Getting ready for our first timber harvest.

We have two main stands of white pine mixed with some very large balsam fir. Much of this pine is what is called field pine here and has been damaged repeatedly by pine weevils. Weevils kill the leading stem (apical meristem) of the tree creating jogs in the trunk where a side shoot has taken over and grown. In severe cases, the upper branches can look like a basket. Many of these trees are at the end of their lives, some have already died and fallen. Within this tangle of wood, there are some decent, straight young pine trees and it is these we hope to nurture. This winter, once the ground freezes, one of our neighbors who cuts trees for a living, will come and harvest those trees I have marked. He will use a tractor to remove the wood. Unfortunately, he has just sold his oxen which he used to use. I was looking for as low as an environmental impact as I could get for our harvest. In the hierarchy of choices we make, I can accept a tractor for skidding wood. I'm hoping to remove about 40% of the canopy, leaving an open floored forest for new pine trees to start. The wood will be sold for pulp or biomass.

I will be the first to admit that I have no experience when it comes to marking trees for a harvest but I do have some "common sense" goals for harvesting our pine stands. I want to eliminate the most diseased trees that are slowly dying anyway. I also want to keep the straightest trees even if they have multiple trunks. This is for two reasons. The first is for potential lumber. The second is for forest canopy structure. By canopy structure I mean that I want the branches of these older trees around to support the younger trees as they grow. These two goals create my "marking" strategy. I'm also trying to leave "clumps" of trees within close proximity to each other, grouping as much as I can in three's in a triangular pattern. My feeling is that if I were to harvest leaving trees somewhat more evenly spaced, they'd be more prone to being blown over in the wind. I have no evidence to support this but I feel this type of spacing is more natural both for the trees and also for animal habitat.

In one old field area, I was having a difficult time seeing the trees thru the forest, so to speak. Our pine stands have never been managed (pruned) so, looking into this stand of pine trees, you would see just a tangle of dead branches. So, I have decided to prune the stand before we harvest. This is no small undertaking but makes determining which trees to take much easier.

The smaller branches are being pruned by hand with a razor saw and broken up by hand into small pieces. The larger branches are being pruned with a chainsaw and run through my chipper. I'm only pruning as high as I can reach but this gets most of the heaviest dead wood out of the way. There is also standing dead wood and the smaller of these are being taken down, cut into 4-6' lengths and will be used to create wildlife brush piles (see previous post). There are also some smaller hardwoods, some of which are being removed to keep this a predominantly pine forest.

As tree harvesting this winter will create a mountain of brush, it sounds silly for me to pre-clear and chip but I do have some well thought out reasons for doing so aside from being able to see what's what. One reason is safety. By removing and shredding branches, I feel there will be less obstacles for the person harvesting to deal with. Secondly, I view the brush from harvesting as "fertilizer". Once wood dies, it is mostly degraded by wood fungi. By leaving different sizes of wood pieces to decay, I am essentially creating "time-release" fertilizer.

I assume this is the same basic premis of leaving the unusable tree parts on the ground during a timber harvest. Heavy equipment drives over the brush and crushes it. Crushed debris would aid in protecting the forest floor from erosion and decays over time. Of course, the crushed and dried brush also provides great tinder for a fire. This may be why many choose to pile the brush and burn it.

I'm hoping the dead wood I am clearing and hand-breaking or chipping now will provide lots of food material for wood fungi. Once the trees I have marked have been removed and the green brush left on the ground, the already decaying material will have an abundance of fungi which will migrate to the newly placed material. This is purely speculation mind you, but as a scientist, it's my nature to treat pretty much everything as an experiment. I may decide to chip some of the leftovers from harvesting but I will see when I get there.

Mid-November Update: It looks as if winter weather has finally come to stay! Nights are in the low 20's and our days barely move above freezing if at all. I have finished cleaning up an area bordered by a stone wall that was probably once garden space. Farmers tended to "fence in" their garden area leaving the outside area for livestock. This area is nice and flat and looks good now that it's been cleaned up. I've been careful to leave one wooded area that is in thick early forest growth alone as it's prime habitat for small animals. This week, I've moved out side the stone wall where the terrain is sloped, strewn with large rocky outcroppings and much more rugged terrain-wise. I bring only my chainsaw to this area as most of the trees are either huge or dead and my goals here are different. I move much quicker as I'm pruning large trees spaced farther apart. I'm also taking down some of the smaller standing deadwood. I'm careful to leave many of the larger dead trees as they provide habitat for woodpeckers, owls and other tree cavity-dwelling critters. There are many "pockets" or shallow depressions in the forest floor and it is in these scattered pockets that I place the debris from pruning and cutting.

One of our neighbors makes wreaths for all of her friends (including us) and for the past few years, she's been coming over to our land to "tip" the balsam fir trees. As I've been clearing some of the smaller of these in an area that will become our yard, I leave her neat piles of brush to gather her tips from. Once she's done with her wreaths, I'll mow the branches with my field mower. The smell of balsam is wonderful in the cold, crisp air!