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septic field pines Friday, January 13 2012
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
The morning was moist and clammy, but, with temperatures at around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a bit warmer than is normal this time of year. It was a good day to catch up on all the television the DVR had recorded during our time down in Silver Spring.
This evening I began clearing some of the small White Pine trees growing on our septic field. Some of these trees are 12 feet tall, having taken advantage of the paradigm of benign neglect that has been in force since we moved here in October of 2002. I was a little concerned about what might happen if these trees grow too large. Would their roots destroy the perforated pipes that allow the septic field to do its work? This is something one of our neighbors warned me about last year, and it's a valid concern. But I have my doubts that pine roots would be all that destructive, since they tend to avoid soil that is too wet. Still, I don't want to place an expensive wager on my being right about this. So I've decided to clear trees from around the septic field's manifold (the length of unperforated pipe from which the perforated pipes branch), whose location (based on a number of surface access ports) I think I know. If the manifold is destroyed, you see, the whole field is destroyed, whereas if trees destroy lengths of perforated pipe far from the manifold, it hardly matters. I intend to leave many of the pines on the septic field standing, particularly in the place where they are beginning to block our view of our downhill neighbors (since this area is far from the manifold). In future years, though, I will have to prune these same trees to keep them from casting shade on the greenhouse, which is only fifty feet or so to the north.
The many small trees that I cut down today mad for a fluffy, unwieldy pile of biomass. I dragged them all over to the greenhouse and piled them to its west and north, will it will help insulate the ground and stabilize the slope of the unnaturally-piled soil underneath.
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