In this volunteer day we are bringing together stewardship and utility through craft. Red Maple is an abundant tree native to this area. It is highly adaptable to a range of conditions and with the disturbances of the recent centuries has spread into a more prominent place in some forests that historically have had a different composition. Given the strength of this species in this region, we have a wonderful opportunity to learn how to partner with it both in improving it’s overall health and balance in the system as well as learning ways to make use of it. Split basketry is traditionally associated with White Oak in this region, but given the challenges that our oaks have been facing in our forests, few are available in the quality typical for good basketmaking. Red Maple does have a history of split basketry and given it’s abundance, is a fine material to learn with.
We will begin our time together dragging cut trees into lines on contour with the slope to serve as a break that will catch leaves that have been exiting our landscape through wind and water flows. By establishing this break, we will be setting up conditions for better rain infiltration into the soil, while creating habitat and food for mycelial networks, detrivores and a web of relationships that will cycle energy previously lost.
After this work we will take some of the Maple logs obtained through the thinning work. We will walk through the process of splitting out the logs and work towards useable Maple basket splits. Our aim in this time is time is to produce useable material that can further be refined and woven into baskets in a future workshop.
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