Monday, March 7 - Sofia, Bulgaria
I woke up feeling rather worn but packed up my things and headed downstairs.  Not knowing the town around and leaving too early to partake in the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, I headed straight for the lobby where Ivaylo Velichkov or Ivo greeted me almost instantly.  Clearly looking the part of a forester with his stout figure and heavy, forest green attire, we greeted one another and headed out towards his car.  Apparently there had been some confusion as I though I was to check out that morning, believing we were setting off on a mini-road trip that would take us beyond the margins of the city.  Turns out I could’ve left my stuff there - we were instead planning to do an extended loop around the city visiting the neighboring forests managed by the Bulgarian state.  Either way, it was alright, it just meant I’d rushed a bit more than was necessary.

Ivo led me to a compact, well worn, four wheel drive vehicle with a low-center of gravity produced by the Russian automaker Lada.  This would more or less be the common means of transport for the ensuing week. While not the best in terms of fuel economy, this rugged little vehicle proves to be nimble, sure footed and up to some very impressive transportational tasks.  We drove across town to pick up Tzvetan Zlatanov - my original Bulgarian contact - at his apartment in the city.  Tzvetan and Ivo both work for Bulgaria’s Forest Research Institute and I’d come across their work while exploring the research projects undertaken by the multi-national CforSEE project developed by a collective of researchers in Croatia, Austria, Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Macedonia.

We quickly made our introductions and set off towards the forested edges of Bulgaria’s capital city.  On the way, my two guides brought me up to speed on Bulgaria’s history and the state of their forests today.  Bulgaria became a nation 1300 years ago though much of it’s modern history has been spent under foreign rule.  After 200 years of Roman occupation, the Ottoman Empire subsequently laid claim to Bulgarian lands from the 15th through 20th centuries.  While 85% of the country was forested, today that number is less than 1/2.  According to my hosts, about 2-300 years ago their high forests were converted to coppice.  Apparently the materials were primarily used to produce fuelwood and polewood for agricultural and viticultural (grape production) needs.  This practice continued until communism in the 1940s

In the past, a typical village housed 500-1000 people.  In those days, each person had 10-15 goats while some rich families would have up to 1000 sheep.  In 1939 Bulgaria had the 4th most developed economy in Europe despite the fact that they had no industry - only forestry and agriculture.  Today 70-80% of the nation’s population live in towns - 60 years ago this number was reversed.

From their move for independence in 1878 through 1910, Bulgaria’s forested landscape was extensively cleared.  Wars created a steady need for material.  Generally speaking, since then, the Bulgarian forests have gone untouched and have since come back largely as coppice.  After WWI and II, Bulgaria had to pay reparations to Serbia, Greece and Romania and paid it in wood.  The subsequent rise of communism saw the state claim rights to all previously held private land and it wasn’t until 1999 that they began to return this land to the ‘original’ landowners as a process of restitution.  This transition also set forth the privatization of the state companies that had once dominated forest management.

Today, small family run companies with modest machinery largely harvest materials from the forested lands of Bulgaria.  The conditions in the forests are not suitable for big machinery and the costs of heavy equipment (like a forwarder and harvester - 1,000,000 Euro) make small, scale intensive operations feasible.

In total, 34% of the country is forest.  And of this total,

75% is owned by the state
12% private
14% municipality
1% churches.…

Bulgaria features 16 regional forestry boards, within which they have 174 forest enterprise units.  Of a total 3,700,000 ha worth of forested lands, 1,750,000 ha are managed as coppice - 47% of all bulgarian forests.

Erosion was a major problem 100 years ago - extensive plantings of Robinia pseudoacacia (black locust) and pine were the solution.  Conifers were once rare in Bulgaria.  Today Bulgaria has 50% more pine plantations than all of the Balkan states combined.  Most of their plantations are 50-60 years old.




Climatically speaking, in the area around Sofia, they receive 600 mm annual precipitation.  During the months of July/August/Sept it amounts to about 120-130 mm.  The country features a continental climate.




Their primary wood products include timber, fuelwood and charcoal. They export their firewood and Charcoal to Turkey while timber resources generally end up heading to both Macedonia and Greece.  Oak and beech are the main species and sometimes exist as mixed stands though oaks are typically found at mid-elevations and the beech tends to reside along the higher slopes.  As far as species go,  Quercus ceres (Turkey oak), petrea (sessile - the most rot resistant), franeto, pubescens (downy) are the most common oaks.




We started off our trip visiting oak coppice maybe a half hour outside of the city.  They forest lay covered in a 10cm or so blanket of snow (4”).  I soon realized that I’d likely seen coppice in many more situations than I’d realized during previous visits to Europe.  If one doesn’t know how extensively this practice is carried out, it would be easily to remain completely ignorant of it.  But conversely, once you learn how widespread forest management via vegetative reproduction (aka coppice) actually is in Europe, it becomes more a matter of picking out the forests that aren’t coppice.




The coppiced oak stands tend to look more scrubby, often thriving on more exposed, dry, rocky, mid-elevation slopes and so their productivity is less than that of strong, fast growing species like chestnut.  By the time they reach a more mature age, say 25 years or more, an individual coppice stool is often reduced to between one and four stems.  Amidst these early site visit, Tzvetan and Ivo began to Educate me about the state of coppice woodlands in Bulgaria.  The basic message was that they are largely viewed as unproductive landholdings, poorly adapted to the economic markets most accessible to state forest enterprise.  Most all of the Bulgarian coppice wood is sold as fuelwood, fetching about 50 leva per cubic meter - about $36 per cubic meter or $140/cord.  As a result, Bulgarian forest policy towards coppice woodlands is based on the ‘reconstruction’ of coppice stands into high forest with an uneven age and stand structure.  Believing that this stand structure is more ecologically stable and will provide higher value yields, they’ve been working to transform these stands for some time now though the actual practice has proven far more difficult than the theory.




There are several ways to shift a coppice forest to a high forest of seed origin (rather than one produced by stump sprouts).  One of these is clear cutting, followed by replanting - this system is generally a total loss as the rapid regrowth of the coppice stools outcompetes planted seedlings and has a very low success rate.  Also, attempts to completely change species during replanting efforts often prove unsuccessful because they may have overlooked the stand productivity potential or its relative ability to produce quality logs of a particular species.

Another strategy, shelterwood thinning, involves a process where the stand is heavily thinned, leaving perhaps 10-20% of total forest cover in the highest quality individuals  (or patches of individuals) who will serve as seed stock to help repopulate the stand.  Shelterwood cuts typically involve two interventions, during the second of which (when the seedling trees have reached 50cm (20”) in height), the seed trees are removed completely, thereby ‘releasing’ the seedlings to form a new stand of seed origin.  This practice can often be effective but it is a very intensive treatment that citizens often find shocking and also typically results in an even aged stand structure - all of the trees representing a single age class.  On a less intensive scale, they often thin oak coppice regrowth so as to encourage the quality of the subsequent polewood, but the relative lack of light creates problems for effective seed regeneration

Tzvetan believes that patch cuts are likely the most ecological forest reconstruction strategy.  Instead of removing most of the forest and leaving only a few select individuals or patches, patches of trees are cut, still leaving swaths of the forest in tact. This more concentrated disturbance has a less dramatic impact on total forest ecology, encouraging considerable change in small areas while maintaining continuity within the forest on a larger scale.  Patch cuts should usually be at least 1.5x the height of the dominant trees in the stand so as to ensure enough light penetrates the patch to encourage healthy seedling growth.  This is especially important for species like oak and pine which are especially light demanding.  

Overall, Tzvetan recognizes that the lack of early release treatments (thinning in overstocked forest stands) is the biggest problem facing Bulgarian foresters as it results in lower overall productivity in the long term.  Early release treatments require considerable planning and investment at phases in forest growth that sometimes prove to be modestly economical at best.  Because of this, it’s often difficult to muster up financial support for these undertakings despite the fact that a few early and mid-stage interventions would have significant effects on the quality and subsequent value of the sawlogs that the stand ultimately yields.  In the end, what we find is that there’s no one magic bullet and though the vision and intention may be clear in the forester’s mind, without the energy or finances (often synonymous) available to bring about these changes, we see no net result in forest management.

We snaked along through steep mountain roads, stopping to visit and examine several more stands before lunchtime.  One of these - an oak coppice stand that’s in the process of conversion to a mixed stand to include black pine.  Another, a 50 or so year old beech coppice stand with individual stools having been thinned down to a single stem, producing 10” or so diameter polewood for fuel.  As we dropped down into the neighboring valley, Ivo pointed out a large clearcut on a mountain face off on the horizon.  We noticed vertical running bands of dark and light that almost appeared to be ski trails.  Much of this stand was cut by villagers, who for each of extraction, chose to orient the remaining brushwood vertically up the slope to facilitate the conveyance of their harvested polewood downhill.  Unfortunately, this not only misses a crucial opportunity to slow water and soil as it’s washed down the hill by wind and water, but it accelerates these erosional processes, removing the little precious topsoil left on the overworked hillsides.

We dipped off the road a mile or so up to get a closer look.  On the way we passed through an old wood pasture full of poplar pollards that I managed to snap a few photos of.  We reached the end of the most reasonably accessed portion of the road that still offered us a solid vantage point of the hillside and stopped to examine three different coppice treatments exhibited on three overlapping hillsides (attempted reconstruction of coppice stand to high forest after planting; recent clear cut stand; heavy-handed shelterwood cut, thinning the stand to provide parent material to disperse seed stock within the gaps).

On our way to a nearby village for lunch, we took a short detour to examine a hillside that had been largely colonized by the exotic Carpinus orientalis - a shrubby hornbeam species, looking very similar in the stem form to Ostrya virginiana (sinuous polewood resembling muscles).  Very opportunistic and tolerant of shade, this species today resides on some 200,000 hectares and has made it difficult to maintain the homogeneity of the oak coppice that once dominated.  Fortunately, the dense wood still proves to be a useful fuel despite the fact that its multi-stemmed form results in many small diameter stems.  

We wound around the hillside where we went on to examine a few remote Bulgarian villages that Tzvetan and Ivo explained were today largely uninhabited.  The hills which bore the scars of generations of wood extraction and overgrazing are now finally succeeding back to forest though it will take a long time for them to reach a restored vigor in the wake of all of their historical overuse.

It was eerily disheartening to roll through theses largely deserted hamlets.  We stopped above one and headed off on foot to explore some of the crumbling houses and outbuildings up close.  May of them constructed of a small diameter timber frame atop a stone foundation.  The earthen plaster was largely cracked and crumbling revealing a riven wattle and daub framework underneath.  Their remaining small diameter polewood rooming members were in clear view, topped by fired clay ties.  Most of these materials still retained their legacy as products harvested from traditional coppice management.  

As we examined the buildings, a woman approached us and asked what we were doing.  Tzvetan explained and she told us, ‘The young people have left, the old people have died.  There’s no one left.  We continued ahead in a somber mood, exploring another deserted barnyard where a fallen roof had crushed an old earthen bread oven despite the fact that the wooden peel still sat adjacent to it.  Despite all of the investment in infrastructure, terracing, soil building and community development, it appeared as if these villages were left to the ravages of time and nature to return to the earth from which they came.  I felt fortunate to have a chance to humbly explore them but sadden to know that they were largely left as a relic of a simpler time.  

We found a village soon enough where we could buy some bread, sausage, cheese and halva (a sweet derived from ground sesame seeds).  We pulled off the road at a developed community spring where we ate our lunch in the misty gray of the afternoon and set off for our final stop of the day.

Ivo, the soft spoken forester turned researcher and ace forest road driver was set to bring us to a forest he’d been working to actively convert from oak coppice to high forest.  Once having managed a large private forestry operation with dozens of employees, he’d chosen to forego the immense stress and responsibility of keeping so many people active and busy, managing multiple jobs at once and instead take a position with the Forest Research Institute.  Not exactly a scientist by training, he’s finding his way along with his colleagues but brings an invaluable practical insight to his work which ultimately strengthens the team as a whole.

