WEEDING WOODLOTS

            I had the distinct pleasure of spending the day Friday with America's foremost horse logging forestry expert, Jason Rutledge.  He's going to be conducting live cutting and selection workshops with his horses at the Mother Earth News fair here at Polyface July 17-18.  Do you have your tickets yet?  Hint hint.

             As we surveyed the woods where he and I will collaborate on our forestry workshops, I was overwhelmed with our similar views toward the forest.  We're about the same age and have been working in the woods for many decades.  We both use chain saws but he uses horses and I use tractors.

             He's visited some of the best stewarded forests in the nation; the best is the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin where for 150 years they've been selecting and upgrading a massive forest.  I've never visited there but I've read about it.  He has been there and said it's beyond imagination, some 12,000 acres of manicured forest. 

             All the trees are straight; spacing is perfect to maximize growth.  And although they operate a profitable harvest schedule, every year the forest gains total volume of wood.  What a treat to walk our own woods here at Polyface with a master woodsman who sees the same things I see; who has the same vision.  I wish I could spend every day all day in the woods practicing the stewardship I know these trees need.

             What do they need?  Thinning, pruning, weeding.  Rutledge and I have the same philosophy:  "take the worst and leave the best."  A new idea to me was his rule of leaning.  If a tree is leaning, go ahead and take it out.  It will never straighten; it's on the way into decline.  Why not cut it before it gets diseased and rots and falls over?  Make room for a new tree.

             Essentially ALL the forests in North America are weedy and crowded.  This slows the growth of the good trees and clogs the forests with diseased and low productive specimens.  We agreed that the problem in doing this kind of work, known as Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) does not pay anything today.  It's a long-term payback in forestal health and economic return (better growing trees).

             Here at Polyface, we chip those weed trees and compost it under the livestock as the heart and soul of our fertility program.  If all the money currently spent on chemical fertilizers were spent on carbon management like weeding woodlots, we'd have healthier forests, better soils, and fewer fires.  And an entirely new local economy--a carbon economy.

             I can't wait to have Jason Rutledge grace my forest with his presence and prescience.  True masters don't come around every day and I'm awed to have the privilege of his expertise here for a couple of days this summer.  The folks who espouse a no-cut  policy on our nation's forests have no idea the damage they inflict.  Denying chain saws in our forests is like taking the scalpel out of the hand of a surgeon.  Both instruments are critical to the eventual progress they facilitate.

             Upgrading forests through pruning and weeding--also known as harvesting and TSI--are one of the most steward-centric activities we can undertake.  When you see bent over, dead, crooked junk in forests, especially in publicly owned land like national forests or the Shenandoah National Park and wilderness areas, you're seeing gross negligence and mismanagement.  You can abuse two ways:  aggressive damage or severe neglect.  Typical industrial forestry like massive clear cuts exemplifies the former--aggressive damage.  Abandonment like national parks and forests indicates the latter--severe neglect.

             What are you doing about the junk trees on your property?