Tending your little piece of earth

[thecfarm]

A very nice record for years to come of what you are doing to your land.

[tcsmpsi]

When I originally bought this place in '84, it was part of St.Regis plantation that had been planted about 5 yrs before.  This is as it was when I first became member of the forum.  This is the entrance to the property.



 

I had ordered my mill and this is the beginning of clearing a path and a spot to set up and mill the logs I had been taking from the clearing.



 



 

This is as I began clearing a tractor/people path toward the back in order to harvest trees and just general 'get around'. 



 

Bringing up logs from the back.



 

There is a natural water shed running across the property, and along it, is older growth not harvested.   As this is to be continued, I will get to some of that next. 

[WDH]

Back where the little yaupons grow.

[SwampDonkey]

You have a very nice ranch tcsmpsi. I say ranch because of the fence at the gate. ;) Keep enjoying your land. 

[red]

East of Mississippi Farm . . West is Ranch ?

[SwampDonkey]

Far northeast is poor farm. :D

[SwampDonkey]

The very first post in this thread was concerning seedlings planted in cedar slash in 2002. The thread began in 2005. Here are the spruce now, and they were cleaned around in 2011. They are 5 to 10 feet tall now. A little slower growth and some yellowing at the edge because the beavers raised the water table on the neighbor's lot and has backed up on my land a little.

[SwampDonkey]

Do you think it's a problem to regenerate cedar when it's been clear cut? I was told it would be difficult to regenerate cedar. What do you think? Some people may look, but they don't observe. ;D





The first picture, is white cedar 'absorbing' a spruce plantation. :D I have thinned this in 2011.

I have some areas throughout that are wet land that vary in size from 1 to 4 acres, that follow the poor drainage. These were all ceder stands.

[SwampDonkey]

My pruning efforts that began in October 2012.







These trees are all over 8" dbh and I'm real fussy what and how I prune. I don't waste time on trees that have no future potential. They have to be near perfect if I'm putting my sweat into it on my own dime. ;D Some smaller trees may look pruned, but that's nature's doing. ;)

[Clark]

Nice job pruning SD. How did your prune them and what equipment did you use?  I'm looking to invest in the next year.

The regenerating cedar is tricky business around here.  If you've got white spruce growing you can discount cedar making it because there will be deer around.  Get into wetter ground where the deer don't tend to wander through and you can get it to grow but it still seems very hit and miss.

Clark

[SwampDonkey]

Clark,

I use a manual Fiskars extendable pole pruner. I first make an undercut so that the limb does not break and strip the bark off the trunk. I don't have that many fir ready to prune, so I'm not overwhelmed with numbers. There's a  lot of fir, but not all will make a nice perfect log. I have a lot with pistol grip buts because of mechanical damage. I soon have to bring out the chain saw and thin out the junk in areas where I have 30 feet of growth. For now they help maintain density and and keep the good ones from brushing up to bad. One of the areas included is a cedar patch.

I did notice some deer droppings the last couple of years on my woodlot, but they don't winter there. I never see a track in the winter. I never see more than 3 deer together. I swear it's been the same 3 does the last 15 years. :D People only hunt from windshields up here these days, so them deer are safe. ;D The trees are not mature enough (tall) to offer much thermal cover yet. But the trees are tall enough now, that it seems like they are jumping by leaps and bounds every year. Some places I no longer recognize.  ;D

I keep looking for browse evidence on the small cedar, and all I see is rabbit works down low, and not a real problem even there. Anyway, I'm real impressed at how to cedar is filling in the wet places. It does take awhile for a cedar to get going. Probably 20 years to get to 8 feet. Then they seem to get a foot or more of growth after.

Sure wish I had one of those little Dion forwarders to play with. :D

[Ianab]

The pole pruners work OK, but locally we would use a ladder, some heavy duty loppers, and a good hand saw (Swedish blade) for any branches the loppers wont handle.

You would routinely go up to 6 metres (18ft) with that gear. While it seems like a hassle to haul a forestry ladder around, once it's wedged in place and you are up in the tree it's pretty secure, and you can deal to the pruning pretty quickly, and much less physical work than using a pole pruner.

