I am at the halfway point of the VetsWork program with the Mt. Adams Institute and everything is still going great!

I have worked on flagging and tagging many tree stand units for prescribed thinning by the District’s silviculturist. This is to help maintain a healthy forest by not overstressing the trees for resources. Some of the photos below include bushwhacking, flagging and tagging out in the field. As you can see there is definitely some effort in marking the boundaries of these tree stand units.

I have continued working at the Clarno Hardwood production site. In the summertime it is necessary to use water from the John Day River to irrigate the planting beds. However, the intake screen on the pump head intermittently needs to be cleaned off to maintain water pressure to the sprinkler heads. You can see me in one of the photos below, diving into the John Day River to clean the irrigation pump head screen.

I have worked on the removal of tree sleeve protective covers that were put in place to increase the survival of the planted seedlings. After a few years of healthy growth the protective tree sleeves can be removed. I have a photo of a group of people on the side of a Butte removing the tree sleeves. The little blue dots are the tree sleeves that were removed.

So all in all I am still really enjoying my time with VetsWork and the Forest Service. The last photo is of me at a lunch spot at one of my tree stand inspection sites. I love not being in a cube anymore!