Small Woodlot Management

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Since the spacing and pruning of young trees has a significant impact on the quantity and quality of lumber produced from a stand, your plan should also address timber stand improvement. For a small wood- lot managed primarily for recreation, aesthetics, and firewood, this may be as simple as choosing the crooked, low-branched, or otherwise defective trees for firewood and then cutting a few of the larger, straighter trees for lumber when you need to build some new cabinets for the house.
We have two wooded areas on our 17-acre homestead. One is about three acres in size, the other about seven. Both have low swampy areas in them and contain a mix of hardwood trees. Species include black ash, quaking aspen, bur oak, American elm, basswood, and white birch. The black ash and the aspen predominate, with the bur oak making a good showing on the higher ground.

There is some market-sized timbe, but not enough to be very attractive to a logger. Our goals for our woodlots include recreational uses such as hiking, camping, and birdwatching, enough firewood production to heat our medium-sized house through the winter, and enough lumber production to provide wood for projects around our place.

A lack of time, coupled with a few wet summers, has resulted in my doing little with our seven-acre patch of woods since we purchased the place three years ago. Early on, I cut trails through the three-acre patch and have maintained them by mowing and cutting out the wood that has fallen across the trails. I also cleared a campsite where we often have a bonfire and where I usually keep a tent set up during the summer.

This fall I completed our chimney and set up a woodstove, so now I am cutting firewood from that three-acre patch. At present I am cutting only dead trees and those that are deformed in some way, trying to clean up a section of the woods at a time but leaving about three or four dead trees per acre for wildlife habitat.

Recent studies have suggested that wildfires are indispensable to the survival of some tree species.

There are enough dead trees in this one three-acre patch of woods to supply us with firewood for at least one year, probably two or three. When they are all cut, I will start cutting the dead trees in the seven-acre patch of woods. When I cut firewood, I cut the whole tree, even the branches a couple inches in diameter. This leaves my woods a lot cleaner and also means I don't have to split up a big piece of wood to get kindling to start the fire in the morning.

The center section of this three-acre woodlot consists largely of black ash. There is a small (one-quarter acre) section on the east side that was clear-cut a few years before we bought the place. It now has a beautiful stand of quaking aspen. The west side, consisting of nearly an acre, has a number of mature bur oaks and a few aging aspen trees. Regeneration of both the oaks and the aspen in that area is virtually nil. Left untouched, the aspen ash will be the dominant species there as it is in most of the rest of the woods.

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