We dipped off the highway onto a muddy forest road that seemed to deteriorate in quality by the minute.  Steep grades, deep ruts, wet spots and occasional modest snow cover called for a skilled and confident driver and Ivo proved well up to the task.  Even when we had to back up to retrieve his muffler as it was sharply removed by a high rock, Ivo set to changing into the mechanic’s clothes he’d brought along so as to replace the missing piece while Tzvetan and I looked at the oak coppice all around.

It seemed that here, they were in the midst of an effective high forest conversion though it was one that would require at least one other release treatment along the way if it were to be truly transformed.  Having proscribed a thinning that reduced stand volume to 100m3/ha, Ivo had marked the trees that were to be cut at breast height with spray paint and with a axe notch at the base.  Because the state doesn’t execute their forest thinnings, the double marking system allows them to ensure that the forest managers they do contract honestly remove only marked trees.  When considering which trees to remove, one looks for several factors.  Crown density, quality of the stem (especially in relation to the other trees around it and including straightness, diameter, knots, crown form) and the species and their relative value..

Though again, this wasn’t exactly the type of information I was actually in search of, I found the details to be very useful in that they also inform the primary considerations a landowner should be aware of when looking to do the exact opposite - convert their high forest into coppice.

From here we made our way back to the city of Sofia as snowflakes fell while the evening hours crept ever closer.  And this all on a Monday!

Saturday, March 5 - Mark heads from Zagreb to Sofia

Fully anticipating a busy upcoming week, I relished a free morning to sleep in.  My train to Bulgaria left at midnight and I needed to check out of the hotel at 11am so I took my time, packed up and showered at the last minute and then returned my room key.  I’d originally planned to bring my bags with me to the train station and leave them in a locker but the kind attendant at the hostel invited me to leave them there and welcomed me to stay as long as I needed to.  This simplified things quite a bit.

Stjepan and I had planned to meet at some point in the early afternoon and go to a museum or something - he had work to do during the first half of the day.  I picked up a pastry and enjoyed it slowly at a nearby town square, watching people do whatever it is they do on a pleasant but grey Saturday.  A few minutes later, the peaceful bustle was interrupted by a violent ‘boom’ that echoed through the square.  With no idea what had just happened, of course my mind raced towards the extreme.  Seconds later, a pickup truck came racing by with a full-on cannon mounted in the back facing the cars behind it.  Another explosion - but something about the costume the operator was wearing told me it wasn’t a serious attack.  Behind the cannon, 5-8 large trucks followed along, their sides clad with rough sawn boards and tattered fabric, full of screaming, celebrating people.  I wasn’t sure if it were part of the recent political protests or some other type of celebration (I later learned it was the start of their Carnival - a celebration marking the start of the season of lent - the lead up to Easter).  Needless to say, it was no ordinary Saturday.  




I slowly made my way downtown on foot where I found the culprits celebrating wildly with music, dancing, games and tomfoolery.  It was quite a sight.  I took it in for ten or fifteen minutes and headed south towards the train station where I’d planned to meet Stjepan.  We walked across town to explore the Arts and Crafts Museum hoping that we might find some exhibits illustrating traditional uses of coppice materials - alas, no luck - it was more geared towards the high arts of glassblowing, ceramics, art and cabinetry.




Stjepan had plans for the evening so once we finished exploring the museum, we said our goodbyes.  Though we had only spent three and a half days together, I’d come to absolutely appreciate his kindness, generosity, openness and insights.  He was a wonderful host, a good friend, a great translator and an insightful philosopher.  I reflected on my good fortune for having met him as I walked about the old town, exploring the city for another few hours.




I returned to the hostel to pass away the time until my train left at midnight.  I had a bit of a time scare when the trolley I needed to take took off just as I was arriving at my stop and wasn’t scheduled to return until 10 minutes before my train was supposed to leave.  Fortunately, a cab rolled by a few minutes later and we raced off to the train station where I climbed on board and did my best to get a good night’s rest.







I awoke several times during the night - we crossed a few borders and also ended up at a standstill for what must’ve easily been an hour during the course of which I could hear the train whistle bellow off into the distance and slowly echo back towards us.  Too tired to spend time worrying about it, I did wonder what it was we were stopped for and why were were calling out to the abyss.  With only one hour of leeway between my arrival time in Beograd (Belgrade, Serbia) and our subsequent departure to Sofia (Bulgaria) I was hoping that the roadblocks wouldn’t prove to accumulate to the point where we missed the connection.  




Around 7am I awoke as we were pulling into a cool, grey central station in the heart of Belgrade.  The shadowy light of a cloudy morning bespoke the ruinous nature of many of the buildings flanking either side of the tracks.  We clearly weren’t in the apparently thriving metropolis of Prague anymore.  Crumbling buildings with an architectural facade that my limited vocabulary could best describe as ‘communist-era’ told of a life with far less affluence than much of western Europe - at least as far as the middle class is concerned.

Despite our midnight holdups - I still had a half an hour or so before my connection was to depart to Sofia, giving me ample time to collect my thoughts, enjoy some moderately fresh air and step into the second class cabin I was to inhabit for the following 12 hours.  Not long after choosing my seat in an empty cabin, a young couple joined me, who appeared to be in the midst of some type of holiday.  It was a few hours before we engaged in any real conversation but they proved to be kind, Swiss born travelers bound for a 1 week vacation in Istanbul.  

The vast majority of our half-day journey through Serbia proved to be rather uneventful.  Slicing through a rolling countryside, amidst scattered agricultural villages still exhibiting the remnants of a land-based tradition that was easily centuries old, I was humbled by the utter simplicity of their dwellings and fields and their largely worn and tattered state.  Stooks of corn dotted their farm fields (upright, conical bundles left to dry) and piles of hay sat atop pollarded trees where they were free from contact with the damp soil below and thereby less prone to decay.  Occasionally knifing through steep gorges with long managed coppice stools hanging on for dear life upon slopes that would otherwise be unthinkable for forestry operations, one could easily see how the need for materials for fuel, serving the most basic of human needs, had driven coppice as a management technique by necessity.  

As the afternoon wore on, I started to catch up on some of my long lost sleep from the previous night of train travel.  A few hours later, I awoke to the bustle of a dozen or more middle-aged Bulgarian women boarding the train at the last Serbian stop before we crossed the border.  Instantly our quiet train compartment grew packed full, and we all engaged in a steady shuffle of seats, luggage and people.  One of the women asked me if she could take my window seat, and I obliged unsure of why she needed it.  Their nervous movements seemed foreign and unclear, but I found them immensely difficult to ignore.  The woman sitting across from me rustled nervously through her peruse for a good 10 minutes.  

Soon we crossed the Serbian border control and in the interim between our subsequent entrance into Bulgaria, our newfound coach mates jumped to action, unpacking their bags and rapidly placing concealed goods into the various corners of the train car.  I had no idea what it was they were actually hiding - the first thing I noticed was tissue paper wrapped packages, scotched taped onto something resembling aluminum flashing, several of which they proceeded to stuff into the cavities between the train seat and the wall.  Feeling a bit surprised by their dodgy maneuvers I wanted to ask them what they were up to, but I lacked the vocabulary.  Of course, the fear driven side of my mind raced ahead thinking, ‘Oh my God, these ladies are gonna blow us all up!’.  But that seemed a bit extreme and despite my complete lack of knowledge of explosive technology, the lack of any apparent wiring, etc seemed to indicate we were relatively safe, and any fears I may hold were driven more by a cultural perspective inbred by the fear-mongering rulers of my homeland.

In time I started to think they were smuggling cigarettes, but it was hard for me to imagine that something as modest as cigarettes could prove to be a lucrative enough item to need to smuggle on as small a scale as they were operating.  My suspicions were confirmed soon enough as they started to peel individual packs from their purses, dumping them down their pants, into their shoes and into random cracks in the packed luggage above.  Another five minutes later we were greeted by Bulgarian border guards who checked our IDs and steadily moved on.  I thought we were safe.  But not yet.  Soon I could sense an inquisitive force approaching from the hallway behind us.  In the mirror’s reflection I saw a security officer armed with a flashlight dismantling the trim work in the train’s hallway apparently looking for some hidden contraband.  In a matter of seconds, they opened up our cabin door and asked questions of the three residing tourists (including me).  Satisfied with our answers, they told us to step out and proceeded to search and question the remaining women.  Either they didn’t look very hard or they never wanted to find anything for despite their apparent scouring of the car, their pat downs and inquisition, they turned away with nothing and our travel companions were left to go free.  I couldn’t believe it.  I thought they were in for it - though I can’t imagine what kind of trouble they would’ve been in for.

The rest of the journey was rather uneventful.  It was nightfall by the time we reached the city of Sofia.  I changed some money and elected to hire a cab to reach my hotel as I only had a relative idea as to its location and distance from our point of arrival.  It was a good idea - it would easily have taken me 45 minutes or more to walk there had I chosen the right route amidst the construction laden city streets.  

I checked in, made my way up to my room amidst a hallway that reeked of chain-smoking residents, settled in, found some food and finally got some rest.  I was to be picked up at 7:30 am, and I knew I had a big week ahead.

Friday March 4 - Mark in Varazdin County, CroatiaI met Stjepan outside my hostel just after 8am.  He’d been able to secure the company car for our day trip to the city and region called Varazdin where we were to meet with two fine forestry consultants who work for the European Forest Institute and provide consulting services to private forest owners in this region.

It took us about an hour to reach Varazdin in the eastern part of the Croatian ‘panhandle’.  Along the way, Stjpean shared some of the unique qualities of this region - namely the dominance of private forest land (70% private vs. 30% state owned).  As is the case for many parts of south east Europe, the average private landholding is very small, totaling about 1 hectare (2.6 acres).  And because of the fragmented nature of the landscape due to land inheritance tradition, the average plot size is just 1/3 of a hectare.  Varazdin has the highest population density in the country and possesses a sizable mountain range.  Typically people occupy elevations up to 300-400 meters, which is generally characterized by oak and chestnut forests.  

Many people maintain small vineyards here - often plots are located up in the mountains/hills where they have a small cabin that they visit on weekends.  The typical settlement pattern features homes and agricultural fields on the lower slopes and bottomlands, vineyards on the south facing slopes and woodlots on slopes facing north.  Most of the wood produced in these private woodlots either goes for some type of agricultural use - garden sticks/fence posts/vineyard use - or fuel.  Today even some of these needs are changing though, with more and more vineyard owners converting to concrete posts instead of oak or chestnut.  

We arrived at the forest office and headed up to the second floor where we met Miljenko Zupanic and Goran Habus - both kind men eager to share their work with interested souls.  Though it was ten or so in the morning at this point, we started things off with a welcoming warmer of local schnapps - a unexpected but welcome tradition.  I shared a bit about my intentions and interests with them, and they told me a bit more about their work and the clients they work with.  Basically, their role is to develop forest management plans for private property owners and educate them as to how to manage their land in a sustainable way.  It took me a while to realize that while Goran seemed to completely understand my English, he didn’t quite have the vocabulary to converse, so he was relatively silent unless I asked him a specific question.  

There are 41 associations of small woodland owners organized at the municipality level, and together, they have collectively established the 'Union of Croatian Forest Owners'.  There are 8 associations in Varazdin County with 30-40 members.  In Croatia, all felling on private land must be approved by the government as detailed in a forest management plan unless you only cut 5 cubic meters per hectare per year or less.  Miljenko and Goran connect with forest owners and help them develop these plans.

We headed out into the field, taking a brief tour of some of the sights their city had to offer on our way.  Our first stop was a private, mixed woodland that featured minimal coppice management.  With an uneven aged structure and a mix of conifer and broadleaf species, it was a healthy-looking, well-managed forest but didn’t really reflect my desire to connect with small scale coppice management.  Standard trees included Scots pine, wild cherry (Prunus avium), hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), black locust (Robinia).  There were a few coppice stools mixed in as well including hornbeam, locust, and chestnut - all cut on short rotation.  Hornbeam will tolerate this to a degree as it is a shade tolerant understory species.

