The 10-acre red pine plantation on our Roche-a-Cri tree farm has withstood rodent damage, insect problems, drought conditions and several different tree diseases in its 13-year history.

Domtar forester Juris Repsa said, "Your plantation is looking pretty good, Don, but being in a fire-prone area, you had better get your fire lane around the plantation back to bare soil."

We agreed to ask Dave Reinke of Port Edwards to come down to my tree farm and make a couple of passes around the plantation with his tractor/Rototiller combination.

As Reinke started tilling around the plantation a few days later, he disappeared in a cloud of dust, and as he continued around the plantation, the dust cloud grew even larger and thicker.

When he finished the job, he dusted himself off, creating yet another dust cloud, and commented, "Don, I have never seen anything like this."

I replied, "Dave, this is just Big Flats sand."

This incident got me thinking about the early days on our tree farm when there were open sand blows and pits everywhere. While this was great for keeping our children's sandboxes filled with fresh sand, it wasn't good for growing anything.

Early settlers to the area grew farm crops, but after a few years the sandy soil would no longer support crop growth, and in many cases, the farmers gave up and the land reverted back to growth of trees -- especially jack pine and black and scrub oak.

Longtime DNR Forester Nina Stensberg said that Big Flats in Adams County is in the center, and possibly the sandiest part of the Central Sand Plain, which also includes parts of Waushara, Juneau, Jackson, Portage and Wood counties. She described the Big Flats area as a land of "sand dunes which were deposited by wind and water during the last ice age."

With the sandy soil it's often hard to get trees started. She described the past two years as examples of this with hot dry summers killing most of the trees replanted in the burned over area of the Cottonville fire.

"It is very challenging to grow trees here with the lack of moisture and poor fertility. What's needed in the sand country is a good wet year. In '93 it was very wet. We had jack pines sprouting in the gravel on the side of the roads," Stensberg added. "We have had some acceptable years though, when trees planted in the spring have survived quite well, but overall, growing trees in this sand country is challenging."

Yet, there is a history of successful tree growing in the area, with many thousands of acres of pines planted over the years by individuals and industry. Many of these trees have been and continue to be harvested and replanted today, making Adams County an important wood fiber contributor to the state's forest products industry.

I can only concur with Nina's comments on growing trees in the Big Flats sand. We have lost our share, but then very few tree farmers I know are growing trees to make a quick buck. We spend long hours planting, weeding, and pruning our trees so that we can eventually walk under them and say, "We really did make a difference."

That's what tree farming is really all about.

Don Krohn is a tree farmer in the town of Big Flats. His columns appear monthly in the Daily Tribune.