In the first article in this series, “The Road to Consultanthood: Musings of an Antique Arborist,” TCI Magazine, February 2023, the author looked at his introduction to tree care and some of the now-outdated practices and equipment being used at that time. In the second article by the same name in this series, TCI Magazine, April 2023, he reminisced about his foray into logging and millwork in the Pacific Northwest and his eventual return to tree care.
I was ready to learn. The cross-country road trip in my ’66 Bug was an adventure. Only youth and a vehicle so mechanically simple that the windshield washer ran off the spare-tire pressure enabled us to limp our way back east.
I spent the summer of ’81 with my old boss Ray, mostly spewing carbaryl during the largest gypsy moth (now called spongy moth – really?) infestation in Massachusetts history. In some locales, roads were a hairy moving carpet, slick as snot. Folks would shed tears of joy upon our arrival. While carbaryl would be a poor choice today, it’s effectiveness could not be denied. The enemy fell writhing from the trees before we finished reeling in the hose. It was quite satisfying, I must say.
Buckling down and college choices
At 22, I had shaken off some wild oats and was ready to get crackin’ on an education. Training in arboriculture was rare in the early ’80s. In my neck of the woods (the Northeast), there was Stockbridge School of Agriculture in western Massachusetts, University of Maine (middle-of-nowhere, Maine), Paul Smith’s College (middle-of-nowhere, New York) and my eventual alma-mater, Essex Agricultural and Technical Institute in Danvers, Massachusetts, on Massachusetts’ North Shore. Only Stockbridge offered any specific arboriculture training, but all had natural-resource management programs that related well.
Essex Agricultural (“The Aggie”) offered a more culturally diverse environment. After a few years in Hooterville, I was hankering for some entertainment, as well as access to a dentist. The Aggie, offering two-year associate degrees, was founded in 1913, and is now defunct. A new school, Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School, focusing on high school students, has taken its place.
Almost every one of the subjects in The Aggie’s Natural Resource Management program proved relevant to arboriculture, directly or indirectly. Consider the partial course list: Surveying, Dendrology, Forest Entomology, Wildlife Ecology, Environmental Geology, Aerial Photo Interpretation, Public Health and Sanitation, Park and Estate Management, Silviculture, Soil Science and, yes, Arboriculture.
The teachers were down to earth and sincere. While most of what I really needed to know I learned in grammar school, my time there unveiled the big picture, of which arboriculture was a part. Remnants of information retained in the old squash would prove beneficial on numerous future occasions. I could now identify most native woody plants and many of their pests, read and produce maps and knew not to drive heavy equipment over septic fields or cisterns (I have stories).
School days and misguided standards
During this time, I was exposed to current information and how to access it. Publications of the day included “Arbor Age” magazine (long gone) and the “Arboricultural Journal,” put out by ISA. “Tree Maintenance, 5th Edition,” by P.P. Pirone, was the go-to text, and upon recent review, had a lot of excellent information. However, as one might expect, there were a few misguided standards, such as:
- “Clean cuts should be made as nearly flush as possible with the branch that is to remain.”
- Wounds of certain types should be “shaped, by pointing the bark above and below the circular cut and removing the protruding wood with a chisel.”
- “Theoretically, all wounds, regardless of size, should be painted with a dressing.”
- “Small branches that may be undesirable within a few years should be treated as interfering branches.”
- “Filling cavities in the trunk and branches is the most spectacular of tree maintenance practices.”
- On treating Dutch elm disease: As no known control existed for the fungus, practitioners were advised to treat the elm bark beetle with methoxichlor (DDT successor), a residual type of contact insecticide banned in 2003.
OK, so there were still some things to work out.
On the road again
After two semesters, a romantic debacle cast me on the road west once again, this time by myself in an old four-speed Volvo sedan, a tank of a vehicle with a sweet red-velour interior. I made it across in five days. After failing miserably reconciling the relationship, it occurred to me that I had no backup plan.
I spent a few weeks commiserating with friends in San Francisco before heading back east again, replacing the aging Volvo with a sweet 12-speed bicycle.
I’m not sure what possessed me, but I was jonesing for a Quixotic adventure, and was ill-informed enough to underestimate the seriousness of the undertaking. I was an avid rider with previous bike-camping experience. No worries. In late October, I unknowingly embarked on a journey of a lifetime that would promote endurance, perseverance, innovation and self-reliance. And the trees…
I camped under the sequoias of western California, in the vast nut orchards near Stockton and in the ponderosa pine of the High Sierra. It was uncomfortable being exposed through the Southwest, counting on stunted mesquite, creosote and cacti for fuel wood and shelter. I embraced the welcoming accommodations of post and live oaks in Texas, marveled at the vastly spreading, bearded limbs of live oaks in southern Mississippi and camped under the pines in the dunes outside Pensacola.
Home again
After arriving in Jacksonville, Florida, in mid-December, a melancholy ride on a Greyhound bus brought me back home again to Massachusetts. Dead broke but motivated, I secured employment as a wayfaring apple-tree pruner – yet another experience that would leave a mark.
