hard work starting to pay off

[TRAILGUY]

had to walk off the pie so out to the sugar bush. And what to my wardering eyes appeared but hundred of small branches sprouting on the sides of maples in the areas I had removed all the oak and pine saw logs . the light was just right and I could see them all over. it felt so good to see the crowns filling in and lowing on the trees
I sold enough saw logs to buy a used motorcycle and cut around 50 cord in the last two years and still have a long ways to go, and it is only on 6 or 7 acres . the other 74 acres only have small pockets of maples. remember more leaves means more sap.

[Bucket Head]

I'll tell you what really opened my eyes to the benefit of thinning. Several years ago on a NY maple tour a Cornell maple specialist had two "cookies"- a cross section cut of a maple tree, or stem as they called them. They were both about six inches in diameter. One, from a thinned area, which showed larger growth rings after they cleared around it. The other cut from an area where the maples were crowded and shaded by other, faster growing trees. I forget exactly what the age of the "thinned" speciman was- somewhere around 30-40 years of growth- you could count the rings. The non-thinned tree was twice as old! Same size tree's, but one could not grow well at all. The growth rings were very thin- so thin they were hard to count. Even if that 80-90 year old tree was tapable size, it could not have healed a taphole well with the poor growing conditions.

Yes, sunlight for the maples is a good thing!

Steve

[maple flats]

To a forester those are not a good thing, they are called epicormic branching, because they degrade the log, but to us they are a thing of beauty, more leaves to make more sugar. A forester wants the thinning to be more gradual to discourage the side sprouts (all trees have suppressed buds on the bark, where a new branch will grow if enough sun gets to that spot.) To a maple maker the goal is more leaves. A forester wants the new growth only in the crown, so they only thin 2 sides and wait for the crown to respond. After that, more thinning is done to encourage more crown again. We don't want to wait, but in our haste we sometimes actually damage the tree by giving it too much sun all at once and actually sun scald the tree.
But, those new sprouts sure do look good to maplers, don't they!