almost virgin bush....?

[Maplebee]

Hey all,
I'm new at this sugaring thing, I was getting ready to start cutting some
fire wood and clear my bush at the same time....I figure I can just start
from were I want to put the evap.
so my first question is , I'm 42 years old and still want to leave a good bush behind me when I die..so what size trees should I be taking out
and what should I be leavin......? how long before a six inch tree is tappable......I have a few birch and stuff too.....do those go also....?
or should I leave some up...? this bush was tapped for like two years,
about 15 yrs ago and lightly logged some time before that and is pretty over grown we did about 30 taps this year and got about 8 gal.
I'm hooked..... :D
Thanks ahead of time for sharing!

[Fred Henderson]

Get a professional forester to help you with it is the best thing to do. He can plan it for the long range.

[forester1]

Fred is right. You can get a forester to come out for free from either the dnr or conservation district depending on the state. Be sure to tell him or her you want to produce maple syrup. You should be able to get a 6 inch diameter tree to 10 inches in 5-10 years depending on your soil and room for growth. You would probably want to remove most of the other trees besides sugar maple over time as you thin. You don't want to remove too much at one time, but want to identify your crop trees and remove at least the two main crown competitors. If all your trees are 6", you can remove all trees within 10 feet of the crowns of your crop trees. 10" and larger trees, just two sides at one time. Discriminate against diseased, poor form(like low sharp forks), and other species. You can also test for sugar with a refractometer in the spring and keep the best sugar % trees if they are otherwise equal.

[maple flats]

Do get a forester. However I believe you do not want a single species forest because it is more suseptible to problems with disease. I would definately strongly favor Sugar maples but you should also have other species. I definately am not a forester but I have worked the woods for 40 years and get a good logging small scale production. I treat the various types of trees as saw log potential except have never taken any sugar maples for saw logs except where thinning is needed to improve the remaining sugars. If they grow there now try to manage for cherry, hickory, oak, birch and ash as the main ones. Do this by removing as forester1 suggested. Pick well shaped trees with straight trunks for keepers but do not favor one size, but rather promote all age stands. Do not thin too fast as you will get eppicormic (all trees have dorment branch buds that develope if given too much sun) branching which is bad for saw logs. Try to keep trees with well formed crowns and good branch structure. A branch at a tight angle to the trunk is weak, wide angles are strong. Open the crowns just to decrease competition for sun light. Study which trees do best in your soil and use that to your advantage. Keep in mind always that every tree you remove is management, make a decision on which should be cut. Keep the crowns open enough that saplings are growing in the understory and the ground should be covered with green. If it is almost bare the sun is blocked too much but increase it gradually until you get to know how much is right. You can steer trees in the way you release the crown to sun which can make better timber in the future, if a tree starts to lean just open up the crown on the other side. Sugarmaples should be the prime species managed for but not to the exclusion of many others. I do however try to cut most beech in my management because they are an invasive species. Another good thing to leave is a couple of snag trees per acre (standing dead trees for wildlife dens) and also leave some trash on the forest floor in the form of dead wood, branches and even whole tree trunks from less desirable trees. This gives new seedlings a protected space for getting a good start before critters devour them or run over them.
Today I took my wife for a walk in a local state forest and it amazes me how the state does absolutely no improvement cutting and therefor wastes a valuable timber resource which could help support the management of the forest BUT then my logs would be worth less because there would be more in the marketplace. I still view it as wasteful.

OK, I'm done rambling on.
Dave

[Fred Henderson]

There is waste at every level of state gov and I mean big time.

[Maplebee]

wow , thanks all...
I wasn't thinking of cutting anything to big, (right now) because I do want to get to know the bush, but there is alot of 2-6 inch trees that are not maple (mostly yellow birch) that will make it more difficult to run tubing...
shouldn't I open up things at the bottom so there is better air flow or is this a bad thing...?
Right now I'm just going to open about a 150 taps in area, but firewood is my main goal, I'm just trying to look ahead...
to give you an idea of what I'm lookin at, if I were to walk through the woods holding a reg. shovel horizontal I won't get very far,so thats about 5 ft per tree (saplings)

[maple flats]

Too thick, but just go by the canopy. For sugar maple open 2 sides, for many others you can open 3 or even 4 sides. When doing so look at what you have, the shapes and limb configerations. Try to leave good straight trees with good limb structure. The 6" tree on good soil and with enough light might be tappable as soon as 5 and not more than 10 years out. When you open up the crown it takes a year or 2 before the tree responds with the desired growth and branches. It all takes time. Trees are always competing for available sun, by opening up it means that the competition adjacent to the tree you are helping has branches touching the crown of the keeper, remove that competitor. It all makes the firewood you want. As you open it up, some will be too small to be worth processing, some of these are good to leave on the ground unless they are evergreens. If evergreens are cut and left you should limb them or they will take forever to break down and could present a fire danger, when in contact with the ground they stay damper and decay faster. This is allowing the minerals in the tree to go back into the soil which feeds future growth.