 This is probably what most people think Connecticut looks like. Actually, 1.8 million acres, over half of the state, is forested. Hi, I'm Carol Yule, a forester with the Connecticut Cooperative Extension Service and Connecticut's Resource Conservation and Development Areas. I'd like to share with you one of the biggest challenges facing the forestry profession today. The vast majority of Connecticut's forests are held by private landowners, over 50,000 of them. We foresters have a difficult time reaching out to all of these owners, many of whom have parcels of 10 acres or less. We'd like to encourage more active management of private lands because our forests are an important renewable natural resource. At present, only a very small percentage of the resource is being managed for sustained growth. Managing a forest is much like cultivating any other agricultural crop, except it takes decades instead of months. With management, we can make much better use of our woodlands. Forests offer us many things. Recreation, food and shelter for wildlife, protection of our water supplies, natural beauty, firewood, and wood products. In one way or another, we all benefit from our woodlands. Our forests are more valuable now than in the recent past. In fact, there's more forest today than during the Revolutionary War. Connecticut's woodlands have undergone repeated cycles of growth, followed by heavy cutting. Clearing a forest for farming in the 18th and the first half of the 19th century resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the existing timber resource. Farmland abandonment in the latter half of the 19th century allowed many acres to begin reforesting. Soon, however, many areas were again cut heavily with the invention of the portable steam sawmill. Raw materials were needed for new industries, expanding urban construction and home heating. Cutting continued into the first two decades of the 20th century as well. A 60-year period followed in which the forest was allowed to slowly restore itself. As a result, many of our woodlands today consist of unmanaged stands about the same age, 50 to 80 years old. These stands are reaching marketable size at nearly the same time. The rebirth of this new commercially valuable forest has revived the dormant sawmill and lumber industry. The demand for wood products and firewood has placed renewed pressure on the resource. Our forests must be carefully managed to survive these new pressures. This is the responsibility of the private landowner. Over the course of a year, I've had the opportunity to observe the progress that one family has made in managing their woodlands. They were kind enough to let us share their experiences. Jim Dutton has assumed the responsibility of managing his family's 110-acre property in Glastonbury. The land has been in the family for about four generations. It used to be an active farm. Some fruit, vegetable and poultry farming still go on today. About three-quarters of the property has reverted to woods. I asked Jim, what his goals were for the land? Well, the whole intent of the family property here is to try to get the property to more or less pay for itself. As time goes on, it's becoming more difficult for people to keep their property in one piece and keep it for us and do what they like with it. We were looking for ways that the land will support itself in terms of taxes and improvements and all these kinds of things. Jim explained how he got involved in managing the woodland. I got married in 1978 and I moved in back into the old homestead here. To heat the house, I started cutting firewood. It became apparent right away that there's more to cutting firewood and cutting trees than it appears to be on the surface. So I sought more help and one thing led to another and here we are. When did you decide to seek professional forestry assistance? Well, as I started cutting trees, I could see I had the feeling that I was cutting the wrong trees and it seems there's got to be a better way to do this. There should be more money that I can be made from the trees and an easier way to heat the house with wood and still it was quite a mess that you're cutting all these trees and doing this. All these small things, I wasn't sure if I should cut that tree. It's a pretty tree. That tree is dead, but should it go? All these little things added up and I just came to conclusion that more help was needed. At that point, Jim contacted me at the University of Connecticut for advice. I provided him with forest management information and we discussed his options. I also told him about additional forestry assistance available to landowners through Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection. He decided to take advantage of this free service and arranged for an appointment. And I called them up and they came out and spent two days out here and we walked to property and he gave me a written forestry management report which he made suggestions on the different areas. There's different forest types out there which I didn't recognize off the bat. I didn't know enough about it. They spent the two days out there, walked around and made some recommendations and I'm following through with these recommendations now. The management plan divided the property into five different areas or forest stands. These are based on the soils, slopes and vegetation present. The plan describes each area, what it is best suited for and how it can be improved to meet the goals of the landowner. Instead of trying to attack the whole parcel at once, Jim set his priorities and decided where he wanted to begin. The area I wanted to do first which was a shelter would harvest to cut the larger trees that are overshadowing the younger ones and the crooked and dying trees. The reason I wanted to do that area first was because of the aesthetics of the area and the difficulty of the area. I wanted to get the tough ones done first. Jim shopped around for a private forester to help him get the job done properly. He decided to do business with Daniel Donahue, a forester with the Rossi Corporation of Hagenham, Connecticut. I came out and looked over the wood lot with Jim. I agreed with the recommendations provided by the Department of Environmental Protection in their management plan and prepared the first stand for a commercial saw timber harvest. I provided Jim with an estimate of the volume and value of the timber to be removed and we then negotiated a price and drew up a contract. When we finally got around to the contract, Dan did an awful lot of work. We did all this legwork before we ever mentioned the contract and we got to the contract and basically it's not a complicated thing but it's something that is necessary. Basically it agrees on how the trees are marked and how much they're going to be paid for them, where they are and how long it's going to take and these sort of things. I had a few extra provisions that I added. For example, I didn't want them crossing the streams in certain spots. I wanted to make sure that they didn't disrupt some of the existing trees that I had around that I wanted to save. I wanted the tops that are near the road to be cut up in smaller pieces so they don't look a little better from the roadway and these kinds of things. Jim also required a small performance deposit be made by the Rossi Corporation before the logging began. We carefully planned the harvest operation in advance. The property boundaries were located and marked. Major streams and wetlands were identified so that they could be avoided as much