It was a similar experience at our second site visit.  They brought us to a well-stocked, robust, natural-looking forest though it was only a 1/3 acre parcel.  While I could appreciate the management planning that has gone into the parcel, I was more actively drawn to the hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) copse that bordered it to the south.  The hornbeam copse was relatively poorly stocked with wide spacing between stools - perhaps 12-15’ - and seemed like it was just too small and inconsistent a property to be properly managed with a regular coppice rotation - at least given the fact that fuelwood was the only product they seemed to be looking to produce.  We talked a bit more about the mixed stand we were there visiting and then made our way to a nearby cafe for a group coffee break.

Here I learned about the complexities of private property ownership in Croatia.  After World War II, the communist government made it illegal for individuals to own property larger than 5 hectares in size.  They nationalized these seized parcels, and as a result, Croatian woodlands were dramatically fragmented.  This legacy provides land use planners considerable challenge as they work to develop cohesive plans for the innumerable tiny private woodlots scattered about the countryside.  In reality, they typically treat private woodlands as part of larger complexes, making more sweeping planning recommendations despite the fact that the realities of each site and the needs of the clients are very much unique.  Unfortunately this is the best they can do do with their available budget and personnel.

From here, we traveled another 20 kilometers or so to the town of Lepoglava, known largely because of the prison housed within the community.  The relatively modern prison has a far deeper history though.  Actually it’s located partly within a building in which 14th century monks established the first high school in the town.  At that point, the walls were made with willow wattle and daub.  We climbed up the hillside where we snaked in between compact private landholdings, most of them filled with parallel rows of grape trellis’.  Typically the villages lived at lower elevations but owned small vineyards and woodlots at these higher slopes - as mentioned earlier - south facing slopes were given up to vineyards and the north facing slopes reserved for woodlots.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about my experience in the Czech Republic, many of the vineyard rows were oriented running up and down the hillside (perpendicular to the contour).  Recently, my friend Edmund Brown wrote me with some insight as to why this is.  His brother and sister-in-law Garrth and Alanna spent time working on a farm along the French/Swiss border where they were told that orienting the rows vertically like this on south facing slopes provided both sides of the vine with equal access to sunlight, thereby encouraging more even fruit ripening.  Since then, I’ve had this corroborated by grape growers in Greece as well.  When I asked what they’d do on east or west facing slopes, Greek wineman Stefanos simply replied - ‘Don’t plant grapes’ (well, to paraphrase him at least).  Obviously this pattern won’t achieve the desired effects in all circumstances, but it definitely makes sense on south facing slopes, despite the way it accelerates erosion and soil loss.  (Apparently Garth and Alanna were told that people would historically bucket eroded soil back upslope to compensate for losses during the season.)

Amidst these parcels, we parked the car and started to explore the woodlands on foot.  To be completely honest, most of them were in pretty poor shape.  It appeared as if most of them were being aggressively thinned, most likely as a source of fuelwood.  This isn’t a problem in and of itself - in fact it could actually help to increase the productivity of individual stools overall.  The problem I saw was that the narrow parcels didn’t receive very good incoming solar energy and different management patterns made it difficult to maintain a more standardized treatment.  One particular chestnut stand we visited featured stools with 1-2” diameter stems that were very crooked and useless for little but fuelwood.  The stubs remaining after individual stems were cut had been aggressively hacked at with an axe leaving a very ragged wound that looked quite susceptible to invasion by decay organisms.  The stools were irregularly spaced with large gaps between one another. 

We looked at another few stands and saw similar patterns though this one had been the lowest quality by far.  It’s difficult to tell how accurate a representation this was of the state of private woodlands in the area but it did provide me with several useful insights - mainly that the small size of these parcels, their orientation on slopes, people’s steady need for materials and relatively crude management had created strained coppice stands that appear to be stressed and largely unproductive.  I don’t say this to be overly critical as I don’t truly understand the social, economic and ecological context for these systems.  These observations do help me see why forest practitioners seem to have a negative view of coppice and aim instead to steer the system towards a more dynamic, uneven aged, high forest structure.

On the other hand, I could see how, especially on this scale, coppice systems would be much better suited to provide useful materials for individuals, families and villages in their concentrated production, utilitarian form and intensive yield.  In my mind I came to recognize how coppice has been, and will likely continue to be a management system ‘of the people’.  And it’s with this in mind that I see it most relevant to a locally-based, energy producing, post-petroleum culture of the future.

From here, we headed back through the town to a nearby village where our hosts had arranged lunch for us at a local family-owned restaurant.  This proved to be a unique treat in that the restaurant isn’t always open - you need to phone ahead during the daytime.  What this means is that they opened up the restaurant just for us and we sat down to a tremendous meal.  Starting off with Rackia - the regional term for locally made schnapps (made either from grapes or plums) and followed by white wine, we enjoyed a multi-course meal - punctuated by multiple cigarette breaks at appropriate stopping points by our smoker comrades.  Thoroughly stuffed, we made room for a desert dish that easily could have been an entire entree - a 15” pizza-like pastry dish that put us all over the top.  We grunted and groaned as we left the restaurant and got into the car and the car seemed to do the same as we drove away.

Miljenko invited us all over to his house to sample his award winning wine made from grapes he harvests in his vineyard uphill.  After several red and white samples drawn off from a couple of 500 liter stainless steel tanks, we said goodbye, returned to the office, where we dropped off Goran and headed back to Zagreb.  Stjepan and I had a lot to discuss on the way back.  Honestly, he had not had all that much exposure to coppice prior to my arrival.  His superior at the Research Institute had actually done most of the work planning our site visits.  In forestry school today, they more or less write off coppice as an antiquated management system and actively promote the high art of silviculture as it relates to uneven aged high forest management.  This isn’t to say that this management system doesn’t have its significant strengths but it does imply something of a bias against the simplicity of a rotational forestry based on the production of small diameter polewood.

Knowing full well that private landowners will likely continue to coppice their woodlands well into the future, Stjepan recognized a need to provide them with some type of manual to help guide their decision making.  We discussed the possibility of publishing our book in Croatian and other eastern European languages as well as the potential to create a series of simple, informative extension-style pamphlets covering a wide range of subjects that we could share with private landowners.  While our book would likely be very valuable to private landowners in Croatia, the depth and scope may be a bit beyond their available time and interest and so something more concise and geared specifically towards their needs and circumstances may well prove appropriate.  It was great to already begin to start planning future collaborative projects and also look for ways to translate our insights and experiences so that they are useful to a wider audience.

Stjepan and I returned to Zagreb and checked on the travel details for me to make my way to Sofia, Bulgaria on Sunday.  It would be a long journey done in two segments - midnight Saturday until 7am Sunday to get to Belgrade Serbia and then 7:30am until 7pm Belgrade to Sofia.  At least there was train service and it wasn’t too complicated.

We dropped into a nearby ‘coffee bar’ for a few drinks and a few hours later headed back home.  Having yet to ‘go out’ in Zagreb, I found out that a local bar hosted an ‘open jazz jam’ so I crossed town around 9:30 to check it out.  Housed in a stone walled, cave like, vaulted basement space full of character, I arrived to a lively scene and a packed room.  It seemed to be a pretty international crowd with English resounding as a common means of communication.  A few minutes after ordering a beer the music resumed, and I soon found my toes tapping away to some solid instrumental jazz and funk.  The musicians rotated somewhat, taking turns on guitars, keyboards and drums.  It was entertaining and definitely the type of cultural outing I’d been in need of.  Unfortunately, just before 11, they bid us goodnight and packed up their gear.  I stepped out into the cool night air and caught a trolley bus back home.

I met Stjepan outside my hostel just after 8am.  He’d been able to secure the company car for our day trip to the city and region called Varazdin where we were to meet with two fine forestry consultants who work for the European Forest Institute and provide consulting services to private forest owners in this region.

It took us about an hour to reach Varazdin in the eastern part of the Croatian ‘panhandle’.  Along the way, Stjpean shared some of the unique qualities of this region - namely the dominance of private forest land (70% private vs. 30% state owned).  As is the case for many parts of south east Europe, the average private landholding is very small, totaling about 1 hectare (2.6 acres).  And because of the fragmented nature of the landscape due to land inheritance tradition, the average plot size is just 1/3 of a hectare.  Varazdin has the highest population density in the country and possesses a sizable mountain range.  Typically people occupy elevations up to 300-400 meters, which is generally characterized by oak and chestnut forests.  

Many people maintain small vineyards here - often plots are located up in the mountains/hills where they have a small cabin that they visit on weekends.  The typical settlement pattern features homes and agricultural fields on the lower slopes and bottomlands, vineyards on the south facing slopes and woodlots on slopes facing north.  Most of the wood produced in these private woodlots either goes for some type of agricultural use - garden sticks/fence posts/vineyard use - or fuel.  Today even some of these needs are changing though, with more and more vineyard owners converting to concrete posts instead of oak or chestnut.  

We arrived at the forest office and headed up to the second floor where we met Miljenko Zupanic and Goran Habus - both kind men eager to share their work with interested souls.  Though it was ten or so in the morning at this point, we started things off with a welcoming warmer of local schnapps - a unexpected but welcome tradition.  I shared a bit about my intentions and interests with them, and they told me a bit more about their work and the clients they work with.  Basically, their role is to develop forest management plans for private property owners and educate them as to how to manage their land in a sustainable way.  It took me a while to realize that while Goran seemed to completely understand my English, he didn’t quite have the vocabulary to converse, so he was relatively silent unless I asked him a specific question.  

There are 41 associations of small woodland owners organized at the municipality level, and together, they have collectively established the 'Union of Croatian Forest Owners'.  There are 8 associations in Varazdin County with 30-40 members.  In Croatia, all felling on private land must be approved by the government as detailed in a forest management plan unless you only cut 5 cubic meters per hectare per year or less.  Miljenko and Goran connect with forest owners and help them develop these plans.

We headed out into the field, taking a brief tour of some of the sights their city had to offer on our way.  Our first stop was a private, mixed woodland that featured minimal coppice management.  With an uneven aged structure and a mix of conifer and broadleaf species, it was a healthy-looking, well-managed forest but didn’t really reflect my desire to connect with small scale coppice management.  Standard trees included Scots pine, wild cherry (Prunus avium), hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), black locust (Robinia).  There were a few coppice stools mixed in as well including hornbeam, locust, and chestnut - all cut on short rotation.  Hornbeam will tolerate this to a degree as it is a shade tolerant understory species.

It was a similar experience at our second site visit.  They brought us to a well-stocked, robust, natural-looking forest though it was only a 1/3 acre parcel.  While I could appreciate the management planning that has gone into the parcel, I was more actively drawn to the hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) copse that bordered it to the south.  The hornbeam copse was relatively poorly stocked with wide spacing between stools - perhaps 12-15’ - and seemed like it was just too small and inconsistent a property to be properly managed with a regular coppice rotation - at least given the fact that fuelwood was the only product they seemed to be looking to produce.  We talked a bit more about the mixed stand we were there visiting and then made our way to a nearby cafe for a group coffee break.

Here I learned about the complexities of private property ownership in Croatia.  After World War II, the communist government made it illegal for individuals to own property larger than 5 hectares in size.  They nationalized these seized parcels, and as a result, Croatian woodlands were dramatically fragmented.  This legacy provides land use planners considerable challenge as they work to develop cohesive plans for the innumerable tiny private woodlots scattered about the countryside.  In reality, they typically treat private woodlands as part of larger complexes, making more sweeping planning recommendations despite the fact that the realities of each site and the needs of the clients are very much unique.  Unfortunately this is the best they can do do with their available budget and personnel.

