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Coshanton Woods:

When the English settled the area around the horseshoe-shaped mountain the Lenape tribe called "Cushetunk" in what became the colony and is now the U.S. state of New Jersey, they renamed it Coshanton.    It has been known by many names since that time and is now commonly considered Round Valley for the reservoir that was created in the center of the mountain range back in the late 1950's.

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While the interior valley was inhabited and extensively farmed before it was dammed and flooded, the outer edges of the mountain remained relatively wild, due to the rocky terrain and abundance of wolves & wild hogs.    However, it had been extensively logged where access was feasible and those old roads have now become trails which crisscross across the range.

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The area that we now inhabit & steward stretches from a woodland stream at the foot of Cushetunk Mountain all the way to the peak.   It is unique in that a visible convergence of two geological formations bisect the land - the large round igneous

(volanically-formed) boulders above and the jagged limestone shale below.

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The large majority is woodland with a wide diversity of large trees including Black Birch, White Ash, Hickory, Beech, Tulip Poplar, Oaks, Maples, Locusts, Black Walnut, Sycamore and White Pine with an understory that includes Witch Hazel, Dogwood, Elderberry, & Sassafras.   Although, like so many other areas, there exists large numbers of "invasive species", the forest floor still contains a healthy population of native forest herbs & a plethora of mushrooms sprouting up everywhere.

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It also is the home of a considerable amount of what most consider "weeds".   However, many of these plants -- Dendelion, Plantain, Nettles, Mugwort, Horsetail, Mullein, Thistles, Autumn Olive, Wild Yarrow - are potent medicinals, even more so here due to the land above being undeveloped and not farmed.   There also exists an overgrown patch of evergreens, too wild to ever be sold as Christmas trees, but still filled with fragrant needles & resins.

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Our mission is to help steer the forest and land back into balance, to build and sustain the soil and find valuable uses from what must be harvested in order to preserve the ecosystem.    We do not wish to impose our will upon Nature (for we observe every day the negative effects that attitude by those who came before us has had upon the environment), but rather strive to better observe & listen to it, so that to better understand what it wishes for us to do to positively participate in its

neverending cycle of creation, decomposition & renewal.

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BERYL  +  SCOTT

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