- 437 
 
 
                              The Pine Cycle 
 
      Mr. Kurtz began operations by fencing a small pasture just below the

house, which is on top of one of the hills included in the property. He 
bought a few head of cattle and grazed them year long on this fenced pas-

ture, taking them in at night, and feeding them as needed with hay and 
grain produced as described under the field and garden crop cycle. He 
protected the pasture from fire by raked or burned fire lines, ultimately

hitting upon the scheme of burning the fire line- INSIDE THE PASTURE so 
that the cattle would concentrate upon the line early in the spring and 
keep it relatively clear of vegetation.    This system of burning inside

the fence makes the costs of maintaining fire lines considerably less than

are experienced under the ordinary practice of burning the lines outside

the fence. It also gives the cattle some diversity of forage. 
 
      Mr. Kurtz stocks his pastures fairly heavily, setting one head per

four acres of protected pasture as his ideal standard. This is considerably.

heavier than the heaviest stocking attempted at McNeill, Mississippi, by
the 
Coastal Plain and Southern Forest Experiment Stations, but it must be remem-

bered that Mr. Kurtz is furnishing some feed as needed in addition to the

forage supplied by the pasture. This heavy stocking effectively breaks down

the broom sedge and wire grass cover and materially reduces the fire hazard

in the pasture. With the close grazing and resulting freedom from fire, car-

pet grass veryeshortly comes in and takes over a surprisingly high percentage

of the site. 
 
      Depending upon periodicity of seed years, either slash pine or lespe-

deza next comes in. The lespedeza increases the value of the forage and has

the additional virtue of being excellent quail food. 
 
       At the worst, reproduction of slash pine is -not many years delayed.

There seems to be very little reproduction of longleaf pine, probably be-

cause of the lack of seed, abundance of birds, close grazing on carpet-grass,

etc. Mr. Kurtz keeps a certain number of hogs on the area, but they are a

good grade of bacon swine, not razor backs, and do not seem to damage long-

leaf reproduction. 
 
       As-the first areas grazed grow up to slash pine, Mr. Kurtz moves or

enlarges his pastures, partly to take care of the increase of hiscattle,

which now number 45 head, and partly to start pine on additional areas of

land. He lays out thenew pastures-so that in time they will protect more

and more of the area hitherto unpastured; i.e. he uses his heavily grazed,

low hazard tracts as a sort of glorified fire break around larger areas on

which he has not yet been able to concentrate .his stock. His cultivated

land and roads also work into this system of breaks or barriers. Areas 
which fourteen years ago were so bare that Mr. Kurtz was able to see his

dogs point quail when the dogs were a quarter of a mile away now support
a 
stand of slash pine so dense that it is difficult to see more than 50 feet.

The trees are of several age classes, more or less group-wise in arrange-

ment and the oldest (14 year old)-trees, some of which are 10 inches or so

breast height, are yielding gum at a profit. Areas put under protection 
more recently have reproduced equally well and have shown equally phenomenal

growth; one area reproduced to slash pine seven years ago now has approxi-

mately 800 trees per acre, 15 to 20 feet high.