From here, we traveled another 20 kilometers or so to the town of Lepoglava, known largely because of the prison housed within the community.  The relatively modern prison has a far deeper history though.  Actually it’s located partly within a building in which 14th century monks established the first high school in the town.  At that point, the walls were made with willow wattle and daub.  We climbed up the hillside where we snaked in between compact private landholdings, most of them filled with parallel rows of grape trellis’.  Typically the villages lived at lower elevations but owned small vineyards and woodlots at these higher slopes - as mentioned earlier - south facing slopes were given up to vineyards and the north facing slopes reserved for woodlots.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about my experience in the Czech Republic, many of the vineyard rows were oriented running up and down the hillside (perpendicular to the contour).  Recently, my friend Edmund Brown wrote me with some insight as to why this is.  His brother and sister-in-law Garrth and Alanna spent time working on a farm along the French/Swiss border where they were told that orienting the rows vertically like this on south facing slopes provided both sides of the vine with equal access to sunlight, thereby encouraging more even fruit ripening.  Since then, I’ve had this corroborated by grape growers in Greece as well.  When I asked what they’d do on east or west facing slopes, Greek wineman Stefanos simply replied - ‘Don’t plant grapes’ (well, to paraphrase him at least).  Obviously this pattern won’t achieve the desired effects in all circumstances, but it definitely makes sense on south facing slopes, despite the way it accelerates erosion and soil loss.  (Apparently Garth and Alanna were told that people would historically bucket eroded soil back upslope to compensate for losses during the season.)

Amidst these parcels, we parked the car and started to explore the woodlands on foot.  To be completely honest, most of them were in pretty poor shape.  It appeared as if most of them were being aggressively thinned, most likely as a source of fuelwood.  This isn’t a problem in and of itself - in fact it could actually help to increase the productivity of individual stools overall.  The problem I saw was that the narrow parcels didn’t receive very good incoming solar energy and different management patterns made it difficult to maintain a more standardized treatment.  One particular chestnut stand we visited featured stools with 1-2” diameter stems that were very crooked and useless for little but fuelwood.  The stubs remaining after individual stems were cut had been aggressively hacked at with an axe leaving a very ragged wound that looked quite susceptible to invasion by decay organisms.  The stools were irregularly spaced with large gaps between one another. 

We looked at another few stands and saw similar patterns though this one had been the lowest quality by far.  It’s difficult to tell how accurate a representation this was of the state of private woodlands in the area but it did provide me with several useful insights - mainly that the small size of these parcels, their orientation on slopes, people’s steady need for materials and relatively crude management had created strained coppice stands that appear to be stressed and largely unproductive.  I don’t say this to be overly critical as I don’t truly understand the social, economic and ecological context for these systems.  These observations do help me see why forest practitioners seem to have a negative view of coppice and aim instead to steer the system towards a more dynamic, uneven aged, high forest structure.

On the other hand, I could see how, especially on this scale, coppice systems would be much better suited to provide useful materials for individuals, families and villages in their concentrated production, utilitarian form and intensive yield.  In my mind I came to recognize how coppice has been, and will likely continue to be a management system ‘of the people’.  And it’s with this in mind that I see it most relevant to a locally-based, energy producing, post-petroleum culture of the future.

From here, we headed back through the town to a nearby village where our hosts had arranged lunch for us at a local family-owned restaurant.  This proved to be a unique treat in that the restaurant isn’t always open - you need to phone ahead during the daytime.  What this means is that they opened up the restaurant just for us and we sat down to a tremendous meal.  Starting off with Rackia - the regional term for locally made schnapps (made either from grapes or plums) and followed by white wine, we enjoyed a multi-course meal - punctuated by multiple cigarette breaks at appropriate stopping points by our smoker comrades.  Thoroughly stuffed, we made room for a desert dish that easily could have been an entire entree - a 15” pizza-like pastry dish that put us all over the top.  We grunted and groaned as we left the restaurant and got into the car and the car seemed to do the same as we drove away.

Miljenko invited us all over to his house to sample his award winning wine made from grapes he harvests in his vineyard uphill.  After several red and white samples drawn off from a couple of 500 liter stainless steel tanks, we said goodbye, returned to the office, where we dropped off Goran and headed back to Zagreb.  Stjepan and I had a lot to discuss on the way back.  Honestly, he had not had all that much exposure to coppice prior to my arrival.  His superior at the Research Institute had actually done most of the work planning our site visits.  In forestry school today, they more or less write off coppice as an antiquated management system and actively promote the high art of silviculture as it relates to uneven aged high forest management.  This isn’t to say that this management system doesn’t have its significant strengths but it does imply something of a bias against the simplicity of a rotational forestry based on the production of small diameter polewood.

Knowing full well that private landowners will likely continue to coppice their woodlands well into the future, Stjepan recognized a need to provide them with some type of manual to help guide their decision making.  We discussed the possibility of publishing our book in Croatian and other eastern European languages as well as the potential to create a series of simple, informative extension-style pamphlets covering a wide range of subjects that we could share with private landowners.  While our book would likely be very valuable to private landowners in Croatia, the depth and scope may be a bit beyond their available time and interest and so something more concise and geared specifically towards their needs and circumstances may well prove appropriate.  It was great to already begin to start planning future collaborative projects and also look for ways to translate our insights and experiences so that they are useful to a wider audience.

Stjepan and I returned to Zagreb and checked on the travel details for me to make my way to Sofia, Bulgaria on Sunday.  It would be a long journey done in two segments - midnight Saturday until 7am Sunday to get to Belgrade Serbia and then 7:30am until 7pm Belgrade to Sofia.  At least there was train service and it wasn’t too complicated.

We dropped into a nearby ‘coffee bar’ for a few drinks and a few hours later headed back home.  Having yet to ‘go out’ in Zagreb, I found out that a local bar hosted an ‘open jazz jam’ so I crossed town around 9:30 to check it out.  Housed in a stone walled, cave like, vaulted basement space full of character, I arrived to a lively scene and a packed room.  It seemed to be a pretty international crowd with English resounding as a common means of communication.  A few minutes after ordering a beer the music resumed, and I soon found my toes tapping away to some solid instrumental jazz and funk.  The musicians rotated somewhat, taking turns on guitars, keyboards and drums.  It was entertaining and definitely the type of cultural outing I’d been in need of.  Unfortunately, just before 11, they bid us goodnight and packed up their gear.  I stepped out into the cool night air and caught a trolley bus back home.

Thursday March 3rd in Sisak, Croatia

Thursday morning Stjepan and a colleague of his Boris Liovic arrived to pick me up right on time.  Boris is a plant pathologist, specializing in disease monitoring and management.  He proved to be an exceptionally appropriate companion for the day in that he has been studying the chestnut blight that is now affecting Croatian stands of sweet chestnut.  We’ll get into it later, but this is the same blight that decimated the American Chestnut nearly a century ago.

Feeling a bit rough from the previous night at the pub, I’d not gotten up in time to get any food.  I was therefore enamored when Boris asked if I’d eaten yet - and if not, if I’d like to try a local delicacy - burek.  I couldn’t have imagined more sweet-sounding words.  Boris, like Stjepan, spoke wonderful English and had a rosy glow reflecting from both his face and his spirit (turns out he just got back from a fishing trip to Africa - but I could imagine that Boris was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy even without the aid of a rejuvenating vacation).  

Before we reached our ‘burek’ destination, the two filled me in a bit on the climatic conditions of Croatia.  Possessing a broad range of climates from the Ionian coast in towards the eastern border, they are described as Mediterranean, Alpine, Continental and Pannonian.  Zagreb is about 2/3 of the way east of the coast and receives about 900 mm of rain annually (35.4”).  The eastern parts of the country receive something closer to 700 mm.  Their dry season generally starts in April and lasts much of the summer or for at least three or four months.  The distribution of their precipitation has been more erratic in the recent past and they’ve seen an increase in mean temperatures.  The soils in this part of the country are largely alluvial, and the area is bounded by three primary rivers - the Trava to the North, Danube to the East and the Sava to the south which forms their border with Bosnia.

Apparently, it wasn’t until 1780 that the nation saw significant exploitation of their virgin forests within the interior.  The coastal portions of the country were settled much earlier and were subsequently subject to more intensive forest management.  Nationally, forest extraction reached its peak between 1890 and 1920 during which time the total forest cover plummeted from 70% to 30%.  

Croatian forests have since come to receive a deep national appreciation, so much so, that they are deemed a ‘national treasure’ in their constitution.  In fact, it is illegal to export raw logs from the country - you have to add some value to it.  Recognizing the quality of the oak stands there, apparently some Italian forestry companies established mills within the country to harvest logs and do the minimal amount of processing necessary so that they might export the logs to their high-end furniture manufacturers in Italy, only for some of the wood to eventually return to Croatia in the form of kitchen cabinet built-ins, etc.

At this point, we were nearing our destination - the State Forest Office in the city of Sisak - where we were to meet with foresters Tihomir Pejnovic and Marko Sprisic.  In this region the primary forest species are the pedunculate oak, sweet chestnut and beech.  After an hour or two in the office, we’d planned a trip out to the field to look at some of the state managed coppice forests.  We arrived at the office and headed up to the second floor.  Our hosts greeted us warmly and we gathered in Tihomir’s office where we were soon brought coffee and grape juice.  Life felt pretty good at this point.  

While I’d come to suspect that this might be the case, my suspicions were soon confirmed - coppice is not viewed favorably by the state forest managers of today.  Concerned with developing management plans that generate income from their forest reserves, coppice products prove by and large to be economic losses for the state.  So much so that their most active management strategy with coppice woodlands has been to aim to convert them into high forest (what we think of as typical forest).  Unfortunately for them, this strategy has proven to be far more difficult than they’d like it to be.

At this point, I began to glean an even deeper insight into the context of coppice management today.  While I’ve recognized ever since first apprenticing in the sweet chestnut coppice of southern England that value-adding is absolutely key to developing an economically viable enterprise, I could see it even more clearly as I sat with these knowledgable, well-intentioned foresters who saw nothing but drawbacks to the coppice stands they inherited.  The black locust they have growing in their area is basically worthless to them.  They market sawlogs and veneer as their most valuable, primary products.  While fuelwood amounts to something, it amounts to little when compared to the returns they see from a mature, 100+ year old pedunculate oak forest.  Chestnut proves to be just about as useless - their primary outlet is the chemical industry where they reduce the polewood to pulp to extract the tannins for use in dyes, beauty products, etc.

As this realization began to crystallize within just a few short minutes of our interview’s start, I needed to find ways to keep them engaged while still gleaning useful information.  I could clearly tell that most of the questions I was looking to ask would be of little relevance to the management objectives of these men.  Though the insights I sought to glean would likely not be found in this conversation, I knew they still had much to offer.  What I came to learn was that their district is broken down into 25 management units, each of which has a management plan that’s reassessed and rewritten every 10 years.  Housed in a series of impressive volumes, each identified forest stand is routinely catalogued, with profiles that describe the location, species mix, stand productivity index, age since last harvest, total productivity, basal area per hectare, etc. - in other words, extensive data has been collected to describe the state of their forest resource.  And this is just the management plan - after completing the harvesting work on a site, the net results are tallied so that they can compare their prescriptions with the net result and better inform their re-interpretation of the plan come the next cycle.

What this means is that even for the coppice forests that they’re not all that keen about managing, they’ve got detailed yield data that will describe the total volume of wood produced on a range of sites with varying species mixes - information that will be invaluable to us in our research and very difficult to come by.  Fortunately, Stjepan has agreed to access some of this data and share it with us.

After an hour or so in the office, Boris, Marko, Stjepan and I set off for our field trip to an extensive stand of chestnut coppice (of which they possess 15,000 ha or 37,000 acres in this region) about 25 kilometers away.  On the way we discussed the current fuelwood market in Croatia and the relative values per unit volume.  In Europe they sell wood by the cubic meter (of which there are about 3.63 to the cord - our unit measure in the States - 128 cubic feet).  In this part of Croatia, green (unseasoned) fuelwood goes for between $35-40 per cubic meter - really not that much cheaper than prices in many parts of the States.  This wood is usually delivered cut in 1 meter lengths and is then up to the buyer to reduce to lengths of either 1/2 or 1/3 meter.  Marko said that the average house in that area will burn between 7-20 cubic meters of wood per year.  Most of the houses are poorly insulated brick structures, so they are very ineffective at preventing heat loss.  This wide range varies depending on a number of factors, including relative insulation as well as heater type.

