Chris and Kim Grant purchased Indian Chimney Farm as a place to grow their alpaca herd in the fall of 2002. Their farm totals 65 acres, containing 35 acres of pastures and fields, and a 25-acre woodlot. The other 5 acres contains two gorges and their home and gardens.

Forest Ecosystem
Over the past few years, I have been curious about the forest ecosystem. I began to learn about the forest, and have discovered that we are able to help the forest be strong, disease and insect resistant, and to provide room for desired species to grow, much like in a garden.

Chris talks about sustainable foresty practices implemented at Indian Chimney Farm

I found that much of our regional forest is too thickly settled with trees and shrubs to allow sun-loving trees to get started, and mature into next generation. In addition, deer pressure and unsustainable logging practices are making it very challenging for native and valuable trees to regenerate properly. As a result of these and other factors, forest composition is changing rapidly.

By the turn of the last century, most of upstate New York had been cultivated. Most of those old farms have since returned to a wild state, and the resulting forest is now evolving and changing rapidly. The succession of tilled farmland to forest in less than 100 years has created crowded wood conditions, and often there is not enough sunlight for all trees to grow to their full, healthy, natural size.

Forest Planning
Our regional Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) forester helped us prepare a ‘forest stewardship plan’, which basically describes the state of our forest, and our goals in managing it. Together, we decided to mark trees for a ‘cull’ cut, or weeding of the woods. With the help of this unbiased and knowledgeable DEC forester, we planned a walk through the woods, identifying trees that could be cut for firewood or left to nourish the soil. This careful planning of a cut to remove a very small percentage of the total number of trees, would as a result leave behind selected trees with improved chances of health, maturity, and succession. Our action would also open up the forest floor to increased sunlight, allowing sun-loving trees to have a better chance of growing to maturity.

So we began to develop some ideas or guidelines to use in our woods, here are a few examples:

1. Many of the hardwood species have to get very old and large before they begin producing large amounts of seed, so many of the large hardwood trees were selected to preserve, ensuring they have the room they need to grow.
2. Many of our native, New York, tree species produce food (nuts and fruits) for wildlife and humans. Some examples of food producers are: oaks, hickories, wild grapes, cherries, and apples.
3. A few of our hardwood trees are very valuable on the timber market (like Black Cherry and Red Oak), so we wish to select for them so they can reach financial maturity, for eventual harvesting after succession is assured.
4. Some of the trees in our forest are rare, like Black Walnut, American Elm, or are dying off rapidly, like White Pine and Red Cedar. We wished to identify healthy specimens of these trees and select for them, so they have a chance to live out their lives and reproduce.
5. We keep 4-5 colonies of bees at Indian Chimney Farm, so we selected for Basswood, which produces nectar that our bees turn into light and delicious honey.

Walking The Woods
So we walked the woods, stopping frequently to look at groups of trees, determining the few chosen trees to preserve, and marking the few cull trees that need to be removed to free them up for maximum growth. In areas where Black Cherries, Oaks and Sugar Maples were common, we dubbed the best ‘crop trees’, and nailed an aluminum tag with a unique number into its base. We recorded species, diameter, quality, and number of saw logs for later analysis and growth tracking.

We chose trees that were seed trees, eventual timber trees, wildlife habitat trees, and unusual or rare trees. We spent hours gazing up at the treetops, attempting to determine who was getting the sun, and where we could safely and effectively thin to improve the situation. Most of the trees we left alone, getting neither mark for cull or tag for keep. We marveled at the diversity, the huge old trees we found (3 trees over 30”!), unusual growth patterns, massive vines, tangles of wild rose and honeysuckle, old stumps, and more (We counted the growth rings on one old Oak stump and got to 100 before we hit the edge). We walked the woods in rain, snow and sun. Our 25-acre woodlot took a total of 15 or 20 hours to cover it all. We tagged 327 crop trees, and many more trees got blue paint for the cull cut, mostly small, diseased, less desirable species, or very common trees, like buckthorn, beech, red maple, and hornbeam. The biggest trees will be left, throwing seed for their natural lives, and inspiring people with their size and beauty.

Begin Today
You too can be a steward of your woods. Any size woodlot can be studied, and possibly improved. The first and most important thing you need to do is to identify some of your own goals for your forest management. Common goals include: recreation, timber sales, hunting, diversity, wildlife observation, habitat improvement, agroforestry (ginseng, mushrooms, goldenseal, berries, nuts), firewood, wetland restoration, maple syrup, and other reasons unique to you. What do you want out of your woods? You can choose to leave it alone and the forest will do its own weeding in due time, and strong and sometimes invasive species will come dominate, or you can apply sound stewardship goals towards long term improvement of the forest stand.

Spend some time walking your woods, alone or with other friends, and let your woods tell you its needs. Think about what the forest will look like in the next generation, and beyond. Look at the treetops and see which ones have a healthy crown, which ones get the sun during the day?

Next Steps
Once you are ready to take the next step, tap into free resources in the DEC and Master Forest Owner (MFO) volunteer program, to learn how to manage your woods to meet your goals. Please, don’t let the for-profit loggers guide your selection of trees to cut, as short-term profit goals are rarely in the best interest of your unique and precious forest ecosystem. Instead work with a good state or consulting forester to determine what, if anything, should be cut in your woods.

As the years go on, I’ll occasionally add to or update the tree database, recording new sizes and growth rates. In 10 or 15 years, we’ll cut some timber from the woods, once we know the next generation of trees is present. To help assure succession of the valuable timber trees, we also have a small nursery of trees that we bought from the USDA and put in buckets to grow. We’ve got 10 each of Black Cherry, Sugar Maple, Red Oak, Sassafras, Norway Spruce (for shelter in our pastures), and a few others. Once we’ve cleared some room in the woods, and these trees have grown up a bit, we’ll put them in sunny spots and surround them with a deer fence.

Further Resources
Forestry is a big topic, and if you wish to become more active in forest management you may feel a bit overwhelmed at times. However, you have great resources to help you! Our own Department of Environment Conservation (DEC), and the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Master Forest Owner (MFO) program both offer free assistance to landowners wishing to take some steps in managing their forest.

Cornell has a resource for an easy to use method of tree identification

Master Forest Owner volunteer program

Department of Environmental Conservation

Cornell Cooperative Extension