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It took me a long time to begin to recognize tree farms. Or tree plantations, as they are often called. At first, I just noticed there were lots of trees in New Zealand. I'll show you how I began to start recognizing the tree farms. First, here are some patches of natural forest (or bush, as they call it here). First, the trees across the valley from our house; second, the trees on one of the islands in Otago Harbour; and third, a hillside by Lake Manapouri. Notice there is variation and texture in the carpet of trees.
We'd been in New Zealand several months before I began to notice that many patches of trees had a uniform texture. We'd be driving by a patch of trees with that uniform texture, and suddenly we would come to a place where I could see that the trees were in rows. The next two photographs demonstrate the uniform texture and the rows.
We had lived in our rental house for five months before I realized we had a view of a tree farm out of our window. See it?
Then we moved into the house we bought, and this time it only took me a month or so to realize a patch of woods we can see from our dining room window is actually a tree farm. See the rows?
In some places, the tree farms are like carpets that cover the hills, like the photo below. The hills in the distance are natural forest (I think), but the hills in the foreground are clearly covered by planted trees.
I had a conversation at a church we visited with a man who is somehow connected to tree planations. He told me 85% of the trees grown on tree farms in NZ is radiata pine, most of which is exported to the US and Australia to be used for trim for houses. The remaining 15% is pretty equally divided between three other kinds of trees: eucalytpus, which is exported to China to become paper pulp; macrocarpa cyprus, which looks like Leylandi cyprus and is used to make furniture here in New Zealand; and Douglas fir, which is used domestically for home construction. You can see how much wood they grow here if 5% is enough to build most of the houses. Almost all the tree plantations I've seen on the southern half of the South Island are radiata pine, but I've seen a few macrocarpa and eucalyptus plantations as we have whizzed by in the car. They are usually pretty small. In the photo below, the uppermost band of trees appears to be a radiata pine plantation (see the rows on the left edge of the photo), and there's a band of grayish trees below it, which I think might be eucalyptus trees planted for harvest.
Now that I've learned to identify tree plantations, I see them everywhere. Big, small, very small. Some lamb and dairy farmers seem to plant the edges of their fields with small tree plantations, I guess to diversify. So here are five more photos showing different sizes of tree plantations.
In ten days we're going to the North Island for a three-week vacation and a conference. I'm sure we'll take tons of photos, but won't be able to post them until we get back. So in mid-July, look for several posts of photos from the North Island. Sorry there won't be anything until then.
Two weeks ago we had a great weekend trip to two small towns about three and a half hours north of Dunedin. Part of why it was a great weekend was the weather, sunny all weekend. (It's been gray and drizzly almost all the time since that weekend. This blog might make you think the weather in New Zealand is always nice. It's just that we mostly take photos when the sun is out!)
When you drive north from Dunedin on Highway 1, the terrain is rolling hills for the first three hours. Then Highway 1 hits the Canterbury Plain, which I've mentioned before. It is a 110-mile-long flat plain with Christchurch roughly in the middle going north-south. The plain is about 25 miles wide at Christchurch. At the south end, it's maybe 10 miles wide. We have friends who live in Geraldine, a charming very old town on the edge of the plain at its southern end. Half of Geraldine is flat as a pancake, and the other half is hilly. Our hosts took us up to the hilly part to see the view. The first photo looks north and east from that view point in Geraldine, across the miles and miles of farmland that make up the Canterbury Plain.
The second photo is taken from the same spot, looking west to the foothills of the Southern Alps.
I've shown so many photos of the old houses in Dunedin. I don't think I've shown photos of a typical residential area with newer houses. Here's our friends' house, in the flat part of Geraldine. Their house was built in the 1950s.
On their same block is a house that looks like it's probably close to 100 years old.
The next street behind theirs is just now being developed, so I thought I'd show some of the brand new houses that are being built in New Zealand.
One of the best parts of the weekend was the drive between Geraldine and Methven, the other small town we visited. Methven is about 40 miles north of Geraldine, also on the edge of the Canterbury Plain, so the road between them runs right along the edge of the plain with the foothills and Southern Alps just to the west. It was a gorgeous drive. Below are some photos of the the views to the west from the road between Geraldine and Methven.
We'd been in New Zealand several months before I began to notice that many patches of trees had a uniform texture. We'd be driving by a patch of trees with that uniform texture, and suddenly we would come to a place where I could see that the trees were in rows. The next two photographs demonstrate the uniform texture and the rows.
We had lived in our rental house for five months before I realized we had a view of a tree farm out of our window. See it?
Then we moved into the house we bought, and this time it only took me a month or so to realize a patch of woods we can see from our dining room window is actually a tree farm. See the rows?
In some places, the tree farms are like carpets that cover the hills, like the photo below. The hills in the distance are natural forest (I think), but the hills in the foreground are clearly covered by planted trees.
I had a conversation at a church we visited with a man who is somehow connected to tree planations. He told me 85% of the trees grown on tree farms in NZ is radiata pine, most of which is exported to the US and Australia to be used for trim for houses. The remaining 15% is pretty equally divided between three other kinds of trees: eucalytpus, which is exported to China to become paper pulp; macrocarpa cyprus, which looks like Leylandi cyprus and is used to make furniture here in New Zealand; and Douglas fir, which is used domestically for home construction. You can see how much wood they grow here if 5% is enough to build most of the houses. Almost all the tree plantations I've seen on the southern half of the South Island are radiata pine, but I've seen a few macrocarpa and eucalyptus plantations as we have whizzed by in the car. They are usually pretty small. In the photo below, the uppermost band of trees appears to be a radiata pine plantation (see the rows on the left edge of the photo), and there's a band of grayish trees below it, which I think might be eucalyptus trees planted for harvest.
Now that I've learned to identify tree plantations, I see them everywhere. Big, small, very small. Some lamb and dairy farmers seem to plant the edges of their fields with small tree plantations, I guess to diversify. So here are five more photos showing different sizes of tree plantations.
In ten days we're going to the North Island for a three-week vacation and a conference. I'm sure we'll take tons of photos, but won't be able to post them until we get back. So in mid-July, look for several posts of photos from the North Island. Sorry there won't be anything until then.
