"We have already lost nearly half the world's trees, most within the last 100 years."  Time Magazine, 8.27.20

Welcome to Rockspan tree farm

Tree & Land management

We manage over 200 acres of timber and farm land with small orchards, nut groves, ponds and projects.  

Innovative Conservation Projects

We're transitioning from old practices to a rotational grazing system with silviculture components.  We're rebuilding the soil and timber one day at a time.

Education & Advocacy

Rockspan is only a few miles from Springfield, Missouri so we host visits from Drury University, Missouri State University, Springfield R-12, non-profits and many others.

Maps of Rockspan Farm

This is the big picture of Rockspan Farm. The details are fuzzy, but you get the idea; there are lots of projects in the works.

Rockspan Farm is located in the Sac River Watershed. Our large fresh water spring flows into the Sac and then North to Stockton Lake where it provides water for the region, including Springfield. Thanks to the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks!

Rockspan is about 11 miles West from the center of Springfield, Missouri. We're on a plateau of an ancient mountain range.

Projects at Rockspan Farm

The Chandler Walnut Grove

We ordered a bag of Chandler walnuts from California and had them turned into RPM trees by our friends at Forest Keeling Nursery in Elsberry, Missouri.  Chandlers were developed in 1979 and are a favorite world wide.  They grow in large numbers out west, but are rare in the Ozarks.  We're hopeful these popular trees will do well in our extremely weird weather. 

Farm Operations Manager Will Chiles shows our Chandler planting technique: We use a large landscape fabric, Grow Tubes and irrigation along with high tech soil amendments.

We hope our Chandler Grove produces walnuts like this someday...

Mark Mann of American BioChar Company talks soil health with Will Chiles.

We bought seeds from California and asked Forest Keeling Nursery in Elsberry, Missouri to raise them as their special RPM trees.

Really hard to see at this angle, but you're looking at about 130 Chandlers including pollinating versions planted in a five concentric circle formation. We have an excellent south facing slope with good temperature drainage.

From this drone view, you can see the pattern of the Chandler Walnuts. You can see the elements of the subsurface irrigation system and the space between the trees for additional, complimentary plantings.

The Sac River Revenant Project

We planted almost 6,000 native trees in a 20 acre plot next to the beautiful, spring-fed Sac River.  This land had been degraded through improper grazing.  The riparian corridor was in shambles and the hundreds of cattle were in the river daily doing more damage to a stream that supplies water for Springfield, Missouri.  

Corey Robb did our cool logo. It took years, but the Sac River is finally showing real improvements from a revitalized riparian corridor.

Tom and Will inspect small trees we got from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

We planted almost 6,000 native trees in 20 acres along the Sac River to arrest soil erosion, clean up the water supply and improve property values on both sides of the river.

We borrowed a tree planting machine from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Along parts of the Sac River, we had to plant trees by hand.

Part of our work including fencing out cattle from the river. We drilled a deep ag well so they would have water.

Before we started working...

Cattle in a spring-fed river. Always a bad idea.

Dead trees pile up and clog the spring-fed river.

Along the banks of the river was a toxic mix of mud and manure.

Sharp cattle hooves kill young tree roots.

and the river today...

The confluence of two large freshwater springs on the Sac River. Over 9 million gallons of fresh water daily pass this point.

The Sac takes spring water and flows north to Stockton Lake where it supplies fresh water to hundreds of thousands of people.

New Threats to the Riparian Corridor

Beavers are a part of our ecosystem, but they are really hard on trees along our growing riparian corridor.

We can't control what comes down the river to us. Here we see a large nutrient flow from what we suspect is a cattle operation upstream. Cattle in the river? Always a bad idea.

In this case, the wily beaver has killed another ash tree which suffers from a deadly disease carried by the emerald ash borer.

The Pecan Groves

The pecans are poking out of their new translucent Grow Tubes. These tubes are designed to keep the wild deer population from destroying the trees. Note also the large landscape fabric designed to keep the weeds at bay.

Will Chiles is the farm operations manager. To the right you see his schematic for the placing and experiments with the Pecans. The site is not optimal, but that's the Ozarks for you. The colored boxes represent different soil treatments including beneficial bacteria, mycorrhiza colonies, biochar and other recipes in a measured amount.

Bald Cypress Grove & large plantings

Native Bald Cypress trees are a treasure. They can live almost 2,000 years and provide cover and soil stability. They love wet feet and produce interesting features called "knees".

