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buckybuck
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# Posted: 11 May 2014 02:59pm - Edited by: buckybuck
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Last Friday, my wife and I attended a program at Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, and thought the program series might be of interest to other Buckeyes here.
The program is called A Day in the Woods, and is sponsored by the OSU extension service. Programs are held the second Friday of every month May through November. Most events are held at Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest. If you're not familiar with this area, altogether it's comprised of about 25 square miles of contiguous woods, with only one gravel road that dead ends halfway through it. That's an amazing amount of uninterrupted woodland for Ohio, when you think about it.
Here's some links to Vinton Furnace and the program series:
Ohio Magazine article
A Day in the Woods
Each program is only $10. That covers the day's program as well as a buffet-style lunch. Last Friday, the lunch included ham and a lot of side dishes such as pesto and salads that incorporated plants pulled from the local woods. I didn't see this mentioned anywhere, but this seems to be an adult-only series. There weren't any kids there last Friday. Regardless, I think it would be a painfully long day for older kids, and perhaps an unsafe day for younger kids. Vinton Furnace is unimproved woods with very limited facilities.
The May event started around 9 a.m. (one of the presenters noted that the first session of the year always started a little late, because most first-time attendees don't realize that once you get to the forest, it's still a six-mile drive along a gravel road to get to the forest headquarters) with a PowerPoint presentation, followed by a walk outside, and then lunch.
After lunch, we took wagons to the end of the gravel road and walked to the old furnaces, stopping to examine native plants along the way.
There's a pdf file for the series brochures on one of the links above. Take a look. If you're free on Fridays, it's a great, inexpensive way to gain some woodland skills.
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Don_P
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# Posted: 11 May 2014 09:50pm - Edited by: Don_P
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Neat, From your second pic it looks like they were using coke as opposed to charcoal, I'm assuming those are coke ovens? Our furnaces locally were charcoal fired and declined around the turn of the century when a lack of timber and newer technology replaced them. I can think of 4 or 5 old furnaces in the nat'l forest behind us, several forges and a number of coalings, or charcoal hearths, several lime kilns. Cool stuff. I slid inside one of our old furnaces and stood inside. The lining had collapsed which I assume was the demise of a furnace, the insides were covered with molten slag glass, it was easy to envision the intense heat that had been in there. Another has a huge chunk of what must have been a "stuck" melt. I assume the air blast must have failed and the melt froze inside. Best I can figure is they must have dismantled one side of the furnace, drug the mess out and rebuilt... that had to have been a very bad day. Near one of the furnaces is a row of shacks that must have been employee housing. I'm glad to be living now. It's kind of interesting, most folks now have no idea what that area looked like a century ago. The old rail cuts are still there if you pay attention, the forest is fully regrown where back in the day it was almost a desert. Leading naturalists of that time, Pinchot, Muir, Teddy Roosevelt didn't think the eastern forest would ever recover. They were not entirely incorrect but it has made an amazing comeback.
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buckybuck
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# Posted: 12 May 2014 05:11pm
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Good eye! A forester who had retired from Mead Corporation was along for the program, and gave a talk on the history of the area during its iron production period.
He said that the coke ovens in the photo were actually a failed experiment that was attempted when it became apparent that the surrounding forest was being used up quickly. Seeking a replacement for charcoal to stoke the iron furnace, its operators attempted to use all that coal under the ground instead, and built the ovens in order to convert it to coke. But the local coal had impurities that limited its use as coke.
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SE Ohio
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# Posted: 13 May 2014 10:12am
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I would have loved to have gone along on that tour! Kids are still in school several counties away so I miss things like that.
I did drive around in the experimental forest a few weeks after the June 30th derecho the other year. Kept getting stopped by downed trees. Glad to hear the roads were eventually cleared, as that is some really remote forest...
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VC_fan
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# Posted: 13 May 2014 05:12pm
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Thanks for posting the info - hopefully I'll get a chance to do that some time. Lots of cool nature and history in the area.
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