11/15/11 APPLES, LOGGING, THE RUT, AND A SOCIETY WITH A DEATH WISH

APPLE TREES

THE RUT IS ON

LOGGING MACHINE...

...CAN LIMB, CUT AND STACK GOOD SIZED TREES

Wednesday, 8:00 AM.  27 degrees, wind WSW, moderate with strong gusts.  The sky is partly cloudy but clearing fast,  the barometer being way up. We had a few snow flurries last night.  It is a wintry day.
    Many varieties of apple trees still retain their leaves, so many orchards are still colorful, filled with fading yellow leaves.
    The rut is definitely on, the buck pictured ran across Hwy 13 north of Red Cliff in broad daylight.  We also saw a doe standing in the rain on the roadside south of Washburn around dusk.
    Modern logging machines can grasp a large tree, remove the limbs, and cut the trunk and stack it in a matter of minutes.  Whole woodlots can be felled with amazing speed.  This machine will be working in a friend’s woods on Old Hwy K and I will try to get photos of it in action. This is all very efficient but a familiar landscape can be changed in a literal instant.
    Political comment: The Trans Canada pipeline from the Canadian Oil Sands to Gulf of Mexico oil refineries has been stalled by President Obama until after the election next year.  The pipeline had originally been planned to cross the huge Niobrara acquifer which underlies parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  Opposition to the original route of the pipeline came from agricultural interests, environmentalists and even the Republican Governor of Nebraska because of the fear that an oil spill might pollute the aquifer.   I feel that this opposition  is more phobia than factual, since if there is one thing this society can still build with some degree of skill it is pipelines, which go everywhere in the USA and carry almost everything liquid and gaseous with very little trouble. The Canadian pipeline company even offered a short time ago to re-route the pipeline around the aquifer, and it has still been blocked by the President. 
    The Canadian oil sands are a huge petroleum source which, added to our own considerable oil and gas reserves would render us virtually independent of Middle East oil for many decades, if not generations.  If the pipeline is not built Canada will likely seek a long-term agreement to ship refined oil to China (global warming folks, please realize that the oil is going to be utilized, if not by us then by others and the CO2 ends up in the atmosphere either way).  Thousands of high paying construction jobs will be lost to American workers, along with decades of less expensive and plentiful oil if this pipeline is not built (I have some personal experience with pipelines as I worked for several years building  them to get myself through college). 
    Are we completely nuts? Are we a society with a death wish? Let’s get this pipeline built; we have every ability to make it safe and dependable. What has happened to the “can do” American spirit?  We are being sold into economic slavery by our own perverse government.