We have about 50 large bald cypress trees on the farm and we've planted almost another 1,000.

Our biggest bald cypress grove is on the Top Forty in a wet valley. These trees are about 5 years old.

See the big map at the top of the page to locate the Cypress Grove.

Rotational Grazing & Silvoculture

Rotational grazing involves moving grazing herds from one paddock to another based on that day's grass supply.  This gives the animals the freshest greenery with the most protein.  It also saves the land from overgrazing and seriously reduces water runoff and erosion.  

We're working with USDA and at the soil people at NRCS to install a rotational grazing/silviculture system.

Here's a layout for the 2" main water/irrigation lines for Rockspan Farm. We've made plans for silviculture, livestock watering and pollinator plots.

Will and Mike Chiles are setting up future access points for watering plants off the main 2" irrigation supply.

The pecans get a drip emitter on each side of the tree.

This is the first day we tried the new drip irrigation system. Success!

Will Chiles is fabricating posts for the rotational grazing system.

John and Will rig a swing gate for easy access to our Pecan Grove. This entails burying lines in shallow trenches between the posts.

We use a drip irrigation system for our tree plantings with daily measured amounts of fresh water.

John Chiles armors the electric cable.

We located a new well house over the 425 foot deep well. Standing water at about 100 feet. Remarkably clean, cool, fresh water in abundance.

Our irrigation system includes almost 2 miles of buried pipes and related fittings. We use the water for our planned rotational grazing and also for our trees and shrubs.

Brother Mike Chiles

How we plant a new small orchard

We picked an old fescue field to plant 18 hybrid RMP native persimmon trees from Forrest Keeling Nursery. We spaced them widely apart because we plan on planting elderberries between the rows.

We use water, biochar, and a proprietary beneficial bacteria soup for each tree. We try to plant most of our new trees in the Fall.

In a properly sized hole, we make sure there's a lot of water to welcome the young tree.

We add the beneficial bacteria.

Biochar has huge surface area to provide living quarters for the new bacteria.

Finally, we choke off the vegetation above the drip line with one of our Treedrings before adding more layers of mulch.

Timber Operations

We're saving our money for a small portable sawmill, but in the meantime, we practice TSI or Timber Stand Improvement.  This starts when professional foresters tour our woods, marking trees that are invasive, malformed and mainly overcrowded.  We use our chainsaws and heavy equipment to improve our timber stands and to minimize erosion which comes when the forest floor is deprived of sunlight.  We use fires strategically for the same reason.  Bigger logs we cut to 8 foot lengths and skid them out and into racks for drying.

We're in the heart of a vast hardwood forest in the Ozarks. We grow huge trees of great value including white oak, walnut and bald cypress.

We work with tree scientists from the Missouri Department of Conservation to do Timber Stand Improvement (TSI).

We age and store wood slabs in one of our old barns.

Tom Chiles slices through a shag bark hickory tree.

We're skidding out trees as part of a timber stand improvement project.

We're removing diseased and invasive trees from our land to improve the overall health of the forest. It's called TSI or Timber Stand Improvement.

John and Jim Chiles are plotting a cut to a huge cherry tree slab.

Tom Chiles and his daughter Iris are planting a willow oak from Forrest Keeling nursery.

That's a cross section of a native red oak. These live about 75 years.

Ginseng Project

First we identified ideal places for ginseng. Then we prepped the ground with our Cat.

David worked over the cleared land with a tiller.

We planted hundreds of ginseng seeds by hand and applied biochar and beneficial bacteria along with a straw cover.

We hauled water to the new plots and Will made sure they get a good start.

After all the work, the ginseng plots look like this. There are 8 in total.

Here's what ginseng plants look like today, about 1.5 years later!

Rockspan Spring Restoration Project

Mike, Will, John and Tom Chiles inspect the spring project.

You can see the large natural arch in the background. The excavator is removing debris from the spring pool to keep it out of the lake.

Rockspan Spring is a famous local landmark. It produces 3.5 million gallons of spring water per day on an annual basis. Over the years the spring basin filled with debris from rain events.

So, we got our 404 permit from the U.S. Corps of Engineers and we're removing the debris to get back to a more natural state of affairs.

Ted Spaid & Scott Runde from SWT Design helped us with plans for a sustainable restoration of the spring.

Our finished project will have walkways, bridges, scenic overlooks and a refurbished spring pool.

The big excavator found a new room at the end of the new slot canyon.

