What’s a “Resto-mod” ?
Another interest outside of the conservation, forestry, and agriculture world, I have always had interest in machines, older machines particularly. I used to be primarily interested in old “go fast” machines, muscle cars from the 60’s and early 70’s, but then it branched out into old trucks and International Scouts and tractors, as my interests took me from the streets, more and more to the woods and the fields.
I say all this to give you some background to some of my lingo here. “Overhaulin” is taking what you’ve got, and freshening it up like new and “Resto-mod” has always been somewhat referred to as doing a restoration with modifications and upgrades to make it more usable or improved in some way to meet desires. A true “Restoration”, is taking something back to a specific point in time, like the day it was new.
Project Philosophy
In the natural world, a restoration is somewhat of a misnomer, because one cant always exactly go back to a specific time and place, or harder yet, the day it was new. Quite frankly, I don’t think its in the plans, nor possible to go back to the day it was new. We must move forward in a responsible way. Some folks like to talk about restoring something back to “pre-settlement” times, as if “pre-settlement” times weren’t always changing then, and I think its a little bit of a reach to say we know exactly what things were like in “pre-settlement” times. Are we talking 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years “pre-settlement” ?
My approach to things is often more like a “Resto-mod” where I like to make some assumptions about the way things may have been (and we can get some good ideas, from carefully studying the created order), and apply many of the benefits and processes of the natural world, and then apply those processes related to animals and plants in today’s natural world to make them more usable and beneficial to our situations today.
The native Americans of days gone by did the very same thing, studying the world, making observations, manipulating the landscape with fire, and other agricultural tools they had to manipulate the landscape to their benefit. I think we can learn some things there.
Project Action
So, I’m in the process of embarking into a project of converting a former fescue pasture with some small patches of johnson grass into a stand of native warm season grass and forbs for agriculture and wildlife purposes. There will also be places on this farm dedicated to bobwhite quail habitat, and pollinator habitat.
I want to share with you my step by step process here as I move along the way. I will warn you though, this process to be done correctly is going to take a year to get to the establishment phase, and then at least another year to really see the rewards of a job well done. But, as the old saying goes, “if its worth doing, its worth doing right”.
The first step was taken the other evening by completing a prescribed burn on the old fescue field to consume all of the old thatch. The black ground will now soak up all the solar energy form the sun and cause the fescue and other plants to make good use of the newly available nutrients and grow like gangbusters. This field will be the greenest field around in a few weeks. Of course, the fescue doesn’t know it, but we are just trying to fatten it up so we can spray it and get a good first kill on it in another month or so.
Bear with us, and stay tuned as we look forward to sharing the next step of this field Resto-mod with you!