{"id":554,"date":"2009-09-11T09:54:06","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T13:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/vdt-quarterman-road-project-completed.html"},"modified":"2014-12-02T15:02:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T20:02:53","slug":"vdt-quarterman-road-project-completed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/vdt-quarterman-road-project-completed.html","title":{"rendered":"VDT: Quarterman Road project completed"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe Valdosta Daily Times caught me working on being tactful.\r\n

\r\nMatt Flumerfelt’s \r\nwriteup<\/a> actually conflates two different county commission meetings, but gets the gist right:\r\n

\r\nThe fate of the tree canopies lining the rural road were thought to hang in the balance. Several residents spoke in favor of the paving, citing dangerous conditions along the road during periods of stormy weather.\r\n

\r\nJohn and Gretchen Quarterman, whose ancestors lent their name to the country lane, led the fight to preserve the road in its original pristine dirt-road condition.\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"A<\/a>\r\nThe forest along Quarterman Road is \u201ca scrap of the longleaf fire forest that used to grow from southern Virginia to eastern Texas,\u201d said John Quarterman following the ribbon-cutting ceremony. \u201cThis forest has been here since the last ice age.\u201d\r\n

\r\nQuarterman Road, pre-paving, was the kind of dirt road down which Huckleberry Finn might be envisioned skipping barefoot with a fishing rod projecting over one shoulder.\r\n

\r\nIt was the kind of road near which Thoreau might have planted a cabin.\r\n

\r\n\u201cMany people don\u2019t know that a longleaf pine forest has more species diversity than anything outside a tropical rain forest,\u201d Quarterman said. \u201cIn our woods, we have five species of blueberries, …\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nOh, the beaver will be mad. I forgot to mention the beaver.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe rest of the story is on the VDT web pages<\/a>.\r\nMore pictures of the event in the previous blog entry.<\/a>\r\n

\r\nFor pictures of what lives in the forest, see\r\n\r\nlongleaf burning<\/a>\r\ngopher tortoises<\/a>,\r\nsnakes<\/a>,\r\nfrogs<\/a>,\r\nbees and butterflies<\/a>,\r\nspiders and scorpion<\/a\r\n>,\r\nand\r\nraccoon<\/a>,\r\nand beautyberry, pokeberry,\r\npassion flower, pond lily, ginger lily, Treat’s rain lily (native only to south Georgia, north Florida, and a bit of Alabama), thistle, sycamore, palmetto, mushrooms,\r\nlantana, magnolia, grapes, yellow jessamine, dogwood, and native wild azaleas.<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThe VDT has a good picture of Gretchen cutting the ribbon.\r\n

\r\nBut it’s not over just because one road project is completed:\r\n

\r\n\u201cMore people around the county seem to be paying attention these days. Commissioners tell us that already another road in the county has had its canopy saved during paving, and the commission has promised residents of Coppage Road that if their road is paved, their canopy will be saved. Commissioners even seem to like the idea of recognizing canopy roads as a feature of quality of life for residents of the county and for visitors.\u201d\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWe have a forest. The county just has roads.\r\n

\r\nNow let’s go see what they’re doing to the rest of our roads. And schools, and waste management, and biofuels, and industry….\r\nIf you’d like to help, please contact the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.<\/a>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Valdosta Daily Times caught me working on being tactful. Matt Flumerfelt’s writeup actually conflates two different county commission meetings, but gets the gist right: The fate of the tree canopies lining the rural road were thought to hang in the balance. Several residents spoke in favor of the paving, citing dangerous conditions along the […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[585,85,207,361,64,133,66,913,358,540,500,69,70,1736,71,1064,60,12,196,36,197,589,22],"tags":[1835,1108,771,1384,1833,3,23,1836,5,2787,2,917,1837,1834,1832],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amphibians","category-arachnids","category-beautyberry","category-beaver","category-birds","category-blackberry","category-botany","category-canopy-road","category-cypress","category-dogwood","category-gopher-tortoise","category-insects","category-longleaf","category-lowndes-county-commission-georgia","category-mammals","category-mushroom","category-plants","category-politics","category-reptiles","category-silviculture","category-snakes","category-treats-rain-lily","category-yellow-jessamine","tag-ashley-paulk","tag-canopy-road-2","tag-coppage-road","tag-fire-forest","tag-functional-classification-9","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-joe-pritchard","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-longleaf","tag-lowndes-county","tag-quarterman-road","tag-rain-forest","tag-richard-lee","tag-rural-road"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-8W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2536,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/2536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}