as possible. Major roads for removing the materials were identified. Landings and skid roads were placed so as to avoid steep areas and sensitive wetlands. The harvesting of timber involves a certain amount of skill as well as planning. Three cuts are used when felling the tree. The first two cuts form the face notch. A wedge is removed in the direction the tree is to fall. The final back cut is made on the opposite side of the tree. A section of wood is left intact after finishing the back cut. This serves as a hinge so that the fall of the tree can be controlled. The top and limbs are normally removed from the tree before it is dragged out of the woods. This makes future transporting and processing much easier. Harvesting can be done anytime of the year as long as proper safety precautions are followed. This piece of machinery is called a skitter. It's designed specifically for working in the woods. It's got large tires that give it a lot of clearance you can go get over stumps and large rocks and it can get through very wet areas too. The chains that are on the tires here give it excellent traction in very hard ground or very wet ground. Here we see the skitter operator as he works in the woods. He has to attach a choker chain to each of the trees that are to be removed from the woods. Places the choker around one end of the tree attach the cable from the machine itself to the choker. This means carrying about 50 pounds of metal uphill in many cases to attach to the tree. Here he has the cable which has already been attached to two trees and he proceeds to attach it to the third. As you can see, steep terrain is very difficult to work in. I guess I should add but not impossible. The choker chain has been attached to the cable. The operator will return to the vehicle pull the cable into the machine formed about one half of his hitch of trees and he'll proceed on to the next tree. He has lifted the butt ends of the logs so that they're not digging into the ground as he's traveling. This lessens the amount of ground erosion or rutting. You'll notice that he's maneuvering around as many trees as possible so as not to create scars along the butts of the trees. Although in this terrain as you can see it's pretty difficult to avoid many trees. We are standing in an area that has just been logged. Our goal here was to remove the lower quality mature trees in order to release the superior young trees that would increase in value over the years. How did the logger decide which trees to take here? The logger didn't decide which trees to take. I came in prior to logging and marked the trees with orange paint. They were marked at breast height so that the logger could see them easily and they were also marked at the stump. And this would act then as a control for the landowner. He could come out here and see that those trees marked with paint were the right ones to be cut. This is some of the slash that remains after the logs have been hauled out of the woods. This is then the upper parts of the tree. Yes, the tops and branches have been cut down because it is close to the road as you can see in the background and if they were left in the form as they drop on the ground they would look unsightly. We've cut them down, Jim will come in after we are gone and pull the tops out for firewood. We are looking at the main skid trail that was used. The route was laid out along the contours of the land instead of traversing straight up the hill. Very little disturbance has resulted. This is a typical log landing area. The logs have been bucked or cut into different lengths depending on the grade and the value of the trees. If the tree is of greater value it will be cut into longer lengths to make longer boards. Raw material is commonly skidded out of the woods in full tree lengths onto the main haul road. It is now on its way to a central landing. Skidding full length saves both time and money. After the logs are bucked to the correct dimensions they are sorted in piles and then loaded onto the hauling truck. Loading has long been one of the most stressful, costly and accident prone operations in logging. The hydraulically controlled knuckle boom loader mounted on the logging truck now makes the job seem effortless. Logs are then hauled to the sawmill for processing. Typically in Connecticut commercial saw timber harvests are followed up by the removal of tops and slash for firewood. Jim intends to gather as much the logging residue as possible. He will keep an ample supply to heat his own home and sell the excess. Jim's 28 acre commercial harvest yielded 28,000 board feet of saw timber and can expect to yield nearly 28 cords of fuel wood in leftover tops and slash. Jim has maximized the value of his trees by selling the marginal material of saw timber and utilized the logging residue for cordwood. The other areas of the property offer different options for management. The view that you see here is looking down a wood road that we have in stand three. You can see that it's quite heavy in pine trees and this area here we've already logged. The whole intent of this area is because the soil is sandy and dry the pine trees will do a lot better than the hardwoods so we've taken most of the hardwoods out of here in hopes that it will promote the growth of the pine tree. In the future when I come in here to clean up the tops and cut those up I will be thinning the pine trees and pruning the pine trees and in 20 years or so the value of the pine tree will be a lot higher and we'll come in here and harvest the pine trees. This area Carol is known to our family as Glory Hollow. It has a lot of sentimental value to both myself and our family. It's also a very sensitive area because it has very steep side slopes and a water course running down through it. The forest group in here is a mixed hemlock and hardwood forest and according to our management plan a good number of the trees are very close to maturity and it is indicated to us that they really should be cut and now because of the sensitivity of the area the logging operation when it does come about is going to be very carefully planned skid roads will be very carefully laid out and all the cutting will be very closely monitored by myself to ensure that the valley here is not disturbed and the aesthetics remain. Jim Dutton and his family were recognized for the accomplishments they've made managing their wood lot. Their property has been certified as a 309th tree farm in Connecticut is a part now of the American Tree Farm System. This nationwide program is sponsored by the country's wood using industries. Its purpose is to encourage forest owners to manage their wood lots for the production of wood and other resources. It is an honor and a privilege to display the tree farm sign. Congratulations. It takes a lifetime to know a property and to know what its potential is and the more time you spend the better you can refine your plans and as time goes on we're working and revising things slightly and we have a good start. Connecticut's forests are not yielding anywhere near their potential for products, services or natural amenities. We now have the opportunity to make our woodlands healthier, more productive and more beautiful through proper management. The future of our forest lies in the hands of its many private owners. If you'd like further information or assistance please contact the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension Service at 486-2840 or the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Bureau of Forestry at 566-5348.