Behind the arch we found a new room.

We loved the old stone wall over the main spring, but the footing had washed away and it was a danger.

The Rockspan Arch is now dramatic.

After the excavator left, we see what the spring must have resembled to the Native Americans. Now we wait for vegetation.

Dave & Mike work on the new guard rail. Below is the newly discovered slot canyon.

We like bigger top rails for viewing.

Ted & Scott from SWT design came up with this concept. Notice the attention to natural features and vegetation.

We build an overlook 

We need a way to get from the top of the bluff to the new spring openings below so we start digging.

We anchor all the uprights into the rock below.

Neighbor Dave Coonrod and Mike Chiles begin framing.

We put extra wide handrails because the view is so cool.

Ole Cussin Cousin Rich Simpson bores holes in rock for the piers.

Johnny Chiles brings up the IQ and lowers the average age when he helps us.

Yep, that's a 16' 6x6 timber.

From the bluff you can see the progress.

We've built an overlook, removed many truckloads of debris and expanded the spring pool.

Chinquapin Restoration Project

The Chinquapin is closely related to the great American Chestnut. We've planted a small grove of Ozarks Chinquapins and placed them in Grow Tube, Tree Protectors. Will Chiles is consulting with Richard Herman, a famous local permaculturalist.

You can see the baby Chinquapin developing at the bottom of the Grow Tube.

This is a rare Ozark Chinquapin from a small survivor grove in Arkansas. This is where we got our seedlings.

We work to restore Native Canebrakes: Gigantea!

There are only two varieties of bamboo native to North America.  One is called Gigantea Aruninaria.  Once, much of the river systems of our continent were lined with vast stands (called Canebrakes) that provided long lasting and valuable riparian corridors.  Now 98% of that resource is dead.  We are working with Dr. Alexander Wait and his graduate students at Missouri State University to study the propagation of Gigantea and its reputation for sequestering carbon.  We are also interested in the plant's ability to reduce erosion into the Sac River and to clean up water that will become drinking water for nearby Springfield and hundreds of thousands of people. 

We cleared an area in the Revenant (see above) for Dr. Wait's carbon sequestration experiments.

Studying the decomposition of the Gigantea plant parts will tell us how fast carbon can be returned to the soil.

MSU biology students laid out a grid and planted bags of Gigantea leaves and plant matter to study its decomposition over time.

Brother Mike and I were thrilled to find a very small stand of Gigantea on the nearby Turnback River.

Dr. Wait and Brother Mike measure the plantings precisely.

In one of our greenhouses, we practice making starts from the culms of plants we harvested.

Dr. Wait and several of his graduate students drop by to measure our progress.

PawPaws, Apples & Figs

We planted a small PawPaw orchard in 2012 and it's doing great. These fruit are the largest native American fruit: about the size of an avocado.

We also grow apples for eating, cider and feeding the irritating squirrel population.

We grow fig plants. These are a variety known as Chicago Hardy. They do great until the first frost.

One of our inspirations for the BeeFoster company was our experience hand pollinating our PawPaw blossoms.

Jenifer and David are setting up the cider press.

Dean Alberty is a local tree scientist and a great guy. He is our consultant for anything having to do with trees.

Hornworm Relocation Project

Last year we fed pesky tomato hornworms to the chickens. But hornworms produce moths that pollinate native plants. So, we decided to create a special area and plant it with tomatoes that can be sacrificed to the cause of pollination. Will & John are growing starts in the greenhouse.

On the site of an ancient Native American village, we plant a small area with tomato plants.

Then we added some water from our new irrigation system and voila! Sacrificial tomatoes for raising hornworms!

Hornworm: pest or pollinator? Yes!

Hornworms turn into Hawkmoths which are a pest to gardeners and also a plant pollinator.

Earthen Dam Maintenance

Earthen dams need constant vigilance and maintenance. The main problems are leaks at the foot of the dam, leaks around the spillway and critters who dig holes.

We started with a four foot trench at the foot of the dam.

We laid in long sections of 6" diameter, perforated & sleeved corrugated drain pipe.

Off the main line were drain lines that ran to the river nearby.

We used bentonite, a absorbent clay to seal the channels.

The top of the spillway was a special challenge. How to find the leak?

We think we found the leak and so we filled the void with bentonite and clay/soil.

Mike, Will and Tom are preparing footings for a new bridge.

Mike and neighbor, Dave Coonrod are lifting the new bridge into place.

