The following is an essay that my granddaughter Nicole wrote for her junior English class to complete a section on transcendentalism.  Nicole has been fearlessly exploring, experiencing and investigating the land almost since birth. One of my favorite memories of Nicole at the land is sitting with her near the wood pile in the light of the fire as she dug under leaves and between logs looking for whatever was available for inspection, then, having found something, holding it up for me to name.

The Land

It is only a fortunate few that are invited to The Land. The lucky members experience an overwhelming sense of tranquility, friendship, and enjoyment. Only those who are close to my grandfather and those who impress him as trustworthy are welcome to his property. As I am his first granddaughter, I have been going to The Land since my birth; it is one of my most prized and respected privileges.

The gorgeous sights of summer at The Land are what make it most intimate. Most days I hike the 67 acres of terrain, without any scheduled purpose.

Nicole walking the Middle Road

Such wonderful things are hidden in the land; I find lush green forest, rolling hills, bountiful gardens, and ponds full of life. When physical exploration ceases for the day, the sun falls behind the largest pond with colorful grace, bringing me to my knees as if to follow it. The solitude of the Amish country it is set in allows little light pollution, revealing the mesmerizing stars each night. They twinkle, sparkle, and perform for us. I fall into my imagination; mental exploration begins. These sights are the ones that have, over time, taught me the beauty of God’s creation, and how special I am to witness it.

Though subtle, the sounds of The Land are what give it familiarity. The music follows me and varies wherever I wander on the property. I wake to the perfect birdsong of the forest. I stroll. The breeze and I force the surrounding plants to bustle. The tall wispy grass and little wild flowers graze each other as if sparking a romance. The gentle buzz of the apiary fills my soul. Unlike the rest of the life at The Land, the honey bees refuse to let me interrupt them. The crackling of the fire at night announces the start of nighttime; crickets hum, playing cards snap against the wooden tables, every person gathers, as if choreographed, around the hearth. These are nature’s way of communicating with me, directing me, protecting me, showing me its beauty.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about The Land is its abundance of flavors. Each fragrance enhances its image, sound, and feeling. Every evening is accompanied by the rich smell of fire, charred wood, and saccharine marshmallow goo. My grandpa’s cigar-soaked essence trails him throughout the property, signifying his wise presence. The scent and taste of all the homemade foods everybody brings permeates the area. Each food represents a member of the community that forms each weekend we spend there. The earthy grilled vegetables, comforting macaroni and cheese, and smoky seasoned meats come together, inviting everybody to the pavilion to feast. My human body, similarly to all others present, reacts to these effervescent cues, following their lead.

The greatest sensations of The Land arise with the touch of nature. The glistening ponds, hosting lilypads, old koi fish, and young frogs, reflect the sun’s shameless smile, inviting me in. I find most comfort in water; the ponds have raised me to be that way since birth.

Nicole searching the Bear Claw Pond

The cool grasp holds me, rinsing me of all of the day’s iniquities, leaving me feeling ultimately refreshed. Even just the tiniest dip of my toes in the deep water can transform my mood. Feet grazing the surface, fingers strumming the heavy strings so lightly, our voices singing so smoothly to each other, the ukulele glowed with the lovely aura we gave it. The wall of pines surrounding the pond held our moment, allowing the emotion to resound, preserving its affinity. Communication with nature is like no other. My curiosity, muscles, and necessity allow me to touch nature. My focus and appreciation allow the natural world to touch me, teach me, and guide me.

The Land has a certain tranquility that absorbs all who allow it to. The simple touch of the water, the sound of the bees and flowers kissing one another, and experiencing the souls that surround me, pull me into a state of euphoric happiness that has never been replicated. These 67 acres of property are truly responsible for molding my outlook on God’s world, majesty, and the life I continue to create each day.

Course Description: In addition to playing a round of disc golf on a challenging 18 hole course, you are also taking a walk around our property. Owned by our family for 25 years, the property is managed for renewable timber resources, wildlife enhancement, food production and recreation. We hope you enjoy the golf, the walk and the informational notes that accompany each hole. If you have any thoughts, comments or questions about the course or the property, I would be happy to hear them either in person or via don@thelandofhuber.com.

Hole 1 – Bear Claw Pond (referring to the ponds shape)

Description: The pond you are about to throw over was built about 8 years ago and is managed for wildlife. The pond with its reeds, water lilies, water iris and cattails provide habitat for many species including dragon flies, toads, fish, turtles and frogs. If you are lucky, you will see the Blue Heron, who likes to hunt in the basket area, take flight. Hopefully, the lilies will be blooming and the frogs croaking for you to enjoy.

Hole 2 – Food Forest

Swale Design

Description: As you walk from the tee to the basket, on your left, you will pass our Food Forest. It is planted with a diverse variety of fruits (apple, pear, cherry, peach), nuts(butternut, filbert, pecans), herbs (lavander, mint, basel) and berries (blueberry, gooseberry, buffalo berry, raspberry, currants). There are five swales, which are ditches uphill of mounded dirt. The ditches hold water and gravity feed water to the plants on the mounds. The stack of light colored boxes is a bee hive which will increase pollination, helping to yield a larger harvest, and provide honey.

