Of
Children and Chestnuts
by Elizabeth
Webster, Penn
State Forest Resources Extension Writer
Posted:
August 18, 2003
Jim Walizer
lives on Walizer Road. He is a fourth generation Pennsylvania landowner
and his sons, Denny and Mike, are fifth generation landowners. Together,
they own a total of 300 acres in Mingoville, Pennsylvania. Jim's
great-grandfather was half Dutch and half Seneca Indian from the
Mingo tribe. Jim calls him a "hunter-gatherer type." He
provided for his family by hunting bear and gathering nuts. Then
there was Jim's grandfather, who dedicated himself to preparing the
land for agriculture for the next generation. Jim remembers helping
him remove rocks and stumps from the ground. Jim's father was a dairy
farmer. Jim says that he and his father knew about the forest through
hunting, but they didn't know anything about trees.
As a VIP-Coverts volunteer, Jim Walizer has learned, and has taught himself, a lot about trees. In 2001, he was recognized as the Pennsylvania Tree Farmer of the Year. With seven grandchildren and a great-grandchild, born just last year, many of Walizer's management activities involve improving the land for future generations. For example, restoring the streamside pasture into forest for wildlife habitat. "We're giving this area back to nature instead of farming it fencerow to fencerow," Walizer says. "If you can stand here, and imagine what this is going to look like in 20 years. That's going to be a regular little forest come up in here in 20 years. I won't be here in 20 years. This is all for him," Walizer says, nodding to his tow-headed grandson Jason, who argues, "Pap, sure you will be."
Walizer's latest project, cultivating hybrid chestnut trees, could easily occupy him for several lifetimes. Five years ago, Walizer discovered a small stand of chestnut trees on his great-grandfather's old farm in Clinton County. Jim accompanied his father, who had asked to see the place again before he died. "As soon as we walked on the property, well, we found all these chestnuts laying there. And of course I said to dad, 'Well here's all these chestnuts laying around,' and he said, 'Oh yeah, yeah, we used to always have chestnuts around here,' like the old timers. And I said, 'We don't anymore, you know, they're gone. They're all gone.'"
Chestnut blight, caused by an exotic fungal disease, infected virtually every mature chestnut tree in the eastern United States. Before the blight, a considerable percentage of the trees in Pennsylvania's forests were chestnuts. They grew to 100 feet tall and five feet in diameter. According to Walizer, the record diameter for a chestnut tree was 17 feet. "The eastern sequoia," he calls it. Tree identification experts believe that the trees on the Walizers' Clinton County farm were crossbred with Chinese chestnuts about 70 years ago. Today, the trees are tall like American chestnut trees, but like the Chinese chestnut, they're disease-free.
The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) and other partners, including Penn State, are working to develop a crossbred tree that will have the desirable qualities of an American chestnut (tallness, straight-grained wood, and a food source for native wildlife), and yet be blight-resistant. Walizer grows his chestnuts experimentally so he can share with the TACF and Penn State what he learns about successfully reintroducing a crossbred tree into the woods. He explains, "A lot of the foresters are saying that the easy part about the American chestnut is doing the crossbreeding…and the hard part is going to be getting them out in the woods."
At the TACF 2003 Annual Meeting in October, Walizer-who counts himself among the "hillbillies that are along with all those professionals"- will be given five to seven minutes to talk. He plans to talk about different tree protector tubes he's tried (Tree Pro made one type especially for him), and also about the unconventional practice of cutting seedlings just above the root collar to promote faster growth.
Wearing a 'Walizer Farms' cap, Jim surveys the 260 chestnut seedlings planted in his side yard. He's planted them in a variety of tree tubes to protect against animal predation: netted, plastic, a netted and plastic combo, two feet high, four feet high, narrow, and wide. He's planted some of them in the sun, others in the shade, and just for fun, he planted a handful of seedlings directly under a walnut tree. "You're not supposed to be able to grow anything under a walnut tree because the roots and fallen leaves of the walnut poison them. And that's a proven fact. But look at these trees growing in the shade. Look at this one here, he's doing pretty good and he's growing right under this walnut tree where he's not supposed to grow."
By far the most amazing tree in Walizer's orchard, however, is the one that he saves for last. The tree has two main shoots, one has grown steadily for four years, and the other has sprouted up from the ground in less than one year. Reaching over five feet in height, the sprout that grew up in a matter of months is by far the taller of the two. Walizer says, "The secret of the American chestnut, I think, is that it has this ability to grow this much in one year." He plans to do something experimental with this tree: Cut the original shoot off at the base to allow the second, faster growing shoot, to thrive. Walizer admits that he's lost a lot of trees, but that doesn't stop him from experimenting with them. "I'm just a conservationist," he says. "It's just a game. Financially wise, I'm not going to make any money off of it. I have to put my money into it to do it. But it's a fascinating thing…Some of us who are conservation minded are trying to bring this tree back. So we won't have lost this tree due to man."