Page 2 of this link shows a standard pruning kit
http://www.timbersaws.co.nz/site/Documents/Forestry%20Catalogue.pdf

Ian

[SwampDonkey]

As I said I don't have the numbers. I cover an acre a day doing what I do now with little investment in equipment. And that's a 2-3 hr day. The advantage of pruning the fir is that it's not plantation, it's trees of many sizes from 1" to 12", so I have a few years for the 1" to grow, and anything 12" is beyond pruning because fir is short lived. I saw a fir yesterday, 12" and stone dead. Not a mark on it. It's probably 80 years old and had survived a few years after being released from suppression. It would be a real hassle to try and move a ladder around in thick brush. ;) I do however intend to bring out the brush saw in any additional pruning to clear brush from the trunk and snip off any junk tree (up to 6" but) too close.

[WDH]

Here is the ladder being used to prune radiata pine in New Zealand like Ian described.  You can see that this is the second pruning.



 

SD,

You need to have a simian nature to be good at this.  Those spruce are waiting for you  :D.

[SwampDonkey]

I'm leaving the spruce alone because they'll be 100 years to be a nice sized log. On the other hand I'll see balsam fir logs in 20 years.

And I'm staying on the ground. We came out of the trees centuries ago. It was a hard fall, and we learned right then not to go back up. :D

[terry f]

   What kind of fir, and how big does the cedar get, is it like western red?

[mesquite buckeye]

Pretty neat, SD. ;D

[SwampDonkey]

   What kind of fir, and how big does the cedar get, is it like western red?

Balsam fir. The cedar is white cedar ( we call eastern white, some call northern white), and they reach about 36" dbh, very slow grown. But yet, no one really thinned cedar, and it can grow thick because it's shade tolerant and almost necessary to stand wind.

[SwampDonkey]

Here's what a typical stand of white cedar looks like unmanaged at 180 years old.



This stand is on the farm north of me.

[Ianab]

Just for contrast, the tree in WDH's picture is probably 6 or 7 years old. It may get one more prune, then it's left alone to grow, for maybe 20 more years. It's not just about removing branches, it's about keeping the defect core small. Only the section of the final log that you can see in the picture will be knotty (and those will be tight "live" knots). All the future wood being laid down in that log will be clear and high value.  But pruning an older tree wont gain you much, the knots are already present.

Ian

[SwampDonkey]

Yes I agree. Know the silvics of the trees your pruning and how they grow on your site. That is why I have a min and a maximum size to focus on, also limb diameter for me is important because fir does not heal up as fast as pine.  I am only interested in the but log to 10 to 12 feet. I would go higher, but to reach the size to be worth while to me I would have to live longer. Plus if I prune too much I'm loosing wood growth. I want to cut the limbs that are dead or beginning to, not the ones taking the full sun. In another 4 years I am going to do a second cruise, the first was in 2007 with 2.5 cord/acre. My plots were circular in thinned areas, so my density was known before hand as 1000 per acre and everything was tallied. Whereas a normal cruise I would only count 4" trees and bigger. Softwood can hold dead limbs for 2 or 3 decades, meanwhile making knotty wood and more chance of rot. And if you haven't got it yet, I'm pruning for me, not someone else. These are my logs. haha ;D

[WDH]

Keeping the core small is key in pruning.  Otherwise, you just wasted time and a lot of money.  I pruned 10 acres of loblolly pine after the first thinning at age 13.  Pruned up to 18'.  That was in 2000.  Now they are going on 27 years old and look nice except for the portion of the stand that has annosum root rot  .  No matter what you do, nature has her way. 

[tonich]

Nice looking pruned fir trees, SD!
Valuable logs they will become.  8)

[SwampDonkey]

I have been pruning now for a couple years in my firs. Late last week I bought a Fiskars Power Tooth 10" pruning saw, well I might have 4 hours on it and the blade shattered today, in two places at once. The tip and back where it enters the handle. Well I won't use that brand again. More Chinese junk at Canadian Tire, and reviews on Amazon reflect same. So instead I ordered up a BAHCO 396-LAP Laplander Folding Saw, blade made in Sweden from good steel. Good reviews. I'll be fighting back this time. :D The fir are healing up in 2 years. A 4"-8" pruned fir grown to 20" has a lot of clear wood in a 12'-16' log. A 4" fir is about 25-' tall. If I was to sell clear fir logs, they pay no premium in these parts. I see nothing in their specs sheets. Only how many knots are allowed over the length and size of knot.

[mesquite buckeye]

Things will change in 20 years. Maybe even for the better. ;D