Monthly Archives: November 2009

Colony Farm Orchard (= Enchanted Forest): Western Herald Wins Again

Large, old bur oak, one of many at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

The major story in the Western Herald today, on the front page above the fold, is “SSE advocates Orchard property preservation.” The story was written by Fritz Klug, News Editor of the Herald.

SSE is the student organization Students for a Sustainable Earth. SSE describes itself as the premiere organization for student environmentalists at WMU. It’s a registered student organization whose mission is to promote attitudes and behaviors on the WMU campus and in the wider Kalamazoo community that are environmentally and culturally sustainable. It has a Facebook group of 435 members.

The story begins with a field trip that a mostly student group of 26 persons, took to the Colony Farm Orchard in October. SSE hosted it as a part of their campaign to save the Enchanted Forest. Benjamin Thayer, a WMU senior is quoted as saying, “It is enchanted because it’s a place in limbo.” This is an excellent, remarkably apt characterization. My dictionary defines limbo as a region of oblivion or neglect. WMU has neglected the Colony Farm Orchard, perhaps so that the claim could be made that the property is not utilized. And certainly, if WMU’s plans for the land are allowed to proceed, oblivion is its fate.

In the story, SSE Co-Chair Andrew Weissenborn indicates no opposition to the current BTR Park or the aim of job creation. “It is neat and extraordinary what WMU has done with the first BTR park,” he is quoted as saying, “but I do not think the park should be extended to the Colony Farm Orchard. The focus at this point is to preserve the land.”

The other front page story of the Herald, below the fold, is “WMU researchers study carbon sequestration benefits.” It describes research proposed by a Geosciences group to study sequestering carbon dioxide from large facilities such as factories and power plants by storing it at depths of 2500-3000 feet in porous sedimentary rocks where overlain by impermeable igneous rocks. It’s a possible technology that, along with many other techniques including conservation and alternative energy sources, may help us out of the global climate aspect of our current environmental predicament.

In the meantime, the Colony Farm Orchard continues sequestering carbon in its humble way–in the growth of old trees planted or self-seeded long ago and the many young ones that have volunteered in the past 50 years, in the vines of old grapes from the abandoned arbors as well as native grape-vines from seeds brought in by catbirds and robins, and in the large amounts of soil organic matter that accumulates each year mostly from foliage. Even a fair share of the carbon in the tree leaves from the west side of Kalamazoo that WMU allows the city to dump at the Orchard site becomes incorporated in rather long-lived compounds in the soil, making its own sequestration contribution.

Leaves from trees in the city of Kalamazoo dumped at Colony Farm Orchard

Tamarack in Oshtemo Township

Spicebush, late October, Oshtemo Township, Section 9. Photo by Richard Brewer

Wetlands are scarce in Oshtemo Township. Its thirty-six square miles are mostly high and dry and the soils are mostly well-drained. A few kettles exist in the moraine-outwash plain topoography. These are depressions formed when ice blocks left behind during the retreat of the last Pleistocene ice sheet melted. Most kettles in Oshtemo Township don’t hold water today. A few do some or most years; perhaps a clay lens lies somewhere beneath them, or perhaps enough clay occurred in the surrounding glacial drift to form a more-or-less impermeable layer when it eroded into the kettle.

The kettles that hold water year round or for a few months in the spring tend to have a buttonbush swamp at the bottom; some have a band of spicebush up the bank from the buttonbush. These are features of some of the sites disturbed least by agriculture and other human activity.

A small triangle of swamp forest is still present in the northwest corner of Oshtemo Township, but several wetland vegetation types that occur elsewhere in Kalamazoo County don’t seem to be present here. I’m unaware of any examples of open bog, bog forest, sedge fen, or prairie fen. Possibly small patches of some of these might have been here at the time of settlement.

Early this November I started noticing a good-sized tamarack tree in the wetland at the west edge of the Lilian Anderson Arboretum (Section 15) as I drove by. It was only 10 0r 15 yards south of West Main (M-43). At this time in the fall, tamarack needles turn a gold color, so the species is easily spotted. I finally stopped by on Saturday 14 November, by which time many of the leaves had fallen and the few remaining ones were dull brown.