After 20 minutes on the road, we climbed up a mountainside on a forest road where we stopped to examine a few stands of sweet chestnut.  Here the effects of the blight were painfully visible with 30% or more of all the stump sprouts infected with canker-like wounds rendering the polewood useless for most building or craft work.  Believed to have been imported to Europe from the States (where it was originally imported from Asia) in the early 1950s, the blight has done considerable damage to stands across the continent though this was by far the worst I’d see to date.  Interestingly, it didn’t have the same devastating impact that it had on trees in eastern North America and the reasons for this aren’t exactly clear.  Perhaps it has something to do with the Mediterranean species’ relative tolerance.  It’s really unclear.  But what we saw is that the blight tends not to affect sprouts until they reach about 5 or 6 years of age, and then they get hit hard.  It was most definitely a sad site to see.

But beyond the blight, the chestnut coppice here really looked to be a stand that represented little value to its owners.  They did continue to manage it as coppice - the challenge and costs of actively shifting it towards a high forest structure, coupled with the effects of the blight, represent a far greater investment than the state is willing to make.  But the stands featured stools that appeared to receive little conscious care, inefficient spacing and just generally the type of attention you might expect to see from a site managed on a large scale - actually a 12-15 hectare stand that would be managed by a contiguous clearcut all at once.

I did take some measurements here - 

The first cant featured stools that were about 7-8 years of age.  The average diameter at breast height ranged from 3-3.7” or so and the stand possessed about 90 square feet of basal area per acre.

At the second site, of the same age, there were about 5-6 stems per stool and 100 square feet of basal area per acre.  Average diameter at breast height ranged from 2.8 to 3.6” and the poles were about 32’ high.  The spacing in this areas seemed to average about 10-12’ on center.

We explored the woods for another half an hour or so and returned to the State Forest Office where we were treated to an enormous lunch, complete with wine and crepes.  We enjoyed good laughs and a considerable joke-exchange before saying goodbyes and parting ways.  

When we arrived back in Zagreb, Boris invited us over to his home where he wanted to show us some of the furniture he’d designed and had built.  He also took the opportunity to share about 5 different types of schnapps that he’d procured from friends and/or infused with various herbs.  After a half hour of sampling, I was about ready to call it a day.  Stjepan dropped me back off at the hostel soon thereafter.  

It had been a very informative day.  Though I didn’t really end up making the connections I’d necessarily intended to, I felt that I’d gained an absolutely valuable insight into the true context of coppice management in Croatia in this day and age.  In many ways, I find that engaging with your critics can be far more valuable than surrounding yourself with supporters.  In the long run, I know that this experience will help to sharpen my focus and be more clear about the intentions I bring as I work to develop economically viable, consciously-designed coppice systems.  

I used the morning as an opportunity to sleep in as much as possible.  The bed was remarkably uncomfortable, so I was thankful to finally have another opportunity to use the sleeping bag I’ve been lugging around with me these past three weeks (as a sleeping pad).  I’d elected to stay in a hostel here to save some money and mingle a bit as I’d planned to be in Zagreb for four days.  That morning, Igor, the calm, kind proprietor made pancakes for us and a few of us discussed the state of Croatian politics.  

While it’s been overshadowed by the unrest in Egypt and Libya, Croatia has been subject to a steady string of protests these past few weeks.  Fed up with deceit, corruption and inequity perpetuated by the people in power, protests of increasing scale have been mounting almost daily in the capitol of this southeast European nation.  Despite it’s rich natural beauty, breathtaking coastline, and thriving tourist industry, Croatia is a poor nation with a large rural population that have apparently been largely forgotten by their political leaders.  While the demands of the protestors aren’t exactly clear, the people are gathering to express their distaste.  It will be interesting to see what it amounts to.

At three, I went outside to meet my host, Stjepan Dekanic, who approached the hostel front just around the time I stepped out to meet him.  With wavy, long dark hair and sideburns and a coat to match (minus the sideburns - and the waves), Stjepan possesses a calm and even demeanor that is absolutely infectious.  We slipped right into conversation and decided to head towards the city center to find a place to meet and talk about our plans for the next couple of days.  

Stjepan is currently completing his phd work, writing his thesis that explores the reasons why pedulculate oak (Quercus robur) populations are in decline throughout Croatia.  Likely the result of a confluence of factors, the pedulculate oak is the most valuable oak species in Croatia - so much so that it provided 44% of the total state forestry income in 2006.  Today roughly half of the value of the pedunculate oak comes from the harvest of diseased trees.  Often found thriving in lowland ecologies, some of the trees have been demonstrating drastic reductions in vigor in the recent past, which has dramatic implications for the Croatian forest industry.  

Stjepan works for the Forest Research Institute, a research-based organization that carries out scientific studies to support the needs of the 16 nation-wide State Forest Offices that oversee the management of the nation’s forested lands.  In exchange, the State Forest Offices provide the Forest Research Institute with funding.  About 70% of the forested land in Croatia is actually owned by the State - the remaining 30% is owned by private landowners of which there are 6000 throughout the country.  With a total forested area of 2,403,000 ha (5,937,942 acres), Croatia possesses 512,000 hectares (1,265,180 acres) of coppice woodland, comprising a total of 21% of their forest reserves.  Comprised primarily of pubescent oak, sessile oak, holm oak, hornbeam and beech stands, Croatia also has some coppice in sweet chestnut, ash, pedunculate oak, willow, alder and poplar.

Stjepan and I took a trolley into the center of the city where we wandered through the streets exploring the old town.  With over 700,000 residents, Zagreb is the largest city in Croatia.  Given it’s size, it doesn’t feel quite as large as it actually is.  We snaked up towards the top of the hill where some of more notable landmarks are - including St. Mark’s Chapel which features a bright, multi-colored, decorative tile roof (see photo below).  From there we enjoyed the view out over the city, gaining a bit of context on the landscape we’d just explored.  Given that it was a cold, gray day, it was about time for us to find an indoor space to continue our conversation.

A nearby ‘coffee bar’ suited our needs and we enjoyed several beers and lively conversation sharing views and opinions on a wide range of subjects and gaining from one another’s insights and contributions.  I could quickly tell the next few days would be good fun and very informative.  As the evening grew late and the beer more frequent, it was eventually time to go.  We got sandwiches back in the town center and went our separate ways by trolley.  We’d agreed to meet the following morning at 8 at my hostel.

Mark in Brno Czech Republic, Monday February 28

After having stayed up till about 2 working the night before, I slept in about as late as I could before I went down to catch the tail end of the continental breakfast the hotel provides.  I left overstuffed with my eyes a bit too big for my stomach and grabbed my things before heading down to the lobby to meet Peter.  

I’d spent an hour or two doing some background research on Peter and his work so that I would be better equipped for our day together.  Having lined up site visits with close to 15 people, it’s hard to keep straight who does what and where their respective expertise lies.  I was fascinated to learn that Peter is actually a ‘Historical Ecologist’ - a phrase I’m not even sure I’d come across before.  He has three master’s degrees and a phd, with a particular emphasis on Medieval History.  Though rather young, Peter has published several dozen academic papers and given talks on an impressive array of subjects.  What’s particularly unique about his perspective is that he integrates the social aspects of history with the likely ecological realities of the era.  This connection is often overlooked in more basic historical accounts.  As I learned more about Peter, I grew increasingly eager to meet him and glean what I could from his particularly unique background.

Just as I reached the hotel lobby, he was entering the building from outside.  We greeted one another and headed towards his office to pick up the car which was located conveniently next door.  According to Peter, the complex in which their company recently relocated was built during the last throes of communism in the Czech Republic, and the architecture and construction quality clearly show it.  The car was located in a below ground parking area that we accessed through two successive remote-operated gates.  We hopped in the car and headed out towards our planned site visit, a place called Devin Woods, about 40 km to the southeast, close to the Austrian border.  

It wasn’t long before we noticed the rather poor performance of the car.  At first I was wondering if Peter was just having trouble driving a manual transmission, but the vast majority of vehicles are manual in Europe, so I doubted that to be the case.  With each gear change, he’d approach 4000 rpm or more with little oomph behind it to propel us along. Our suspicions were confirmed when, at a traffic light on a shallow incline of a hill, the car no longer advanced.  We were stuck.  I got out and gave us a push up to the crest of the hill where Peter was then able to coast forward until he reached a turn-off, hoping to find a parking space.  Just as he began to turn, a police car showed up.  It seemed that things were about to get even a little more complicated but fortunately, for some reason, they chose to turn off their lights and move ahead.

We parked the car, grabbed our things and headed back to the office.  Fortunately we had only been driving for 10 minutes so we weren’t all that far.  At the office, Peter took care of the logistics of procuring another company car and figuring out what to do with the stranded one while I feasted on the impressive library on his shelves.  Peter had handed me The Historical Ecology Handbook by David Egan as a primer to his field of expertise - I was happy to see Tending the Wild author Kat Anderson amongst the list of contributors - I had the pleasure to meet with her a few months ago in Davis, CA.  Another interesting book I’ve yet to see was entitled Reading the Landscape of America by Mary Watts.

Ok, so back to the day as planned.  In case I haven’t already mentioned this, Peter works for the Institute of Botany, a branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.  The research academies maintained by the state, receive 60-70% of their funding from the government to carry out their research (the remainder they receive from grants).  Their work is project-based, so they need to continue to develop creative fields of study in order to receive steady funding.  Their academy carries out interdisciplinary research to construct as whole a picture of their identified ‘problem’ as possible.  This includes paleoecology (pollen analysis), history, botany, phytosociology (a look at the shift in plant species in a given place over time).  

In the realm of phytosociology as it relates to coppice woodlands for example, the primary problem they typically aim to assess is biodiversity loss as a result of a steady canopy forming.  As we’ve already discussed, in a coppice woodland, the shifting mosaic of full sun, moderate canopy cover, and full closure creates a varied light regime that supports a broad diversity of plant, insect and wildlife species.  This change in composition can only be carried out through long-term research done at the same point in the field.  Fortunately, at some of their study sites, researchers identified quadrats (areas of study) 15m by 15m that they indentified on a map for future researchers.  Scientists at the Academy were able to re-locate these quadrats and then catalogue the current species data so as to examine what the net result has been of the disappearance of coppice management in the area.

Today coppicing is virtually non-existent in the Czech Republic.  As we’ve seen in many parts of Europe, it fell victim to many of the same influential changes in the years following the second World War.  Most forestry in the Czech Republic to date then has been geared towards the conversion of existing coppices into high forest.  In a few relatively rare instances, conversation has driven the recoppicing of some neglected stands so as to help restore some of the dwindling, high biological diversity habitat.  Peter explained that high forest management was basically born and developed to a high art in that very area, (Czech Republic, Austria, Germany) and it has a very strong lobby today.  The management of woodlands for quality sawlogs is the primary diver of their management goals and as such, it leaves polewood a product of little to no value.  

Interestingly though, the Forestry University located in Brno recently contacted folks at the Academy because they have a genuine interest in coppicing.  They would like to research why it’s good to coppice and do some in-depth research that looks at the value and volume of materials produced in coppice systems.  Apparently, they already have test plots that they’ve been managing for a few years, and Peter has offered to share the research once it’s reached a polished form.  

One-third of the Czech Republic is covered by trees.  Most of this forested land is managed by a huge, state run forestry company.  In total, they actually manage about 1/5 of the country, with most of the forested land in plantation.  In much of this part of the world, up to about 150 years ago, forest management consisted of nothing but coppicing, or ‘parezeni’ as they call it in Czech.  Because this all really started to change about 70 years ago, there is very little reliable oral history to help reconstruct these old management systems - it’s basically been wiped free of the cultural memory.

