So a lot of the exercise is already being taken care of and done. You might as well finish the job.
Speaker 3:Okay, what is the official name of this plan and where would people, if they want to look it up online, can find out some details about it in Ontario, because this is an Ontario program and we go all over and everybody else have to check their own jurisdiction to see if they have similar programs. But what's the official name of it in Ontario and where do you look for it to find it?
Speaker 4:Got it. It's the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program. So MFTIP, m-f-t-i-p. I'm not an employee of the government, therefore they're not authorizing me to give them a plug, but that's who I'm. I'm a forest plan approver for that program and I'm an mfpa. So you just all. It's very easy to find online. You just dot type in mftip, ontario or manas forest tax incentive program and it comes up as like your first and second third choices. Yeah, very easy to find.
Speaker 3:Yeah under the ministry of's the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Speaker 4:That's right Now. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, and it was there when I was minister, and I just don't want to make sure that people realize that it was well, at that time it was Ministry of Natural Resources. Now it's Natural Resources and Forestry, which is a good thing. So what about other things like Christmas tree farms? Is it applicable to Christmas tree farms and things like that, or can you have a Christmas tree farm and get this incentive?
Speaker 4:Yes, yes, you can. You have to meet a stem count. It's generally about 400 to 500 trees per acre is what you need. It's a minimum stem count to qualify into the program. So generally if you're growing that many trees and that much space and you're managing it for forestry, then it'll qualify. I've actually got several customers that live on former christmas tree farms okay, and now they're just the trees are being let go to go natural and succession is moving in um cedar trees, other baby pine or spruce trees are growing in, poplars are starting to establish and uh, and those ones are interesting to watch develop because they that stuff develops pretty quick right.
Speaker 3:so yeah, and stem counts are I tried to discuss that before with some of the other groups as um to originally naturally seeded. They start out quite high and eventually they do self-thinning on their own as the mature ones and the more aggressive and it's the better trees are more aggressive and grow up. And you start off with almost what is it? 2,500, 2,800 stems per hectare, and when you get down to when they're getting to be mature trees, you're looking at the count that you just kind of mentioned, I believe, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 5:Yes, because it was kind of an interesting thing where naturally things are.
Speaker 4:To qualify for a Forest Ontario program. You got to get up to about a thousand trees an acre, right, it's half of that for a ministry for the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program.
Speaker 3:Right, right.
Speaker 4:So depending on your program, when it comes to stems count is what you have to take a look at.
Speaker 3:So this Managed tax incentive program, is it for residential or is it private properties or is there a commercial application? So if somebody wants to do major harvesting, like forest harvesting, is that something that it's applicable to as well?
Speaker 4:Absolutely Commercial and personal. So during the application process that's confirmed in that process is whether it's a personal harvester plan or commercial harvest plan. So a commercial plan will have more details in regards to an inventory and its practices than a personal one. Will the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry reserve the right to access property at any time, and that is to verify activities are actually being carried out.
Speaker 3:Right. What about things like the gypsy moth or emerald ash, borer beetle or other tree parasites? Do you manage or talk about any of those sort of things?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we do talk about that stuff and we can lay out management objectives. So, as a forest plan approver, we aren't specifically managing doing the management. The landowner does the management and they can use they can do it themselves, they can hire a contractor or a consultant uh, we lay, we help them lay out their management objectives. It doesn't mean I don't have services I can provide to manage it or a referral, but that's generally how that works. So we give them the education, we give them the resources and then we we as their force plan improver will help them manage it. And that's the incentive you get a tax break and you get to learn how to manage your property.
Speaker 3:Very good. Well, I think, Doug, you've given us a lot of information on forest planning, the incentives of it, how to go about it, the different trees and the use of them. But what about stuff like if somebody actually has, say, a vacant property? If somebody actually has, say, a vacant property, so it's an abandoned farm field that was not being used, it's just gone fallow? Can people plant that in order to achieve a tax reduction as well?
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and that's one of my specialties is in reforestation. So just this spring alone we worked with two landowners. We did 25,000 trees and we put on one property we did 8,500 trees and the other property we did about 15,000 and change trees and we put about 22 to 25 acres back into forest production. So we worked with their farm properties that are active farms. It was what's considered to be marginal farmland and that's interpretive In this case, where I live where I live, marginal by a farmer's point of view.
Speaker 4:If they can't put corn, beans or rye in it and they can't get hay like it's not enough there to go out and do all the work and get hay, or the hills are too steep, then it's marginal, Right, but that's large-scale farming. There's small-scale farming where people make quite good use of that land where people make quite good use of that land.
Speaker 4:So a lot of the time it'll be part of the property that's adjacent to wet areas or hills that are too steep for their modern equipment, or the fields are too small for modern equipment, or expanding windbreaks, expanding corridors between different woodlots. So we do a lot of that. I work with a lot of farmers and landowners in regards to setting up their property so it is a functioning ecosystem again, but they can still farm and do other practices.
Speaker 3:So all right. Well, you've given us a lot of information, Doug. It's really appreciated. Now, how do people get in touch with you and how do they find your service, or where can they locate you or how do they get in touch with you?
Speaker 4:and how do they find your service or where can they locate you or how do they get in touch with you? Yeah, um, well, my website's greenservicesca and I'm doug kennedy. Um, my cell is 289-892-2827. Anybody can reach me anytime. Um, a good, I just want to make a point on that.
Speaker 4:On those planting services and, like those properties and those, those projects on marginal farmland, there are specific programs that, um, you can't convert people who just don't believe in what you're talking about. Right, and I'm not going to convert people, um, but I would. My job is to help people see value in what they have, and not everybody values the ecology, the nature that's around them. But if you give them some sort of value to it, such as the dollar or infrastructure or privacy, whatever it is, we like to call it ecological goods and services, right, right, whether you like it or not, you will receive a benefit from enhancing and growing ecological spaces on your property. There are programs available in Ontario where you'll receive an annual payment per acre for the ecological goods and services you provide. So they're starting to give a monetary value, or at least trying to develop monetary value on that, so people who don't see value in it at least can get what they value Right, and so everybody wins Very good.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that we've learned a lot here. I think a lot of people are learning something new and some of the things that and some more interesting aspects of all the things that happen in our forests, and gain a better understanding of everything that happens under the canopy.
Speaker 4:Thanks a lot.
Speaker 3:Thanks a lot, Doug, for being on.
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Speaker 6:Each week we're bringing you inside the boat tree stand or duck blind and giving you real advice that you can use to make the most out of your fish and game.
Speaker 7:You're going to flip that duck breast over. Once you get a nice hard sear on that breast, you don't want to sear the actual meat. And it's not just us chatting here. If you can name a celebrity, we've probably worked with them and I think you might be surprised who likes to hunt and fish. When Kit Harington asks me to prepare him sashimi with his bass, I couldn't say no. Whatever Taylor Sheridan wanted, I made sure I had it. Burgers, steak, anything off the barbecue. That's a true cowboy. All Jeremy Renner wanted to have was lemon ginger shots all day. Find Eating Wild now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts.