Field trip to Ostad, Sweden

My current class is about forest management planning, and while I wish it were done YESTERDAY alas it is not and thus I am busily trying to finish up what needs to be done before the holidays. The main task of the course is to create a 10 year and 100 year plan for an Estate in southern Sweden called Ostad, located about 50 km from Goteborg (the 2nd largest city in Sweden after Stockholm).

To accomplish this task we took a week long field trip to the estate. The field trip involved planning tasks and other exercises related to forestry, some in the field and some in the classroom. Sometimes it is evident that I don't fit in with this group of foresters, such as the day in the trip dedicated to hunting. I, along with 5 others, took a trip to see Goteborg instead. The hunt, from what I can gather, involved a line of people walking through the forest trying to gently scare the animals toward the hunters. Seems a lot less work for the hunter this way compared to the way they do it in Maine. In Maine you have to find the animal yourself by waiting around quietly all day and hoping to get lucky. I am not sure if the Swedish/Danish way is more efficient or just lazy :-)

Here are some pretty photos of the estate we looked at.

















A spruce stand with a moss covered carpet in the afternoon sun.


















Of course there are also not so pretty vistas on a forest estate such as this large clear cut















The tree-hugger in me feels a bit sad to see this but the economic forester in me see that the owner made a lot of money from this forest stand. Forestry, just like any other business, needs to make money and this seems to be well understood in Sweden - probably due to its long history of forestry. What is interesting to me as well is that in the US there seems to be more effort to hide the big clear cut areas from public view, as this will result in complaints (environmental and aesthetic). But here you see small and large clear cuts all over.

On one day of the trip we walked around a nature conservation area. The area had high rock cliffs and apparently millions of years ago it was the shore of the Baltic Sea! Quite unbelieveable to imagine. That means the valley you see with the house in this photo would have all been water. And here we are located at least 50 km from Sweden's west coast.















I also like this photo (above) because of the small pine here. Despite the rock and the terrible growing condition (almost no soil, very wind exposed on the edge of the cliff) this tree is growing anyway. It is strong and determined to grow regardless of the natural elements stacked up against it. It seems to me a metaphor for how we sometimes feel about life. Whatever the challenges and difficulties we must be like this tenacious pine, continuing to thrive and grow anyway.

This photo reminds me a little of Maine. Here I am at the top of a small but rather steep hill where we were doing some inspection of the estate. The lake in the background is representative of many views on this property with all of its small lakes scattered here and there.















Although this course is one that frustrates the hell out of me at times (calculation intensive, computer system and modelling system excessive) I have had the chance to see some beautiful spots in Sweden during my studies here and meet some wonderful people during my time here.