The lowland region we were in in the southeastern Czech Republic is basically the hottest place in the entire country.  Receiving an average of 700-800 mm precipitation per year (27.5-31.5”) their average temperature is about 9 degrees C (48.2 F).  They have a subcontinental climate that is relatively warm, rather dry and receives most of its rain in the summer.  The landform here is relatively flat with a few topographic exceptions.  

Peter is originally from Hungary which is known for being the shangri-la of black locust production around the world.  ‘The Great Hungarian Plain’ describes the massive flat expanse that was treeless up until the 18th century.  By the 19th/20th century, they began to perceive this as a problem established vast woodland tracts there using largely the black locust tree - (Robinia pseudoacacia) a species which they imported sometime around 1700.  It has thrived there and they’ve since gone on to do considerable selection for trees that have desirable timber qualities.  At this point, you really can’t get rid of it it’s so well-established.

Our meandering conversation continued on as such until we started to reach the site for our field walk.  One of the only hills present in the landscape about as far as you can see, this 300 hectare forested hillside was already known to have been managed as coppice in the 14th century (and the site has been very heavily populated for 3000 years with a Bronze age settlement located at the crest of one side of the ridge).  By and large, the vast majority of the coppice wood was used as a fuel.  This is also wine country, with vineyards populating the mid-elevation slopes for the last 7-8 centuries.  Historically, poles for the supporting vines in the vineyards represented one of the other most important products that the coppice provided for consistently.  

Through research they’ve learned that the coppice rotation steadily lengthened over time.  In the 14th century, people typically cut on a 7 year cycle.  By the 17th century, they were cutting at 11, 12 or 13 years.  And this continued to increase to 20, 25 or even 40 years, up until it was no longer managed in the 1950s.  In the late 19th century, the property began to be used as a deer park as well.  They brought in muflon - a rocky-hillside-adapted goat from Corsica - and along with the wild boar populations already present, the nobility used the land as a hunting ground.  In addition to the collapse in the value for polewood, the property ceased to be managed as coppice in 1946 when it was declared a nature reserve and thus protected from extractive management.  

We parked the car in the village below and headed up the hillside through the vineyards until we reached the wood’s edge.  It was primarily a lime (linden) coppice (Tilia spp.) with scattered pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) standards.  The lime poles were typically 6-8” in diameter and probably 60’ in height.  The stand had a particularly open form with 4-6 meters spacings between the stools.  It seemed like much of the structure as I would’ve imagined it once being had declined during the years of neglect.  Nonetheless, the trees seemed healthy and looked to be producing solid growth still.  According to Peter, most of the old vineyard compartments were still clearly visible with the right view, and we actually were able to make them out when we reached the ridge.  The ownership of this property was similar to that of much of Europe’s woodlands in the past.  Possessed by the nobility, the villagers had access to the ‘underwood’, (coppice wood) but the landowner retained the rights to all of the standard trees.  Over time, he worked to steadily increase the number of standards located within the woods, and this became something of a steady point of tension with the villagers, as more standard trees ultimately reduced the volume of underwood.  

At this point, there would’ve been much more woodland in the area as well, and they likely would’ve cut the entire hill side in one go, rather than break it up into smaller cants (or coppice compartments).  I found this a little bit difficult to envision myself as it was a very expansive property, but I also didn’t fully comprehend the density of human settlement there at that point which would have a considerable influence on the volume of material they’d need to harvest annually.  I suppose that simply felling the entire hill would be easier than trying to encourage the community to honor cant boundaries that limit annual felling to a restricted area.  It’s clear that the complexities of managing land use on the community scale can be considerable.

Stopping along the way to examine some of the intricacies of the stand, I found on average between 6-8 stems per stool with each pole’s diameter at breast height between 5 and 7.8”.  They appeared to be 45-50’ high, with stools spaced at an average of about 15’.  Using a prism, I found the stand contained roughly 140 square feet of basal area per acre.

In another ten minutes we reached one side of the peak of the hill where we explored the ruins of the castle - did I mention there was a castle there as well?  Largely crumbling, the limestone and brick walls were clearly exposed for inspection.  After enjoying the view, we headed back down into the woodland and proceeded to wrap our way around the hillside to examine the remainder of the site.  Further along Peter pointed out the network of woodbanks that denoted the wood’s previous edge.  These ancient excavations - ditches and berms - would’ve featured a fence atop the bank at one point and were used to protect the trees within the woodland from theft and livestock.

As we circled around towards the other side of the hill, Peter shoed me other historical earthworks indicating past land use - compartmentalized rectangular basins bounded by earth berms.  These are the remnants of old vineyards.  As people cultivated the soil in between their vineyard rows, they inevitably turned up rocks in this rocky, limestone-based soil.  With nowhere between to put them, they tossed them into piles on either size of their vineyard, not unlike the strategy that gave rise to the stone walls that today snake throughout New England.  In time, trees began to grow on these stony banks - especially oaks, as they were well suited to the dry, rocky soils.  People would later coppice them every 10-15 years, and they provided necessary poles for maintaining the vineyard.

We wrapped up our field walk after passing through one last impressive stand of neglected lime/oak coppice-with-standards.  With healthy, productive stools that were particularly widely spaced, it was very interesting to imagine how one might augment the productivity of stand overall.  The open understory expanse seemed well capable of supporting one more more productive shade tolerant vegetation layers - medicinal herbs, gooseberries/currants, elderberry, kiwi vineyard…  Lots of potential here - especially in the transitional woodlands that many folks might end up with as they aim to convert high forest stands to coppice back in North America.

Upon our return to the car, Peter suggested that we drop into a nearby town for a late lunch, and I eagerly seconded his motion.  As we drove away, I asked him about what I found to be the confusing vineyard layout along the hill.  Stretching in narrow bands vertically up the hillside (perpendicular to the contour of the land), this is the opposite orientation I would select if given the chance (unless I was concerned with cold air drainage and frost dams forming behind a contour strip of grapes).  All we could come up with as an explanation was that perhaps they chose to orient them vertically so as to make things more equal in their distribution.  In other words, everyone got a slice of upland, mid-slopes and lowlands, as opposed to a narrow band along an even contour.  We weren’t sure this was the reason, but it seemed the only logical explanation.

About 10 kms away, we reached the village of Breclav which is particularly close to the Austrian border.  We strolled through the streets examining the architecture, visiting the castle (and the massive wine press - see photo), enjoying the views and finally settling on a charming old-style restaurant.  After having only eating Czech food for a few days, I was already well aware of the meat-heavy cuisine.  I ordered a stuffed pork (not sure with what) with braised cabbage and a soft, spongy white bread that apparently is unique to Czech Republic.  

It was getting late by the time we left, and Peter dropped me off back at the hotel.  Another day’s unique insight into the plight of the coppice worker in the modern world.  Peter brings a uniquely invaluable perspective to his work and helped me gain a broader understanding of the context of the historical practicality of these systems over time.  He is a great contact to have made.

Friday was a day of travel with little really worth recounting though it was packed full of events.  For anyone interested, here’s a bullet point list….

Madrid
Hostel roommates arrive home at 6am
Wake up 7:15
Rush to bus station on a packed metro
Catch the bus at the last minute (well almost)
Lose window seat to kind Nigerian man
Kind Nigerian man tries to make me ‘born again’
Active conversation ensues
Friendship results - he doesn’t give up though...
Grand views of brittle landscape
Colorado/Utah-like mesa topography
Almond orchards in bloom
Blog-city and catch up/multi-tasking
Arrive in Barcelona
Locate hostel via metro
Arrive - it’s on the 12th floor - whew!
Enjoy the awesome open air terrace on the third floor
Sauna next door!!  Yes, and it was included in the hostel price
Incredible 3 course dinner (first meal of the day at 10:30 pm) with wonderful waitstaff, Catalunyan birthday - complete 360 from dining experience the night before
Nice conversation with a lovely young Portuguese man
Return home - bed…..

Saturday
I had to set off early this morning to make sure I caught my flight.  I pulled my things out of the high-tech hostel lockers (activated by a card you swipe past a sensor on the door), did my best not to wake any of my roommates and set off for the Barcelona airport.  The metro trip there was very straightforward.  I’ve been blessed by very convenient travel throughout much of this trip.  I’ve grown especially grateful for cities with metro systems as they make for such expedient, accessible public transport.

My flight left at 11am, and the trip to Prague took only two hours.  While I had a window seat, cloud cover obscured most of the views for the first hour or so (we spent much of it above the Mediterranean Sea anyways though).  


The second hour on the other hand proved to be pretty spectacular.  Our route over the Alps featured crystal clear skies and breathtaking views of the high alpine terrain and the towns and villages typically located in the valley bottoms.  I snapped a couple dozen photos of the landscape below.  Beyond the Alps, the countryside opened up, appearing to be a spreading plain, featuring clustered settlements with roads radiating out from the center, and adjacent fields and woodland pockets that seemed to serve each respective community.  I later confirmed that this is the typical settlement pattern in the area, which makes a lot of sense from a historical development perspective.

We arrived in Prague more or less on time, and now it was time to get used to a new language and currency.  I hopped on a bus bound for the city center and from there stumbled onto my hotel after getting severely turned around a few times.  In the limited travel I’ve done in Eastern Europe, I’ve found myself particularly inept.  The radial pattern of the streets, coupled with complex and unfamiliar names make even clear maps feel more or less useless.  I noticed I was most definitely not alone in my ineptitude as I recognized innumerable tourists, nose firmly planted in their map, displaying confused looks.  Re-reading through Oliver Rackham’s Trees and Woodlands in the British Countryside, I got a chuckle later that night as I came onto a quote describing an old historical method of recording property boundaries.  I imagined this quote being used to give directions to someone to get from point A to B in Prague...

'Start from Twyford along the road to Bracken Ridge, from there along the road to Carrion Barrow; then in a straight line to the pear tree; then along the road to Ceardic's Barrow; the to Withy Grove; then to the road that shoots over the ditch; then along the road to the pollard oak; from there along the road from where it adjoins the wood... by the little hedge along the spinney... along the hedge to the old maple tree. . from there to the hoar (ie - lichen-covered) apple tree; then along the ditch out to the river Test; to its southern bank; then along the bank; then below the timber weir to the northern bank; along the bank back to Twyford.'  

Boundary of Hurstbourne Priors (Hants), dated AD 901

Well, fortunately for me, I’d brought my compass with me which meant that in the evening when I had no sun to provide orientation, I could still tell which direction I was heading.  That, coupled with a map, made me immensely more effective in finding my way around.

I checked into the remarkably reasonably-priced Pension Alabastr and was greeted by the very kind proprietors.  The fourth floor room was lovely and featured a small terrace providing me with a wonderful view of the cityscape.  I was only to spend one day in Prague - my scheduled visit was actually in the city of Brno - about 2 hours south, but it proved far more economical to travel to Prague first - so I figured I’d make the most of the opportunity to visit this exquisitely-beautiful city with a rich cultural and architectural history.  

Making use of the limited daylight hours, I headed north towards the old town.  The architecture in Prague is absolutely stunning.  Ornate, well-proportioned building facades often feature decorative paintings of some sort depicting imagery from folklore and rural life.  The city has become a particularly popular tourist destination during the last decade plus for this and much more.  Some of the most impressive structures in the city date back to the 14th century.  My knowledge of the history and architecture of the city is very limited - all I can say is that the experience in the old town center is immensely memorable.  

I was greeted with a festive atmosphere when I arrived at the square.  A crowd had gathered around a group of costumed performers armed with puppets, masks, stilts and creative, engaging games.  Nearby, vendors manned wood fired spits rotating hams and offering mulled wine.  I had to partake in this cultural experience, and it was a true delight.  As one might imagine, it was a lot cooler in Prague than it had been in Barcelona that morning, but it was something of a relief to put some warm clothes on once again.  

