Bear Forestry

Aug Dog!

Lunchtime rambling…..

This is a typical scenario in southern Indiana forests. Good quality oak overstory with a dense beech maple understory. A poor but very common harvest would take the overstory trees and leave the understory trees to grow into the next forest. Unfortunately these understory trees are almost always very old , often already decaying beech and maple that will never evolve into a high quality forest. I try to do things differently. I’m eliminating these poor understory trees, and creating light conditions to allow the growth of tiny oak seedlings on the forest floor. Those new young oak sprouts are the species that I want replacing the overstory trees when time comes to harvest. This takes planning, funding, and a lot of work. I feel fortunate to have the chance to sculpt the structure of a new forest extremely gratifying.

First day for the new tractor! No more perfect paint 😬