Hole 3 – Food Forest 2 

Wild Blueberry Bush

Description: As you leave the tee, there is a large blueberry bush on your right. Look left for an overview of the Food Forest. The southern pitch of the field works to collect water in the swales, feeds cold air down hill to the big pond, increases sunlight hours on the plants and the horseshoe of trees on three sides of the field helps to hold heat. The trees in this field leaf out two weeks sooner than the trees in the field only 150 yards west of here.

Hole 4 – Old Field Forest Succession

Black Cherry and Maple with young Beech under story.

Description: The fairway you are walking down was an agricultural field 80 to 100 years ago. When farming stopped here, the fields began the return to forest starting with brambles, shrubs and ferns. Next, would have been the light loving, short lived pioneer trees like Aspen and Pin Cherry, followed by the longer lived Red Maple and Black Cherry you see now. Next, will come Beech, Yellow Birch, Hickory and Oak. As you walk the woods, you will see a variety of forest succession stages because this is an uneven aged woods.

Hole 5 – The Main Road

Oak

Description: This fairway is the first road we built to gain access to the property. The mounds of dirt on the right side, the basket area is one, are the soil that was bulldozed off the road to get to hard pan. A layer of bank run, unsorted, unsifted and unwashed gravel, was put on top to make a good hard road. Just to the right and slightly behind the tee area is our only Oak, a Northern Red Oak.

Hole 6 – Conifer Alley

Description: The fairway you are walking goes through an area that has the largest concentration of Conifers on the property. The predominate species are Austrian Pine on your right and White Spruce on your left. Both of these were planted in rows, crop style, about 60 to 80 years ago. Neither species is really doing very well because of disease and growing conditions. There are White Pine scattered in this area that are indigenous to the northeast and are doing very well.

Hole 7 – Low Land 

Willow Corner Tree

Description: The tee area is in the lowest part of the property, about 1900 feet above sea level. You may have already encountered some standing water or mud. The property drains from east to west or right to left as you face the next basket, making the western edge of the property wetter, however, there are no “Wet Lands Areas” on the property. If you look over your left shoulder while in the tee box, after leaf drop in the fall, you will see a large decaying willow which is indicative of a wet area and also a corner tree. Historically, large trees that grew in property corners were allowed to grow, naturally marking boundary lines. There are two remaining corner trees on the property.  This Willow and a Black Cherry in the north east corner.  Note the Wild Apple in the basket area.

Hole 8 – Young Woods

Description: The fairways of the previous and current hole go through the youngest woods on the property, particularly the woods on your right. This area was probably the primary agricultural field 100 years ago and the last to begin old field succession. Most of the trees in this area are Aspen, Red Maple, and Pin Cherry. Some Wild Apple, which are left overs from the shrubby first stage of old field succession, are still visible and some still bear fruit.

Hole 9 – Recreation Area 

Picnic Pavilion

Description: 25 years ago there were no ponds, fields or roads on this property. Ponds were placed in lower areas to take advantage of natural drainage. Fields were placed in areas where they would become the drainage area for the ponds. This area is our primary recreation area with a pond, open field, pavilion and campfire ring. An interesting note is that 25 years ago, before fields, ponds and roadway openings were made, very few small animals and birds were seen or heard on the property. This was because most animals and birds need open space and forest edges to survive. They use these open areas and edges to hunt, watch for prey and predators, and nest. Now, it is impossible not to hear and see birds, and squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits are often seen.

Hole 10 – Older Woods 

Yellow Birch

Description: The fairways of the next few holes will take you through the property’s older woods. The predominant species are still Red Maple and Black Cherry, but they are larger than in the younger areas on the property. Note the larger Black Cherry in the basket area. You will also see American Beech, Blue Beech, American Hophornbeam and Yellow Birch.  

Hole 11 – Snag Trees 

Snag Tree

Description: Dead trees still standing in the forest are called Snag Trees. There are two in sight but safely to the left of this fairway. Stay away from them. Getting too close to them, especially on windy days, can be dangerous. Why not cut them down? These trees are very valuable to wildlife. The holes are nests, the bugs that eat them are food, and the rotting wood is a great place for beneficial bacteria and fungi to grow. In its final stage of decay, the tree will provide fresh soil and fertilizer for the woods.

Hole 12 – American Beech 

A Beech showing signs of disease with a “healthy” Beech in the right background.

Description: The large Beech trees in the basket area, are slowly dying, like most Beech in northeastern woods, from Beech Bark disease. Scale insects bores a hole in the bark, lays eggs, and cover those eggs with a white waxy substance. If you look closely, you can see the white dots, that is the wax. A fungus enters the hole after the Scale insect has hatched and does the killing. Dark spots on the bark on some trees, or a redish brown drainage are signs of disease presence. Some foresters believe some Beech are resistant. Note that not all the large Beech show signs of the fungal disease even if they bear the marks of the Scale insects presence. Other foresters believe these “healthy” Beech just haven’t succumbed to the disease yet.

