Mast (botany) some domestic animals consume. Mast is found in two forms. Mast is generated in large quantities during mast seeding events (or masting, mast events). Mast seeding is a population-level phenomenon that is hypothesized to be driven by economies of scale, weather, and resources. These pulses of resources drive ecosystem-level functions and dynamics. Tree species such as oak, hickory, and beech produce a hard mast—acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts. It has been traditional to turn pigs loose into forests to fatten on this form of mast. Other tree and shrub species produce a soft mast, such as raspberries, blueberries, and greenbriar.
Beech Settlement to find better-paying jobs. When the Beech community's school and church closed between 1900 and 1910, the settlement no longer functioned as a farming community. Fewer than six Beech families remained by 1920. Sanford Hill, the last African American farming in Ripley Township, died in 1955. Beech's friends and the descendants of its former residents hold annual reunions. As with many of Indiana's black rural settlements, educational opportunities were important to its rural residents but limited. Beech children attended subscription schools (parents paid for their children to attend) in the settlement's meetinghouses or at nearby Quakers schools. Beech School was