Forestry; Managing our Woodlands
We have about 45 acres of woods on our place, scattered in 3 locations. Soil types are the "Heavy " variety and the topography varies from hilltop (drier), to "halfway up the hill" (sometimes marshy) to "floor of the valley" (usually sandier). The main more-or-less mature species of trees are White Oak, Basswood, Sugar Maple, Black Ash, Poplar, Red Oak, American Elm (that survived the Dutch Elm blight of the 60's and 70's), Smooth Bark Hickory, Cherry, White Ash, Butternut and Yellow Birch, in order of frequency. For almost 20 years we heated our house with wood and never even kept up with the deadfalls from this prolific energy source. Over those 20 years, we have planted some 7000 additional trees, introducing several species of conifers, Black walnut and other deciduous types.
Although our main use for wood was for heat, we did harvest several thousand board feet of Elm back in the mid 70's. We sawed it into 1" boards, 2X4's and 2X6's. We used the wood for many projects around the farm and are only now running low on this tough material. Over the years, as we made our firewood, we would section out promising saw logs and take a half dozen at a time to one of the 4 or 5 local saw mills for conversion to dimension lumber for possible future projects. We have several thousand board feet stored inside, in a building dedicated to that use; some of it for almost 20 years, now. Some billets are 18' to 20' long and some boards are as wide as 20" or so. We continue this cut-saw-sticker practice to this day, although we don't currently heat with wood.
We started making Maple Syrup in 1995, utilizing the main concentration of Sugar Maples, conveniently located UP the hill so the whole thing works by gravity. That is another story. We have been burning wood scraps from a local business to fuel the evaporator till now, but next year we will again be cutting firewood for that purpose.
Woodland management consists of keeping fences up enough to keep cattle out, looking for and treating any signs of disease, planting to fill in thin spots, cleaning out deadfalls that might endanger other trees, discouraging beavers who like to cut down everything that is young and to drown everything that is mature, avoiding the creation of tractor tracks that might start erosion, etc..
Maple Syrup
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