PondArk Project

We build these devices in our shop and put them on our ponds and lake. They are a home for turtles, blue herons, muskrats and fish.

Ames building a PondArk in our Mysterious Building 137 workshop.

Tom is working on an early version of the PondArk.

Brother Jim Chiles assembles a fish habitat feature that rides on the anchor rope. Fish need safe habitat in a pond setting and this is one way to do it.

Tom carries a PondArk to be launched on our little lake.

Tom and Will are securing the anchor rope to the bottom of the PondArk. You can see we are experimenting with different types of floatation.

These PondArks are ready to be launched into one of our ponds.

Will and Tom throw out the anchors and then make sure there is proper distance between each PondArk.

Pond turtles bask in the sun. But we also observe this platform being used as a fishing spot by Blue Herons and a lunch spot for muskrats. So, we are taking care of amphibians, birds and mammals.

Restore Cucurbita Pepo Ozarkana squash

There are only four prehistoric plants known to have been domesticated in North America.  Only recently have archeologists rediscovered and identified the amazing Cucurbita Pepo Ozarkana squash.  This beautiful gourd is the ancestor of the many squash varieties we enjoy today.   We noticed that there were hundreds of them washing up in the Revenant (see above) in the fall and we collected them to see what they were.  Today we are growing them to see what value they may have in our modern era.  You can read more about this historic plant at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-22-mn-2164-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1SEnJc2aZbq5iUFAmpXrjNNENVWxxE1VHK8CBhhMpNw8spvWoSIJ26nmo

Rain events bring hundreds of historic Ozarkana squash to our low lying fields. Each one holds about 25 seeds. We think native americans have used them for food and cups and fishing bobbers for about 8,000 years. They were recently rediscovered and identified.

The Ozarkana squash typically looks like this and doesn't grow much bigger.

We see variations in coloring including yellow, green and white in interesting combinations.

Trees, gardens, archeology and more

We have a bunch of raised bed gardens.

Our friend, John Moore keeps honeybees on our farm.

We build and mount fence cross-overs so we can connect the trails on the farm.

Jack Ray, brainy PhD archeologist at MSU brings grad students to the farm to scout out ancient native American settlements.

We don't dig for artifacts, but when we disturb the soil for any reason, chances are pretty good there's something old and beautiful to see.

We build cool deer stands/critter observatories on the farm. This one is called a crows nest.

Ames raises chickens, mostly easter egg versions and we share eggs with the neighbors.

Every year we have to destroy the invasive thistles. It's the law!

Dan and Margy live on the farm in a solar powered LEED Platinum certified house. Designed for efficiency, comfort and tornado resistance, it is radiant cooled and heated by a tiny ground source heat pump.

We raise guineas next to our chickens. These are natives to Africa, are quite social and noisy.

The Ozarks were once the great producers of tomatoes for the United States. We honor that tradition on our farm.

Jenifer and David stand at the entrance to Rockspan farm.

MargyMay starts our garden in the greenhouse. We grow PawPaws, figs, watermelons, honeydew melons, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, green beans, peas, potatoes, blackberries, sweetcorn, basil, strawberries, lettuce, cucumbers, gourds and apples.

This was our wild bluebird tragedy. Every year, we clean and restore about 40 Bluebird houses. We had a terrible freeze event caused by a wandering polar vortex that dropped temperatures by 30 degrees F below normal. The birds crowded together to stay warm and 23 died together. We cried.

That's me harvesting tomatoes.

Will is checking the Grow Tube around a young Burr Oak tree. Note the defenses against all the local deer.

We're meeting with our local NRCS representative, Mark Green. We're talking about tree crops, irrigation, pollinator plots and soil health.

Iris picks up several of the zillion black walnuts that fall on our farm each year.

The Ozarks are the greatest concentration of Black Walnut trees in the world. We have hundreds of giant walnuts on our farm.

Ames is building raised bed gardens in Mysterious Building 137.

Elderberries are a native fruit and we grow them in small patches near our flowing water.

Burns to build pollinator plots

The grass known as fescue showed up in the Ozarks after WW2 and was a major turning point for Missouri agriculture.  It made cattle farming practical for sub-par farm land.  But fescue is also an invasive pest that outcompetes native grasses and forbes.  Part of our mission is to reestablish warm season grasses and as much of the original native prairie as practical.  All over the farm, we are planting pollinator plots that we will ring with fence to keep out cattle.  First, however, we need to kill off the existing plants.  Glyphosate is an option but it causes cancer and we're determined to minimize its use.

