Walking
on the Zdanovecs’ land, it’s hard to imagine what it
looked like 20 years ago. As we walk, we see large oaks and growing balsam
and aspen. Well-maintained trails meander. Frogs sing in the nearby ponds
and sand hill cranes call from afar.
Before Jim and Marlene purchased their property (80 acres in 1985 and another 80 in 1987), people treated the land like a city dump and it carried heavy wounds from past granite excavations.
“When we first bought this land, some of the neighbors referred to it as “The Pitts,” said Jim Zdanovec.
Throughout the land there were pitts from the excavations and because the main road to the property had been left un-gated, people had dumped trash.
“We picked up a ton of garbage for the first few years,” said Jim Zdanovec.
Today, as we hike through parts of the Zdanovecs’ 160 acres in Marathon County, those wounds, though still partially visible to the knowing eye, have been helped to heal. Once empty water holes now brim with life. None of the trash remains. From the spring peepers to the geese to the wild rice that grows alongside ponds, forest life flourishes here.
With all that was wrong with the property, what made Jim and Marlene buy it in the first place?
“We
saw the possibilities of what it could be,” said Marlene Zdanovec.
And Jim added: “When I saw the numerous ponds, the wildlife potential in a lot of the area – it had a good variation of tree species, like aspen and oak, which are good for wildlife – I knew it had potential.”
Jim breaks down the current composition of the Marathon County property to about 40 percent aspen, 40 percent hardwoods -- like sugar and red maple, birch, oak, and elm–10 percent ponds and 10 percent conifers.
Because there was no previous management planning done on the property, Jim and Marlene started out slowly to get where they are today.
“Anything that was done previously was very detrimental,”
he explained. “They had cut out some of the very best trees and
left all the scrub trees growing.”
And re-growth doesn’t happen quickly.
“It takes a lifetime,” Jim said.
“The first harvest I had was generally the poorest of the trees -- the trees that will never be a good quality lumber tree,” Jim said. “You’re taking out the poor trees and letting the good trees grow.”
But with every harvest the quality of lumber improves.
“So you’re going to have some veneer timber after the 3rd
or 4th harvest,” he said.
Harvests,
which occur in different sections of the land, are generally 20 to 25
years apart, so Jim and Marlene know their restoration work is something
for the next generation.
“We’re building a legacy that will go on beyond us,” Marlene said.
The Zdanovecs have put in more than 3 miles of trails -- used as firebreaks and access for timber harvests – along with culverts to drain flooded roads, and thousands of trees.
Much of the planting they do is done with wildlife in mind.
“My principal objective in owning the land is wildlife,” Jim
said. “I have a lot of wildlife shrubs -- food producing shrubs.”
Jim and Marlene estimate that on average they plant 500 to 600 trees each year, but have planted as many as a 1,000.
“My two most valuable species that I have here for wildlife are aspen and oak,” he said. “Aspen for the grouse and oak for the acorns.”
Jim says management is geared primarily for the white tail deer and the ruffed grouse.
Hear
more about managing for the ruffed grouse and aspen clear-cuts: Mp3
or Real Audio
“In
our forest management plan, we highlight that wildlife is our number one
preference,” he said.
Hear
more about their management plan: Mp3
or Real Audio
Jim first started working by himself on a management plan, but then contacted an industrial forester. He found that the forester primarily knew about wood product concerns and Jim wanted to learn more about wildlife management. That’s when he contacted a DNR forester. Today all but 3 acres of their property is in Managed Forest Law and he follows the management plan designed through the program.
Here
more about where to go to learn about forest management: Mp3
or Real Audio
“I would not think of doing any harvesting without a written management plan,” he said. “With a written management plan I know what’s going to be cut, why it’s going to be cut, what it is going to look like when it’s done.”
Hear
what the Zdanovecs' might do differently if starting out again: Mp3
or Real Audio.
And he doesn’t have to look far to see the consequences of having no management plan.
“Back
in the days when they were excavating, there were no laws regulating how
they would leave (the land) … so topsoil was shoved all in one place,”
he said.
“This is primarily level land (in the area),” he continued. “As you walk down the road you see there’s some hills. The hills are the result of granite excavations. Some of those hills had so much subsoil that nothing grew. It was just all erosion.”
And the Zdanovecs’ good management planning has paid off. Recently they were selected as the 2002 Outstanding Tree Farmers in the State of Wisconsin.
One of the reasons they were given the award was because of their commitment to educating the public. Hand-constructed signs placed around the property instruct visitors about what they are seeing in that particular section of the woodland. And the day we visited, a group of school kids had just left after planting trees for Arbor Day.
Another reason for the award is the diversity of plants and wildlife on the land. Jim and Marlene have planted everything from Butternut to apple trees and have put in a goose-nesting site and wood duck houses, among other wildlife attractors.
Hear
about the challenges of growing apple trees in bear country: Mp3
or Real Audio.
“We’re proud of the diversity of the property,” Marlene said. “We wish many times we had taken a lot of pictures early at the purchase, because it’s night and day between what it was then and what it is now.”
And the Zdanovecs are rightly proud of their land stewardship.
“It’s a legacy,” said Marlene. “A lot of what we’re doing now we’re not actually going to see in our lifetime. We’re building a future."