Boreal forest husbandry

 Boreal forest husbandry.

I have posted on the agricultural potential of our boreal forest in the past and we identified several types of husbandry that certainly could go forward.

not least would be salmon farming in particular and including other fish types as well, all synced with the seasons and exploiting the massive insect larvae load in the lakes.  this allows fish fattening for a fall harvest to allow a reduced wintering over stock.

Pine tree culture has to be fully managed around three point sets well spaced to allow seventy percent sunlight during the summer.  this means forest grooming and herbavore pressure on young pines and brush and weeds.  The good news is that goats can actually do this in particular.  We know human grooming can drop branches at the six inch mark and annual tree topping to harvest green ripened pine cones will facilitates all this.  All this will create an open forest producing a saw log every two decades from any three point planting.

Then of course we have a natural husbandry of female moose and other deer family ruminants who can be fed using bull rush silage over winter.  all this could well lead to a dairy industry as well.

Way more important though is that opened woodlands will allow grass and weed culture to spring up which needs to be rotationally impacted by cattle or bison.  This will begin the process of producing grassland solis overtop acid forest soils and even rock.

what is clear though is that the slow build up of soil will increase stocking density over time.  Plan a thousand years, but also expect to be surprised.  not everything out there vis rock and sandy soils can convert quickly here.

The growing season is still short, but that means only a little in fact and winter outdoor husbandry is something we have already used a lot.  Wood bison are doing it somehow all the way way north.  Goats will not be a problem if they can eat mostly pine boughs which is when we would be tree grooming.  and let us not forget the huge amount of larch and aspen as well.

and we will certainly have ample bullrush silage to work with.

My takehome is that this forest properly managed can produce massive inventories of fish, Moose, goat,  sheep, bison and yes, even cattle in huge abundance.  peat bogs can become bull rush meadows easily enough.  all this country also grows a variety of brush fruit of which we have already exploited cranberries and blue berries.

what is difficult is ginning up a patch of rich soil to make up a garden patch.  understand that our garden growing season runs from the onset of a warm surface soil until harvest maturation.  Yet that begins from even three weeks for radishes through three months for corn and potatoes.  you would be surprised just how much can be done.  also long days force your crops.

The important biological limit is the northern extent of grass growing.  that seems to be at around 55 degrees latitude.  Pretty decent actually and i suspect away from most permafrost.  We can leave that to the cariboo and raindeer.

Understand that this biome can likely support .a billion folks, most of whom will want to migrate south over winter as the active animal husbandry drops off.  Yet even there it is no trick to build proper refugia housing.  ..