Hole 13 – Big Tooth Aspen 

Aspen

Description: This is one of my favorite areas on The Land because of the diverse woods, large trees and because I see a lot of animals in this area. I have seen newly born fawns, herds of up to 18 turkeys, owls, fox and squirrels while walking these paths. Note the large Aspen in the basket area. Oyster mushrooms grow well on older Aspen and are prized by foragers but please don’t pick them. Oyster mushrooms are not the only fungi to grow on Aspens. Wild mushroom foraging is extremely dangerous and can be deadly to those who are not experts at fungi identification.

Hole 14 – Hugelkultur

Log pile that one day will be a fertile hill

Description: Hugelkultur is a German word meaning hill or mound culture. It describes a method of making raised beds out of decaying wood, covered by leaves, grass, or any compostable material. The end result will be a rich moist bed for growing plants. The brush created by building this course has been piled in various ways throughout the course to see what happens. The piles are most visible on this fairway. Our hope is that they will first become homes for animals like rabbits, then rot into mounds of fertile soil for growing naturally occurring mushrooms and berry bushes or perhaps things we plant, like root vegatables. Time will tell. Right now the logs along this fairway make a nice place to sit.

Hole 15 – Top of the Hill

Description: The tee area of this hole is the highest point on the property. About 2100 feet above sea level. It is also near the northeastern corner. It is mostly downhill from here to 18. Along this fairway, there are a nice mix of ferns and blackberry and huckleberry bushes that love to grow in the semi shade of forest edges. If you know your berries, have a snack, but once again, wild berry picking can be dangerous and even deadly to those who don’t know what they are doing.

Hole 16 – Strange Shapes

Reaching for Light

Description: As you walk down this fairway look into the woods, mostly on the right hand side, and check out the oddly shaped trees. You may see some that have turned their trunk at right angles. The trees are doing this to find light, openings in the canopy where they can reach for the sun. While water, nutrients, and soil depth and type are important, almost everything that happens in a forest begins with a competition for light.

Hole 17 – A Blast from the Past

Old Wagon Road

Description: As mentioned earlier, until about the 1920’s this property was a small family farm. The families that lived on these small farms usually kept animals and grew crops for personal consumption and sale. The older woods on the property were not plowed and probably were the family’s wood lot where they harvested trees for fuel for heat and cooking and possibly lumber. The areas that were plowed are the areas that are now the younger woods. Just off to the right of the fairway, you can still see wheel ruts in the ground. This was probably a path on which the farmer drove his wagon, or maybe a tractor, to and from the wood lot, out to feed and herd cattle and to tend his crops. Not exactly the Oregon Trail but still pretty cool. It also shows that when we do things to the land, nature does makes repairs but it is a long process.

Hole 18 – The End?

Description: One of the beautiful things about forests in particular and ecosystems in general is that there is no end, change is always occurring. One of the enduring myths of uninformed environmentalism is that if we never cut a tree, build a road or plant a crop nothing will change and our forests, our parks, and our environment will alays be juse how we remember it and lIke it. The truth is that lovely plant that grows in the semi-shade of a young woods will eventually die off when the woods become older and the canopy closes turning semi-shade into darkness. Perhaps, it would be better for us to learn its stages, what the ecosystem can provide and live in a state of cooperation with nature rather than always thinking of preservation or trying to hold onto a current state that is destined to change. That big beautiful tree that you want to keep forever will die. Perhaps, it’s better to harvest it and let the spot it left become home to new trees that will provide a renewable resource. Your disc golf round may be at an end but on this property, on your way home, in your neighborhood park, and all around you everywhere everything is changing because nature never sleeps and never stops. You can’t change the natural progression of nature, certainly you can damage it for a time but whether we survive or not, nature will recover and restore itself, even though it may take years, decades or centuries. So, I think it is better to learn about it and live cooperatively within it, reaping its sustainable bounty and enjoying its beauty.

This is how the Swales look fourteen months into the project. We dreamed and hoped for about an 80% survival and return the second year.  Did not believe we would get it but WE DID. We are thrilled so far.

Of significant note is that we this spring was extremely dry. Less that 1/2 inch of rain this May and the Swales while almost empty kept everything nicely watered and thriving.  A 1/2 inch of rain yesterday replenished some but more rain would be nice, we always hope for 1/2 to 1 inch a week.  But not going to complain about the sunny days and warm pleasant weather, a rarity for Western New York or so it seems.

New to the Swales this year are marigolds, persimmons and mulberry.

Watch the video.

This is the first of four videos showing the construction of our swales and planting.  This video shows the field before construction and briefly discusses the plan.  The previous posts describe the project in great detail.

Click for Video