Land Care Plan

Description

WAGRAM WOODS & ORCHARD is a 45-acre tract of agricultural land in Wagram, NC (Scotland County tax Parcel ID Number 03040205003). This Land Care Plan is meant as a simple and practical guide for the stewardship of this tract of land.

The tract operationally consists of two portions, each cared for using distinct types of agroforestry. “WAGRAM ORCHARD” is maintained as a cultivated chestnut orchard around the homeplace at 24181 Riverton Road. “WAGRAM WOODS” is the remaining acreage, permanently to make up at least half of the tract as a lightly managed hardwood (non-coniferous) forest. Besides chestnuts, food crops from either portion of the tract may include other tree nuts, berries and fruits, honey, perennial herbs, garden produce, and value-added farm products.

Woods Management

Regular tasks in caring for Wagram Woods include but are not limited to the following:

Preserving open footpaths with access to food trees
Organically supporting the wellbeing of trees and the forest in general
Seasonally harvesting and processing foods sustainably
Managing ponds and wildlife to promote healthy biological conditions
Periodically thinning underbrush in key areas
Periodically trimming or pollarding select trees

Methods for thinning brush and trimming/pollarding are addressed in more detail below.

Orchard Maintenance

The livelihood and farming inclinations of each generation living at the homeplace will heavily influence the techniques of caring for Wagram Orchard over time. Either work continuity or else any lapse in farming activities notwithstanding, the forest edge delineating orchard from woods shall be maintained once or more each year. This may be done by either mowing or rotational grazing (not chronic overgrazing) of ruminant livestock such as sheep or cattle.

Thinning of underbrush

Native grasses and shrubbery should be given leeway in general, although foreign invasives must be vigilantly kept down. In addition to periodic maintenance of forest edges and open areas, the ground underneath chestnuts and other food-bearing trees shall be kept accessible enough for comfortable harvesting.

Trimming or pollarding

Simple tree-trimming habits may be implemented as needed. In addition, around the expected root zone of any food tree, caretakers of the land shall cut down all young pines, sweet gum trees, and any other fast-growing competitive trees which may threaten to overshade or crowd around the food trees, especially taking care to eliminate any invasive foreign species.

Oak, cedar, magnolia, sycamore, persimmon, holly, and some other native trees are desirable to have growing near food trees, especially in the edges or more forested areas. However, if growing close enough to overshade a food tree, such neighboring trees should be pollarded every five years. The method of pollarding is as follows:

To the height that can be safely reached on a standard step ladder, all leafy limbs are cut off the tree cleanly. Cuts are made vertically or diagonally, not level enough for rainwater to puddle on. Branches are removed from the immediate area of the tree.

Century Schedule

Pollarding is conducted in January of 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040, and so on, every fifth year till the end of the century. At the end of the century, consideration may be made whether to continue pollarding each five years or adjust to a 10-year rhythm instead.

This Land Care Plan, keeping its selfsame principles and spirit, shall be updated into a similar 100-year land care plan for the years 2100 to 2200. That updated plan shall be written, kept and implemented by the owner/caretaker who has stewardship of Wagram Woods and Orchard at that turn-of-century, and shall be followed by all successors during their respective times.

In essence, the basic rhythm laid out here is meant to continue indefinitely. This land’s chestnuts and other trees are meant to grow for a millennium and more. The land shall never be logged or generally harvested for timber but shall remain to develop as both old-growth woods and a mature orchard, where nuts, fruits, and other edibles are to remain the primary products in perpetuity.

Our intent is for this Land Care Plan (and its updates) to provide a benevolent scheduling cycle that is deliberately, thoughtfully adhered to and is faithfully renewed at the turn of every century, contributing to the increasing benefit of local communities.

Brief history of this place

About a century ago, the majority of this land along Riverton Road in Wagram was a patchwork of plowed fields, mostly cultivated with cotton. Various small farm plots were divided by hedgerows and old ditches. In the northwestern few acres, a lumberyard and train depot sprawled out with a collection of warehouses and other buildings next to the railroad (which is now long abandoned).

Later in the 1900s, the train stopped running and other factors combined to send the economy of Wagram and Scotland County into steep decline. This change likely coincided with the exhaustion of soil on many farmlands after intensive use for many decades. (Layers of topsoil and humus can be easily stripped of natural fertility when this sandy soil is repeatedly plowed.) Soon, almost all the old cotton fields reverted to forest. Local old timers could probably tell a lot more details about the ensuing decades. Life went on, and Wagram shrank and continued as a quiet little backwoods town on the river.

At some point around 2007, the old lumberyard acreage (now our main chestnut field) began to get cleared of trees, cleaned up of old buildings, mill machinery, etc. and tilled to cultivate annual crops again. By then, all the old houses on it were gone except for the one built in 1950 by the owner of the lumber mill.

Other than the upper five acres and a one-acre garden plot on the southeastern edge (near Crumptown Road), the rest of this space continued as woods until 2016, when it was stripped -- almost all clear-cut for timber money. Luckily, the soil here can be resilient even after such abuse.

By 2020, both of the cleared spots had been abandoned again, and the land had returned to a state of neglect. Nate and Amanda Crew bought the southern nine acres and immediately got to work. Over the following two years, they secured the rest, which they initially toyed with a couple different names for, but now simply call it "Wagram Woods & Orchard".