We wait for calm days with just the right amount of moisture. We burn off small sections so the fire doesn't get out of control.

We burn with the wind on calm day with plenty of help.

We use rubber flappers to put out the fire that has escaped borders.

Burning a forest is different from a field. Physically, it's more challenging.

Will walks over the burned out fescue. It will come back in weeks, so we have to be persistant.

We use a a firestarting gadget to get the flames going. Once the fire hits the dry leaves, it takes off...

First, we build fire breaks by mowing and setting small fires to contain the bigger blazes.

We follow the plan during the burn. Make sure our fire lanes are in place. Wind speeds and forest floor dampness are all part of the calculations.

We forage for wild, edible mushrooms

Rockspan Farm is about half forest and half pasture.  We build trails everywhere and we love to hunt wild edible mushrooms.  We harvest morels, chicken-of-the woods, hen-of-the-woods, oysters and lions mane. 

We practice forest bathing

Spending time in forests is therapeutic and has been recognized as such by professional forest bathing guides like Tamberly Conway of Conservation Conexions.  She spent several days with us on our trails and introduced us to a whole new way of seeing our forests.

Tamberly leads a small group down a series of forest trails on our first Forest Bathing adventure.

Upon our return, we chill and discuss what we saw and how we reacted to that experience.

Our group cooled our heels in the outflow of the large spring.

Tamberly helps identify plants with her smartphone app.

On a forest bathing adventure, we perambulate on a slow pace so we don't miss anything.

We rely on local tree and horticulture experts

Trees are complicated and we maintain dozens of interesting tree-related experiments on our farm.  We rely on local experts to counsel us on new ideas and proven practices.  These guys are really special to us.

Dean Alberty is a world famous tree expert and pollinator for great new technologies to grow trees. He is a good friend and advisor.

Dr. Alexander Wait is a PhD professor at Missouri State University and an expert on plant and tree biology. We learn important new ideas every time he visits.

Richard Herman is one of the leading Permaculture experts and practitioners in the Ozarks. We treasure his advice.

Patrick Byers works for Missouri Extension is one of the leading voices in the Ozarks for sustainable horticulture, tree science and soil health.

Wild Critter management

Nature's top predators are gone now and managing wild animal populations falls to us.  We are a tree farm restoring a vibrant riparian corridor and one of our worst enemies is the beaver.  We protect the trees with wire when we can, but we plant thousands of trees, making screens impractical.  So, periodically we make use of Missouri Department of Conservation to remove overpopulations of beaver from our stretch of the river.  We have the same problem with white tail deer which shred and rub our finest trees to destruction.  So, each year, we put on a deer camp in Building 137 to reduce the herd.  We do our own butchering and processing.

Brother Mike and I wrap one of our mature Bald Cypress trees. These were planted by our father and are precious to us.

That's me with a 9 point buck. I always inspect the antlers for evidence of tree rubbing.

David, Jim, Dave, Greg and Tom in our Hunting Cabin and shop, Building 137.

Josh Wisdom of the Missouri Department of Conservation helps us manage our beaver overpopulation.

Judge Greg Dorshorst and I have hunted deer together for over 25 years.

Tom, Jim, Dan, Dave and James during the Pandemic Deer Hunt of 2020.

This particular beaver killed dozens of our riparian corridor trees.

This is Tom Chiles with a fine specimen on opening day.

Jim, Greg, Dan, Dave and Tom on Day 2 of the annual hunt.

We serve the community

Scientists from Missouri State University test both the Sac River and the Spring for native plants and animals.

Rachel is a native plant/ food specialist. Here she is conducting a class with the local Wolf School, a partnership with Springfield R-12 schools and Bass Pro Shops.

An architecture class from Drury University comes by to study land use planning.

We're members of the local Sierra Club and they came by on a chilly winter day for a walk!

The local Audubon Society likes to visit for their annual bird count and just for fun.

The Partners for Conservation stopped by to visit during one of their annual conventions in Springfield.

BeeFoster Native Bee Nurseries

A roof against weather. Metal screen protects against predators. Paper straws are proper length. Special mineral coated paper for waterproofing. Simple attachment. American made in our shop.

The Beestra can be installed easily. Keep it for a year, raise native bees, release them in the spring and then recycle your Beestra.

This is not your father's bee nursery. Find out what makes the Beestra special.

Suppliers and organizations we work with