The situation where the tamarack is growing is consistent with the possibility of fen. The site is at the base of a slope where ground water feeds the sizable wetland northeast of Bonnie Castle Lake. However, I haven’t noticed fen plants at other places along the edge of the wetland on many other visits to the Arboretum. I walked around near the tamarack, but I was just wearing short leather boots and couldn’t get very far out. I didn’t see any obvious fen indicator species, but this isn’t not a good time of year for botanizing anyway. I’ll have another look or two next spring and summer.

I’ll also make a point late next October of driving around the other wetlands in the township to see if more tamaracks are evident. Clarence and Florence Hanes found tamaracks in the Twin Lakes area which is right next door to Oshtemo, but nearly all the Twin Lake low ground is across the line, in Alamo Township.

Spotted wintergreen, Oshtemo Township, Section 9. Photo by Richard Brewer.

Spotted wintergreen, mid-November,Oshtemo Township, Section 9. Photo by Richard Brewer.

Walking back up the wooded slope above the wetland at the Arboretum, I saw a few spotted wintergreen plants (also called spotted pipsissewa). It’s a small plant, handsome with dark green leaves with a whitish line running along the midrib. The line is often rather jagged looking where the pale coloration runs off varying distances along the side veins. The leaves are evergreen and were peeking through the fallen oak leaves. A good share of the oak areas in Oshtemo Township that weren’t cleared still have the species, though I’ve never seen it abundant. A plant or two or small patches pretty widely scattered is the way it usually occurs. Its geographic range is basically eastern North America, in most parts of which its occurrence is much the same as here–never common but seemingly not in serious trouble.

A Conservation Plan for the Colony Farm Orchard (=Enchanted Forest)

Button from the Facebook group

As we all know, HB 5207 put forth by Representative Bob Jones (D–Kalamazoo) is designed to strip the conservation/public use restrictions from the Colony Farm Orchard as a first step in turning the 54 acres into an Annex to Western Michigan University’s BTR Park. Here are the stated restrictions: “The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.” The bill, introduced in mid-July with no public notice, made its way quickly to the Senate but there progress has slowed.

This delay has given conservationists and other opponents of the measure a chance to make their views known, and they have done so in large numbers. As of now, we cannot know what will happen. But we should talk about what ought to be done with the property as conservation land. I made a start on this subject earlier and concluded that the best role for the land was exactly what it’s doing now, but better.

In that post, I discussed some important ecological functions of the Colony Farm Orchard. I won’t repeat them in detail, but here’s a quick list. It’s worth taking note that all these would be diminished or lost altogether by development as a BTR installation.

Many are beneficial effects that the Orchard exerts on the Asylum Lake Preserve, such as

Reducing noise from M-131

Filtering noxious fumes from trucks and automobiles on M-131

Reducing artificial lighting coming from M-131 and buildings across the highway to the west. Research on the dangerous effects that bright artificial lights have on insects, bats, amphibians in the breeding season, and other forms of wildlife is accumulating rapidly.

By serving as a very near island of similar but not identical habitats, the Orchard adds species, lowers extinctions and enhances immigration, all of which lead to higher biodiversity and ecosystem stability at Asylum Lake.

Other positive conservation roles the Orchard plays, not necessarily involving the Asylum Lake Preserve directly, include

Allowing for the presence and reproduction of shy animals, such as foxes and American woodcock, that are likely to be disturbed on the more heavily visited Asylum Lake Preserve.

Serving as a migratory bird stopover site well-supplied with cover, water, and food supplies in both spring and fall.

Preserving land within the historic Genesee tall-grass prairie and the adjacent bur oak opening. Perhaps few herbaceous species survive from those pre-settlement plant communities, but numerous bur oaks of various ages and sizes are present that are almost certainly descended from the oaks of the original savanna.

This is just a good start on a listing of the conservation values of the Orchard. There are, for example, the marvelous asparagus patches along the west edge. Not for nothing was Euell Gibbons’s first book named Stalking the Wild Asparagus. “When I am out along the hedgerows and waysides gathering wild asparagus,” he wrote, “I am twelve years old again and all the world is new and wonderful as the spring sun quickens the green things into life….”

There are also the old trees–horse chestnut, tulip tree, maples–planted by the original farm family or by the staff or patients of the Colony Farm. Big and open grown but surrounded now by many trees of smaller diameters, these are probably what suggested the “Enchanted Forest” name to the Facebook Group. They ought to be kept as a way of conserving human history as well as natural history.

