BAYFIELD AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREES TO GROW IN SIBERIA

A BAYFIELD AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREE

Friday, 9:30 AM.  33 degrees F at the ferry dock, 31 on the back porch.  Wind NNE, mostly calm with light gusts. The sky is cloudy and overcast, the humidity 69%.  The barometer is mostly steady, now at 30.42".  Highs today in the mid 30's, with snow changing to rain Saturday as temperatures turn warmer.  Rain continuing into Sunday.  We are now in November, gashkadino-giizis (Ojibwe), the ice-is-forming moon.
   I almost got my buck yesterday.  With the truck.  The doe was too far ahead of the buck to give us warning, and the big animal came charging out of the woods, head down, oblivious to all but his carnal ambitions.  If I had tried to grab my camera we would have hit him for sure.  I need a dash camera, like the cop cars have.
   Readers of the Almanac will recall that several weeks ago I sent American chestnut seeds from our isolated, disease free Bayfield chestnut population to Ivan Amelin, a Russian professional forester in Novosibersk, Siberia.
   Mr. Amelin's goal is to establish a population of the trees in the Altai Mountains in south central Siberia, near Lake Baikal.
   I sent Ivan about 30 seeds, and if they all germinate and survive the seedling stage it should give him a good start. The climatic conditions in his region are quite similar to those in Bayfield, and he has high hopes for his project.  They should be out of the range of the fungal disease which has decimated the American chestnut population in North America.
   I had almost given up on the seeds reaching their destination after being sent some three weeks ago, but perhaps they were held up in customs or plant inspection on one end or the other.  With all the hype about Russia these days I had nightmares about  them were being interrogated by the FBI (or perhaps the old KGB).  Hard to imagine those innocent chestnuts cowering under the klieg lights, but who knows?