I continued to stroll through the city, pausing to admire the incredible detail in the clock tower of the old town (perhaps its not actually called the ‘clock tower’ - I can’t recall but that’s the best I can do).  I believe it is 600 years old and features the only astronomical clock in the world!  And it still reads correctly.  At this point I happened to be standing immediately in front of an English speaking tourist group so I soaked up as much insight as I could.  Basically, it’s very complex - I don’t think the guide really understood it, but the clock features the 12 astrological signs as well as the sun and the moon and indicates their relative location to one another at this point in time.  Below, there’s a rotating clock face that features the names of a canonized saint for all 365 days of the year, which functions as a current calendar.  And above, the clock itself provides a show every hour on the hour with a door that opens, from which emerge the 12 apostles who do a little dance of some sort along with additional characters (one of them a skeleton) on either side.  I’m sure there are videos of it on youtube and far better explanations of it all somewhere on line.  If anyone digs it up and could add a link or better description in the comment box below, please do.  But check it out.  It’s pretty mind-blowing.


Not much else to say really.  It’s hard to imagine visiting Prague without feeling inspired.  

The next morning, I’d hoped to visit Dobra Tea in the city center.  A few friends of mine opened up a branch of this original tea house in Burlington, Vermont, and I’ve already logged in several full work weeks there, chipping away at this book.  It would’ve been nice to have a chance to visit the original and say hello, but alas, they didn’t open until 2 on Sunday, and I needed to get myself to Brno.

I hopped on a bus on the other end of town and we set off for the two and a half hour journey towards the southeast.  The landscape is largely agricultural in this part of the country (I can’t say much for any other parts as I really haven’t visited them).  Gentle topography blanketed by wide expanses of grain crops.  This time of year, there’s actually little to see but stubble, bare soil or in some cases, newly-germinated seed.  Not much in the way of woods - at least on either side of the highway.  Occasional hedgerows break up the monotony of field crops, and from time-to-time scattered woodland plots emerged, but by-and-large it was a prairie-type landscape.

We arrived in Brno around 4 in the afternoon.  I glanced at a map and intuitively made my way in the direction of my hotel on the northern edge of the city.  It took a little bit of guesswork but I eventually found it and settled in.  The following morning I had a 10 am appointment to meet with Peter Szabo, my Hungarian, Brno-residing contact.  I spent the evening exploring the old town - it followed the same general pattern as that of the rural villages I’d seen from the air the other day despite the fact that it’s a fairly large city of 400,000 - a dense central district with roads radiating out from the middle and a ring road around the perimeter.  Like Prague, the architecture is truly inspiring and it was entertainment enough to simply stroll along the cobblestone streets taking in the history embodied in this centuries-old built environment. 

Exploring in and around Madrid, February 23/24

My plan for the day Wednesday was to hopefully visit some oak Monte bajo (coppice) and take a trip up to the village of Cotos along the ridge of the Sierra mountains north of Madrid.  I got a bit of a late start and caught the Metro to the local train depot and then headed north towards Cercedilla where I had to change to a bus to reach the ridgetop.

As we left the city, the landscape largely gave way to the dehesa-style woodland, dominated by the Holly oak.  The structure seemed particularly dense though and it didn’t appear as if it were an active working landscape.  As we started to reach the villages closer to the foothills of the mountains, pollarded trees intermingled within pastures and hedgerows of mixed species trees and shrubs carved up a well-partitioned rural landscape.  The details of these systems were difficult to discern (and more difficult to photograph at cruising speed with dirty windows).  It was good to get a taste of what small-scale rural agriculture systems looked like nevertheless.

We arrived in Cercedilla where we transferred to a bus - the narrow passage up the mountain requires transport via either a more narrow train or bus.  The cute, mountain city seemed a haven for outdoors enthusiasts, boasting bicycle and outdoor gear shops, inviting cafes, narrow streets and various accommodation options.  It definitely seemed to be a great base for more rural excursions into the mountains of central Spain.

The bus snaked through the at-some-points ridiculously narrow streets leaving me wondering if they’d actually had to design the buses around the available turning radius they inherited from the centuries-old town planning.  Like many parts of Europe, most of the private properties we passed featured several trees managed by intensive pollarding - most likely the result of a cultural tradition as much as anything functional.  It does keep the trees low and ensure they provide healthy shade come summertime, but otherwise seems to have little functional value.

As we escaped the village limits, we entered oak-dominated woodlands, the deciduous species Quercus petrea or the pedunculate oak.  Most of the stems were fairly small - 3-4” diameter and 25’ high or so.  They didn’t appear to be coppiced as I’d anticipated, though the stands were very dense, almost thicket-like.  We continued to climb, and I was hoping to make out clearer signs of coppice management, but to the best of my ability, didn’t recognize any.  Twenty minutes or so later, we’d reached an elevation where oaks gave way to pine (Pinus sylvestre) and between this ecotone and the ridgetop, there was little else in the way of woody diversity.  Several ski slopes and a competition area straddled the road and finally we reached Cotos - if there were a town, I missed it.  

It was a beautiful site located at the base of an upland valley with sweeping views.  We arrived there at 3:15, and I was disappointed to discover that the visitor’s center closed at 3.  I had hoped to glean an orientation to the area and find out where and how to access the oak silvopasture/coppice that I’d expected to find there.  With the last bus retuning to Cercedilla in another 2.5 hours, I figured I was best just to set off along the clearest path up, hoping I might gain a view that might lead me visually towards the coppice stands I was looking for.  Internally I knew that what I was looking for is something that I wouldn’t find heading up the mountain, but I figured the worst case was enjoying a panoramic view from 2100 meters or so.  

The cool air felt wonderful.  It was a bright sunny day, amplified by the snow cover.  Folks were rejoicing in the winter respite, sledding skiing and just enjoying the deep deposits of frozen water.  The well traveled pathways at the base of the settlement seemed to have about 4-6” cover but as I snaked my way uphill, there was easily 2’ or more in places.  It was hard to believe that so much snow could persist in a location that seemed so openly exposed to the strong sun, but the air temperatures were likely cooler than they felt given the gorgeous clarity of the day.  

It took a little over an hour to reach the ridgetop, and the hike was well worth the view.  In a sheltered valley about 15 minutes below the ridge, was a distant stone cabin - perhaps built by a shepherd for seasonal accommodation as they followed the grass uphill as the onset of the dry season made lower pastures impractical.  

I didn’t have much time to enjoy the views as I wanted to be certain I didn’t miss the last bus back down.  I never did see the oak coppice I’d been looking for despite the scope of my viewshed, but the experience was well worth it.  The ability to witness such an intense variation in microclimate over a relatively short distance spoke to the dramatic effects elevation and aspect have on the climate of a site (3 degree Fahrenheit for every 1000’ change in elevation).  An hour later I was back down at the bus stop with another time to take down a chorizo bocadillo (chorizo sandwich - a sliced baguette with sausage slices - no sauce, nothing else!  That’s not by request - it’s the way it came) and a quick beer.  We reached the village of Cercedilla just before the light began to fade and I was back home, feeling well exhausted by 8:30.



Thursday was to be my last day in Madrid.  My next planned stop on my trip required me to leap across western Europe in one fell swoop - from Spain all the way to the Czech Republic.  This plan wasn’t so much a result of a lack of coppice anywhere in between but rather my active efforts to connect with prospective hosts who had responded to my requests.  I know that there is coppice in Italy, Germany, Holland, Scandanavia and likely a number of other countries, but I was particularly eager to explore some of the still-active systems in south eastern Europe, so I had intended to high tail it over there so I could spend the second three weeks of my journey reveling in their past and present.  

What this means is that I had to suss out a sensible travel plan from Madrid to Brno, Czech Republic which proved to be less-than-direct.  I did find a bus that went more or less direct but it would take 40 hours.  As someone who’s no stranger to multi-day bus trips (I’ve crossed the USA in a Greyhound on several occasions) I knew that the benefits of the extended experience and trans-sectional views of the landscape at this point in life may well be outweighed by the toll the experience might take on my physical stamina.  (And it was pretty darn expensive).  The only other option I could locate was a flight from Barcelona on Saturday the 26th.  The entire trip would thus only take two hours - I’m well familiar of course with the ecological costs of air travel, and did all I could to justify it in my mind.  I’ve got a steadily guilty conscience, and in the end, just chose to let it be and hope that the good that comes from it all outweighs the emissions I’m generating.  

So at this point, I hadn’t really even done much to explore the Spanish capital city.  To help reduce some costs and also hoping to connect with some interesting folks, I switched to a very inexpensive hostel across town.  Not particularly well laid out, the proprietors were very nice and it proved to be comfortable and provide a nice social outlet.  

I checked in at 1pm and opened the door to my room to find 2 of the guests still deep in slumber with their possessions strewn about the remaining beds in the room.  It is Spain remember (late partying, etc).  I set my things aside, disturbed them as little as possible and headed out on foot to explore the city.   

I was only a twenty minute walk from a primary avenue where I could access several museums, the botanical garden and an extensive park all within a few miles of each other.  Seeking to make the most of the sun and the gorgeous spring-like weather, I started off at the botanical garden.  It’s always interesting being in another part of the world and seeing species native to your bioregion.  To me it feels like seeing an old friend, and I was surprised to see how many eastern North American natives I came across.  Sugar and silver maple, boxelder (!! - I love seeing this so underappreciated plant in special collections or as street trees (Milan, Italy) in foreign places), hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), black walnut, black locust (not exactly native to the all of northeast, but it’s everywhere - the most common street tree I see in cities around Europe) and though native a bit further south and west, one of the most impressive specimens I came across - Maclura pomifera (see attached photo) - also known as osage-orange.  

I’d always thought of this dense, rot-resistant, adaptive, nitrogen fixing plant as a small tree but the specimens they had in their collection at the botanical gardens here were immensely impressive with trunks over 26” in diameter and canopies reaching 50-60’.  This wonderful multi-purpose tree is fantastic for living hedges as it’s also thorny so it will help deter wildlife and livestock from penetrating it.  Responding actively to coppicing, the osage orange has considerable potential for use in agroforestry systems throughout North America - keep it in mind!

I explored the grounds for a couple of hours, observing growth forms and management regimes and gleaning insights into some of the more exotic species that appear to have coppice potential that I had yet to consider (Sophora japonica - one that Eric Toensmier had brought to mind a couple of months ago - and Amorpha fructiosa being two that I’d previously not met in person).  Hoping to pack in a bit of quality time at some of the nearby museums, I left the peaceful confines of the garden and returned to the bustle of an active, tourist-filled city promenade.  

Three institutions piqued my tourist mind that were all within a fifteen minute walk of each other - the National Archaeology Museum, the Anthropology Museum and the Prado Art Museum.  Fortunately all three were open until 8pm leaving me with plenty of time to explore them all (or blow through them at top speed rather).  Passing by the Prado I saw that they waived the 8 Euro admission between 6-8, so I chose to hit the Archaeology Museum first.  I’d hoped that I might stumble onto some exhibition that indicated some type of coppice tradition but alas, no luck.  It was a small installation - the scope definitely left me feeling awestruck and inspired by the incredible creativity and ingenuity of human cultures the world over during the last several thousand years.  The level of craftsmanship expressed in Grecian pottery, Egyptian sarcophagi, Spanish gold jewelry and more reflects a level of cultural sophistication that I find difficult to grasp.  But no time to sit around and dream - I two more museums to pack in!

The Anthropology Museum was very interesting and well laid out.  The exhibits were all in Spanish but they seemed to be written to suit my reading level which was particularly enjoyable.  Only two of three floors were open - the first featuring Asian cultures and the second Africa.  American cultures were housed on the third floor and strangely enough, no displays on European anthropology.  Coincidentally, I’d come to the museum hoping to gain a more detailed anthropological insight into the history and traditions of the Spanish people.  I guess that must be housed in another museum…

Each region featured well presented exhibits on tools, food, clothing, buildings and belief systems.  The segments devoted to the housing styles and farming techniques of south east Asian cultures were particularly fascinating, featuring well-crafted dioramas showing the different techniques they’d developed over time for hulling, cleaning and winnowing rice.  

