Posts

Forest Products: Hard Maple Flooring

American hophornbeam for fencing

I have posted on more than one occasion, regarding the felling of trees, bucking and splitting to produce wood fuel, and chipping to produce mulch.  There is also American hophornbeam (aka ironwood, see under “Trees” on the Plants & Animals page) growing on the homestead, which makes great fence posts; I have perhaps 15 to 20 such posts air drying now.  Hophornbeam can also be used to make long bows and re-curve bows, which I intend to attempt in the future.  Of course maple syrup is another  forest product, and one we intend to expand our production of in the spring of 2015.  And the list goes on.

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Late Winter 2013/2014 – Weekend of 1 Mar 2014

The weekends provide opportunities to take on more time-consuming projects, and this weekend was no exception. There is much forest management work to do on the property leading up to planting in the spring, and winter has also traditionally been a time when the fuel-wood stores were stocked.  And, I want to show just briefly, a plumbing repair I substantially completed this past weekend.  Later I will make a very detailed post regarding the cause(s) of the damage.

The largest of four trees, an American Beech.  Some of the four smaller trees
in the upper right corner, one of which was a Sugar Maple.

Saturday morning I spent about 4 hours working the slope just south of the house; two reasons, the first is that we needed some firewood, and secondly, I am removing dead-fall and live trees selectively to bring more light and life to the forest floor in the spring.  There is a tremendous amount of dead-fall, with many trees having been broken off by wind 20-30 ft off the ground.  I identified four trees, two with the tops broken off 30 feet or so above ground, and two others that had been damaged by the fall of the first two. Read more

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