Apple orchards are traditionally pruned in the winter months. Six to eight of us would meet at the local Ho-Jo’s (Howard Johnson’s restaurant) and then pack into an old International Scout. After driving an hour or so to one of the many orchards in central Massachusetts, we would stumble out of the boxy vehicle like some kind of wool-and-flannel clown show, then disperse into the trees.
The tools of the trade were basic. We received one pruning saw, essentially a hacksaw with a fine wood-cutting blade, one surplus army belt with a hook on it to hold the saw and a 12-foot aluminum pole pruner that operated with a lever and shaft. We shared one chain saw. No pruning shears, ladders, ropes or saddles. Trees were free-climbed, and we often worked through inclement weather. The pay was anywhere from 5 to 10 bucks per tree. The same tree would cost 30 times that amount to prune in the ornamental tree care world of today.
I watched in awe one day as the genial 65-year-old patriarch of the operation took a ride with the large scaffold limb that failed underneath him. Fortunately, there was plenty of snow. He performed a classic shoulder roll, popped back up, gave a chuckle and went back to work. No crying in tree pruning.
Honing my pruning skills
Fruit trees are a different animal than amenity trees, but many pruning practices were similar. Apple and pear trees are pruned to have a single leader, with lateral limbs spaced appropriately and in scale with the leader. Peaches are pruned in a vase shape with three to five fruit-bearing scaffolds. To assess thinning requirements, one of my Aggie professors suggested you should be able to drop a cat through the canopy.I spent the following summer back in the saddle with Ray, my former tree care employer.
Once again, not much had changed, except he had more children. Still no PPE requirements, same rudimentary handsaws with large-toothed blades, clunky anvil-style pruners, etc. All the skills acquired to this point were beginning to gel, and I was becoming a decent climber. Concurrently, slivers of knowledge that managed to seep in began to nag at me regarding certain treatments. I did not yet question flush cuts or wound painting, but practices such as lion’s tailing, topping, making large pruning cuts and fertilizing without soil testing were seemingly done without scientific backing or good justification. I was uneasy.
Back to The Aggie
Heading back to The Aggie for the fall semester was serendipitous, in that if I had not taken a year off, I would not have witnessed Dr. Alex Shigo speak on campus. A large man with a deep, booming voice, he was grandpa on steroids. His message was loud and clear; current arboricultural practices were in fact doing a great disservice.
Dr. Shigo, a plant biologist and pathologist for the USDA Forest Service (USFS), spent countless hours in his outdoor lab wounding trees, then later slicing and dicing them up to observe reactions. The results of his studies culminated in his theory or concept of Compartmentalization of Decay or Damage in Trees (CODIT), and a fundamental shift in the approach to tree care.
The flush cut would become the eighth deadly sin and wound painting an exercise in futility. Ironically, the flush cut was not as much of an issue before the advent of the chain saw. It was simply easier to make a cut further from the trunk when armed only with a dull handsaw.
He also shined a light underground. The living soil, mycorrhizae and root hairs, all essential for tree growth, were finally getting their due. Henceforth, any arborist worth his salt would look down before up when assessing an ailing specimen.
Dr. Shigo’s appearance coincided with the arboriculture course during my final semester. It was a breeze for me, and I helped with the climbing instruction, basking in my arboricultural prowess. As I recall, there were still no helmets. I know, right?!
The go-to textbook
Becoming a certified arborist
The arboricultural course also provided a primer for the MCA (Mass. Certified Arborist) exam, still considered one of the profession’s toughest. I squeaked by with a score of 74 and became MCA #468. The Massachusetts Arborists Association (MAA) was founded in the late 1930s by area tree aficionados. Six-hundred-fifty MCAs currently roam the state.
The MAA is proud to be one of the oldest arboriculture associations in the nation. In 1957, MAA introduced a voluntary certification program that would become a precursor for the ISA Certified Arborist exam.
Dutch elm disease brings change
The 1980s would bring substantial changes. Dutch elm disease was rampant in the entire eastern half of the country, and the industry struggled to control it. New treatments and forms of delivering materials were developed and deployed, mostly in vain. The disease killed millions of trees, and tree removal became a booming industry. Innovation and techniques rapidly developed to meet demand.
After decades of static, the times, they were a changin’ …
In part 4 of this series, coming in the July or August 2023 issue of TCI Magazine, we’ll cover my foray into the business and the infancy of an empire.
Resources
“Tree Maintenance, 5th Edition,” by P.P. Pirone, 1978, Oxford University Press. Now called “Pirone’s Tree Maintenance, Seventh Edition,” by John R. Hartman, Thomas P. Pirone and Mary Ann Sall. The book was updated in 2000 and renamed to include the original author’s name.
Howard Gaffin, BCMA, RCA and Massachusetts Certified Arborist, is owner of Gaffin Tree & Landscaping and a member of TCI Magazine’s Editorial Advisory Committee. This is the third in his series of articles sharing an appreciation for some of the changes the industry has seen over the years.