Then there is the carbon sequestration that has gone on and is going on in the accumulation of tree biomass, which acts to temper the greenhouse effect and slow global climate change. Turning this land into a BTR park extension would almost certainly mean cutting most of the trees and brush and releasing the stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide either by burning or by the slow fire of decomposition.

It’s not possible yet to come up with a complete conservation design, but here are some things we might want to do when the Colony Farm Orchard is devoted to conservation.

1. Construct a self-guided loop trail going through the property’s major habitats with the trailhead on the east side of the property next to Drake Road.
2. Next to the trailhead, construct a small bicycle parking space. Too much space for automobile parking has already been subtracted from the Asylum Lake Preserve to allow more to be lost for auto parking here.
3. Provide for safe passage of pedestrians from somewhere south of the Asylum Lake parking lot at the top of the hill on Drake by means of pedestrian on-demand lights, or an overpass.
4. Stop the dumping of leaves and yard waste from Kalamazoo. It’s a public service of a sort, but on a parcel of only 54 acres it takes up space that ought to be available for natural revegetation or restoration. The area of thick leaf mulch can be seen in one of the fine low-level aerial photographs of the Colony Farm Orchard by JaySeaAre. Locate the metal pole barn (“Butler building”) on the west border (toward the highway); the heavy leaf mulch is the unvegetated area east of the Butler building and running south toward the electric substation and north toward the old orchard. Several years accumulation are involved, ringed with rank growths of barnyard weeds.
5. Erect a signboard facing M-131 that says something like this:

Asylum Lake Preserve of Western Michigan University

A sanctuary of 320 acres protected for all time

that by education, research, and as green and open space

benefits the public and the Earth

Before describing what the trail could be like, it’s worth considering why we need a trail at all. People who are highly enough motivated have always made their way onto the Orchard for bird-watching, asparagus hunting, photography, and contemplation. And no trail is needed for the Orchard to continue its services to the Asylum Lake Preserve. But there are good reasons for the trail: One, it will make it much handier to visit the site, especially for education–classes, but also groups interested in natural history, and any strolling autodidact.

Two, if the Orchard is left as is, there will be those who say, as some connected with WMU have said, that the land is not utilized. Of course, the charge was and is bogus. But the trail is one way to demonstrate utilization. It will show most people that the land is utilized, though perhaps not that segment of humanity for whom the only meaningful way a piece of property can be utilized is to generate income.

What should the trail be like? I’d say most of it should be narrow, just wide enough for one person to walk comfortably, and unimproved. No dogs, I’d say. It’s nice that people can walk their pets on the Asylum Lake property, but the Orchard ought to continue to be a dog-free refuge, a place for the woodcocks and turkeys and other ground nesters.

There would be plenty to see along the trail, including many of the features already mentioned. Any trip would find dozens of things to look at and discourse on, as the changing seasons brought forth something new every day.

The trail should loop through the south part of the WMU Foundation property. In fact, I’d say that the south half of the Foundation land ought to be reunited with the Enchanted Forest. The eight acres extending up to Stadium Drive were regrettably severed from the Orchard property in 1957 and sold into commerce. The Foundation did Kalamazoo a service by acquiring it in 2007.

Pond with Mallards on WMU Foundation land just north of Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by R. Brewer

Having the trail run through the south part of what is now Foundation property would include a small pond and the ducks and aquatic life that could be seen there and also an area of great hydrological interest as the main source of ground water flow into Asylum Lake.

These are just some ideas of mine. I haven’t discussed them in detail with anybody. No charette was held. Nobody paid me a consulting fee; my work was all pro bono publico. Publico has been given short shrift in WMU’s proposals for the Orchard, so I’m glad to bring a little of it back.

Will the Colony Farm Orchard be allowed to fulfill these conservation aims? That depends on the Michigan Senate, or perhaps Governor Granholm. But, of course, it depends most of all on Western Michigan University, which could at any time, decide to let the Orchard live up to the purposes for which it was conveyed from state to university in 1977. That WMU has not already asked the Michigan legislature to withdraw the section of HB 5207 dealing with the Colony Farm Orchard reveals an anti-conservation, anti-environment, anti-sustainability mindset that may foretell a troubled future.