With just one hour left, I sped off towards the Prado Museum, ready to cash in on their free admission.  The line that had wrapped around the corner of the block when I’d passed by just before the promotion began had completely disappeared by this point, and feeling eager to soak up historical artistic tradition, I grabbed a ticket and set to exploring.  Looking to make my visit as multi-functional as possible, I set to looking for paintings that depicted managed landscapes that might indicate some type of coppice/pollard management.  I found only one - and what it actually showed was eroding plaster that revealed a wattle and daub wall framework in a beautiful painting depicting Jesus’ nativity.  I’m sure there were more, but by this point, I was having trouble thinking straight and was about saturated.

I retreated to the hostel enjoying the lovely cool evening air.  This part of Madrid was particularly lively with narrow streets full of shops, restaurants and bars.  A few hours later I set out for an evening meal.

Tuesday February 22nd - Madrid, Spain

Today I’d planned to meet with Alfredo Bravo Fernandez - a professor and researcher at Madrid Polytechnic Institute.  He picked me up outside the metro station entry on the University campus.  Things seemed pretty ideal in Madrid at this point.  The sky was blue, the temperatures must’ve been approaching 60 (F) and I was eager to get yet another take on woodland management in the old world.  I was wondering exactly how we would find one another with me standing on a busy street side, but a few minutes later I heard someone shout my name from across the street - guess I don't blend in as much as I’d like to think I might.

Instantly I felt Alfredo’s warm and generous spirit - a young professional, with a dark beard and a calm and pleasant demeanor, we immediately set off for a nearby park for a short field trip.  Alfredo had told me that things were very busy for him early in the week with meetings every day and other work responsibilities, but I kind of pushed hoping he could squeeze in some time with me to give me a better insight into his area of expertise.  As a phd student, his thesis explored the role of thinning in ‘monte bajo’ (the Spanish term for coppice - literally short woodland) to help improve total stand health, reduce fire danger and encourage productivity.  Also having actively studied the Spanish dehesa system, Alfredo was to prove a wonderful ally in my journey.  

For those folks who aren’t familiar, the dehesa system is a remarkable silvopasture management system (silvopasture is the integration of tree crops and grazing livestock).  In the dehesa systems which cover more than 3,000,000 hectares (7,800,000 acres) throughout much of western and southwest Spain and Portugal (but also found in and around central Spain to a lesser degree) livestock graze on pasture with a canopy of oak trees. Typically these include the Holly/holm oak (Quercus ilex) and the cork oak (Quercus suber) though other species are also integrated into these systems. More a result of active integration of production systems than a consciously established system via planting, dehesas provide myriad benefits - shaded pasture, opportunities for fuelwood production, and a livestock diet supplemented by protein-rich acorns.  During dry times (typically summer and winter months), pastoralists could also harvest the evergreen foliage of the Holly oak and use them as supplemental fodder for their animals.  In the case of those systems featuring cork oaks, the outer bark from these mature trees could be harvested on a regular rotation in a way that didn’t injure the tree, thereby allowing them continuous living cover an a sustained, long-term yield of cork.  Up until the development of plastic and screw-on corks, the global wine industry relied on this very cork production system that had been sustained for centuries.  And to top it all off, pigs grazing on fallen acorns during the last few weeks of their lives are recognized the world around for the quality and flavor of their meat.  Know as ‘jamon iberico de bellota’ - ham from the Iberian peninsula finished on acorns, it’s not uncommon for this prized product to fetch $100/lb or more.  Needless to say, the residents of the Iberian peninsula developed an elegant strategy to cope with the challenges of their Mediterranean climate.

Alfredo and I spent some time getting to know one another on our ride out of the city and learning a bit more about our respective backgrounds.  He’d grown up in the city but had long had a relationship with the woods and a love of trees, and this continued to drive his studies well into adulthood.  He’d not heard of permaculture, and I was happy to be able to introduce it to him and share some resources that had been translated into Spanish.  I’m conversational in Spanish, and he’s about the same with his English so we each provided one another with an opportunity to practice our respective speech and build some new vocabulary.  Believe it or not, they don’t teach you how to say stump sprouts, adventitious buds or polewood in Spanish in high school.

About a half hour outside of town, we pulled off to park and as we crossed the street I could instantly see why.  The park was full of incredible ash pollards (Fraxinus angustifolia or ‘fresno’ en Espanol) - some of them easily three feet in diameter.  Probably last cut 15 years ago, Alfredo explained to me how their management has become a problem for the same reasons as we’ve seen in so many other places.  As they start to grow, mature, and fall out of rotation, the stems get to be too big for the ‘bolling’ (the trunk) to support them, and they become very vulnerable to damage due to high winds.  We examined some of these pollards and saw how poor attention to detail while cutting pollard shoots in the past have caused long-lasting damage to the bolling, inviting infection, disease and decay.  Alfredo explained that the cuts should be made slanted outwards, if not vertical, to force water to drain off and away from the bolling.  In the areas where this hadn’t been done, large holes had formed, inviting more water into the stem and leading to further decay.  Of course, ‘bad’ is all a matter of perspective - if you’re looking to create habitat for invertebrates and wood-dwelling fungi, this is an exceptional way to do it and as Helen Read shared in London, these ancient trees provide vital habitat for these organisms.  But that said over time, this will lead to the demise of these ancient creatures, and without an active replacement plan in place, the pollarded landscapes of today will not be sustained.

As we left the lowlands of the park and made our way up hill the landscape quickly began to shift from ash to oak and pine (primarily oak).  Alfredo told me that the primary pine species - Stone pine (Pinus pinea) - is one that produces cones with edible pine nuts.  It proved to be a minor constituent of these woodlands, but it was great to know that such multi-purpose species populate the site.

As we started to explore the uplands, I noticed surface water in a number of spots and asked Alfredo more about the soils and bedrock geology of the site.  Largely granitic and gneiss-derived, the soils are particularly coarse sands which are excessively drained and prone to leaching of their mineral fertility.  Fractures in the bedrock provide underground water channels, and in turn, leads to the emergence of springs and seeps throughout the landscape, providing active exit points for groundwater at the soil surface.  We stopped and looked at some of this exposed soil, and it had a texture not unlike that of small textured perlite, pebble-like in appearance.  With modest annual rainfall very unevenly distributed throughout the year, even abundant sunshine can only do so much towards making this a hospitable climate for year-round food production.  It’s likely because of these challenges that grazing has become such a staple of the local agriculture.  

As we came to examine the Holly/holm oak that basically dominated the landscape here (with scattered broom - Cytisus scoparius - a shrubby legume - and the deciduous Quercus fagina) strewn about) we observed the fact that Holly oak is somewhat unique in its ability to send up sprouts from both the stump and the root system.  This strategy means that trees tend to form colonies which provide low woody browse for livestock, the grazing of which ultimately does little damage to the tree.  One problem that it does create though is a propensity for fire.

Given the brittle nature of this landscape, fire is a common ecological process, and especially without the regular wood harvest that it likely once saw when the systems were under more active management, the high density of stump and root sprouts, under a low spreading canopy create the perfect conditions for fire to spread rapidly.  It’s because of this that Alfredo has been so actively examining the role that thinning plays in stand health and overall productivity.  From the perspective of an individual interested in acorn production, because the flowers of the oaks are located at the branch tips at the periphery of the tree’s crown, it’s far more desirable to have a low spreading canopy than one that tends towards vertical growth.  Thus, allowing these trees to develop a more open grown form at ideal spacings of anywhere from 15-30 meters encourages this stand structure as well as a more even partitioning of water and minerals.  

An as of yet unmentioned benefit of this silvopasture system is the fact that the pasture growth underneath the trees stays green far later in the season.  Shaded from the intense sun, furnished by the absorptive leaf litter the trees deposit and aided by the hydraulic lift caused by tree roots bringing groundwater to the upper layers of the soil, the difference between grass underneath the oaks and out in the open is clearly evident.  And adding one more benefit on top of this, the herbaceous growth located within the intervals between trees, often supports wildflowers and other flowerings plants which in turn support a healthy pollinator complex and an active apiary industry.

Scattered within this woodland - which is now more of a public recreation site than a grazed dehesa, tree tubes fill in the gaps between more mature individuals including Holly oak and olives - another well adapted multi-functional tree.  Alfredo told me there’s really no need to plant Holly oak, they do just fine spreading from their acorns though the olives may add another valuable yield.  We looked at the unmanaged structure within the stand, and I could see how the preponderance of deadwood and shrubby stump sprouts overtopped by standing trees could pose a considerable fire hazard during the dry season.  The stunted root sprouts also show very little productive growth and so their presence appears in this case to sap energy from the dominant stems of the stools.  Again, with a functional, in-tact system, these root sprouts would be consumed by grazing animals, converting them into food and nutrients and helping to control and manage the growth.

Alfredo told me that the primary products oaks furnished in dehesas were the supplemental fodder their acorns produced and fuelwood.  To his knowledge, a craft economy was not directly linked to these systems, and I could see why.  In this dry landscape, growth was relatively slow and the oaks take on a lower form with few straight stems.  While there would certainly be some potential to add value to this material through craftsmanship, it’s not ideally suited.  The material is well-suited to fuelwood though - dense, hot burning, and reaching a reasonable diameter over a modest productive cycle, oak fuelwood makes sense.

We started to circle back towards the car and passed by a few more groves of ash pollards.  Other more mesic (moist-adapted) woody species would also typically be found in these lowland ecologies including willow, poplar/aspen and sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus).  Upon reaching the car, we turned back towards the University where we spent the afternoon.

Alfredo shared his doctoral dissertation with me while he took care of some office work.  The specialized spanish vocabulary proved to be a bit of a challenge for me, but I could tell that it contained some very useful information.  Entitled ‘SELVICULTURA EN MONTES BAJOS Y MEDIOS DE ENCINA (Quercus ilex L.), REBOLLO (Q. pyrenaica Willd.) Y QUEJIGO (Q. faginea Lam.): TRATAMIENTOS TRADICIONALES, SITUACIÓN ACTUAL Y PRINCIPALES ALTERNATIVA’, it translates roughly into Silviculture in coppice woods of oak (three species): Traditional treatments, the current situation and alternatives.

We spent the lunch hour in the faculty lounge where I met one of his colleagues Sonia Ruiz - a silvopasture specialist who has spent considerable time researching the dehesa systems.  She gave me some great insights into the evolution and distribution of dehesa silvopastures in Spain - namely throughout western Spain and Portugal, though present in some areas in the center of the country as well.  She recommended that I spend the next day visiting the upland pine forests in the Sierras north of the city and gave me detailed instructions as to how to arrive there.  A wonderfully kind person, Sonia seemed confident and driven in her work.  

After lunch I sat in on a team-taught master’s class on Ecosystem Restoration.  Covering a wide rage of topics during the course of the semester, the opening segment was focused on an overview of silviculture and was taught by Rafael Serrada, one of the most respected forest researchers in Spain.  I struggled a bit to understand the details but he used slides to illustrate his points so I was able to follow along  enough to get the gist.  He demonstrated how silviculture is the management of forest resources to provide for various cultural and societal needs, illustrating the myriad products that woodland species can provide.  By this time in the day, slightly overheated in a warm classroom and tired both mentally (exercising the Spanish conversation side of the brain is exhausting stuff) and physically, I slipped out during the mid-class break (it was a four hour lecture!) and headed back to my hotel for the night.

We took Sunday as an opportunity to sleep in a bit (or at least I did being the one with no kids to tend to).  Still feeling the pull of a largely ignored jet lag, has left me in a state of frequent yawning until I really start to come into my own around 5pm each day.  We spent much of the day relaxing around the house, sharing resources and me typing up my notes and reflections from the past week.  My plan was to leave on an overnight train from Limoges headed for Madrid at 7pm.  I took an opportunity in the meantime to enjoy the cool, dry afternoon and take a stroll through the woods we’d explored the previous day.