cutting trees

[growalot]

Today gave me the opportunity down several trees...some large maples and several smaller ones...opening a couple of areas to sun and the crowding of apple trees...this has been a stellar winter but the winds have been the usual riproaring pain....got a bit of a start before the drizzle turned to a down pour and the calm breeze became a whirling mess...hhhmmm snow verses rain...well I believe the snow to be a better choice for the long run for the water table...but it's nice not fighting deep snows in the winter woods...and knowing that the deer and turkey have plenty to eat well into winter....

[Geno C]

good stuff... im trying to get up there and do a little cutting back my self. i want to prune out some apple trees and cut some of the pines out the are starting to smother the apple trees.

[wdswtr]

You CUT DOWN MAPLE trees

[JJBat150]

You CUT DOWN MAPLE trees

The Trees - Rush

There is unrest in the forest,

There is trouble with the trees,

For the maples want more sunlight

And the oaks ignore their pleas.

The trouble with the maples,

(And they're quite convinced the're right)

They say the oaks are just too lofty

And they grab up all the light.

But the oaks can't help their feelings

If they like the way they're made.

And they wonder why the maples

Can't be happy in their shade.

There is trouble in the Forest,

And the Creatures all have fled,

As the Maples scream oppression,

And the Oaks just shake their heads.

So the maples formed a union

And demanded equal rights.

"These oaks are just too greedy;

We will make them give us light."

Now there's no more oak oppression,

For they passed a noble law,

And the trees are all kept equal

By hatchet, axe, and saw.

[growalot]

Don't worry wdswtrI manage for future timber...and cutting is based on damage ...disease...we have a canker problem...and form...In the winds we have here a V shaped tree is a future split tree....and nothing more than a possible damage to other good maples....and the few red maples we have aren't good good timber trees..Every wood lot even one used for say mapleing can only grow as good as the the ppl managing it ....even maples can crowd maples

[G-Man]

I'm cutting down about 5 acres of maple.. not good for much twisted,multiple trunk things. deer like to browse the tops and the stumps readily sprout creating more browse.

[wdswtr]

Well coming from a maple syrup producer I am cringing hearing such talk form you people. Yikes. 5 acres of maples with syrup prices upwards of 70 bucks a gallon and each tap on vac has the potential of making .5 gallons x how many trees. Im going to pretend I never read this thread.

[G-Man]

I have over 100 acres of mostly maple ..and no one taps around here,... prolly cause they havent figured out how to get sap to flow up hill

[landtracdeerhunter]

Really, a tree can produce 200+ gal. of sap. Maybe depends on the year? Colder the better.

[growalot]

I think he wrote .5..or 1/2gal of actual syrup...doesn't it take 10 gal of sap to produce 1 gal. of syrup?

[wdswtr]

All depends on the sugar content of the sap and the tree. My trees average 2.0 percent sugar content. That is 43 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup. I have some trees that put out 30 gallons of sap a tap at a tad lower sugar content. G-man there are many ways to get that sap up the hill. A series of sap ladders or a pump station at the bottom of the hill would be the 2 easiest ways. 100 acres of maples is alot of taps and lets say you can get 2000 taps on that 100 acres, if you pulled out 750 gallons of syrup from that and sold for 60 a gallon retail you are looking at annual income of $45,000. Or if you sold it bulk and not deal with retail sales you could pull in $21,450. How much annual income would you get out of those woods if you logged it? There are producers always looking for tap leases as well. Did I mention maple syrup is a tax free income?

[Doc]

Well coming from a maple syrup producer I am cringing hearing such talk form you people. Yikes. 5 acres of maples with syrup prices upwards of 70 bucks a gallon and each tap on vac has the potential of making .5 gallons x how many trees. Im going to pretend I never read this thread.

Even an up and coming sugar bush needs to be thinned and manicured even if it means cutting some of the maples out. We have an area on top of the hill that was once a cleared field (long before me) and has already gone through and past the brushy stage and is now filled in with maple saplings that are only a few yards apart. The result: none of the trees are really developing properly. I've been working in that area for decades thinning out the thing as I have time. Already, I can see vast improvement in the growth and shape of the trees in the worked over area, vs. the area that I haven't gotten to yet. Perhaps some day somebody will have a nice sugar operation here, maybe not, but at least the maples that are there will have been given a great chance to grow to their max potential for whatever use future owners of the land might want to use them for.

[G-Man]

well i logged it 3x in the past 20 years and have made approximatly 4g a year averaged. and yes maple syrup is worth money but it takes money to make money.. the only taps localy do maybe 20-30 trees. spragues is the largest i know of and they are 18 mies away..never heard of tap leases ..its just not that big in my area except as a hobby.

[landtracdeerhunter]

Use to make 4 gallons of maple syrup back in high school days, many many moons ago. We heated it down from 50 gal. of sap. That was some of the best flavored syrup. It was takened from silver maple trees on the farm. Two things I remember very well. On a warm day, 40, better empty the pails more often, as the sap ran out of the tree, at a very fast drip. Second,When getting close to the finish product, watch it closely, or you end up with maple candy.

[Doc]

When we first moved on to our property, we got into the "home-use" version of making syrup. It was a pretty crude set-up, but we were just doing for the heck of it. That was some pretty darn good stuff. Actually, I preferred it to the commercially produced syrup. Maybe because it was done over the open wood fire ..... I don't know. Also, we took it down as thick as possible without losing a bunch of it as rock-candy. Those were great times. I tapped the trees, the boys gathered the sap, and we all got involved in watching the boiling.

[wdswtr]

It is a great way to spend some time with the family in the spring Doc. There is no comparison to the commercial crap on the shelf. I am the 3rd generation producer and right now am prepping for the season myself. Its a never ending cylce of growing and adding more and more taps. More and more equipment as well. I will have 2500 taps on my land by the time Im done expanding here and then I have several locals looking for me to expand onto there property with tap leases. I expand from the income generated off the land from Syrup sales and when Im am in retirement I will have a very good income off it and something to keep me busy. Hoping for 250 gallons of syrup this season. Syrup seems expensive as it is indeed a luxery item to buy but if anyone has knowledge to how much work it truly is they would quickly change there mind on the how much it cost. Its not a few weeks work in the spring it a year round prep and woods work to make it all come together. Runnning tubing is time consuming, expansion projects, putting up 12 full cords of wood just for the sugarhouse, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning, pulling tanks out of the woods and storing them, setting tanks in the woods for the season, keeping trails cleared and plowed through the woods, setting vac pumps, replacing tree rat damamge and looking for vacum leaks all season long and heck a fire hasnt even been lit yet to boil. Hard work and time consuming but well worth it in the end. Cutting the fire wood takes about 3 times longer to put up than wood for the house. It gets split to the size of your arm to get the max out of the evaporator. I have about 2 more days of prep and then a few days to get the taps drilled and set. Then its go time here. I also maintain a Maple Syrup Forum as well http://www.sugarbush.info/forums/index.php. Then run my own business servicing and selling printing equipment. Heres to a great season for anyone else bitten by the maple disease.

Edited January 30, 2012 by wdswtr

[growalot]

Today was a great day to be out working...man are my arms sore...good feeling....took down a bunch of blk locus for fence post I'm putting in this spring....took out a bunch of double maples...ones growing ground up...took out worst of two....thinned out the oak flats a bit...and found a large bedding area,,,urin and droppings in a few beds...still alot of snow in the woods here

[Doc]

Today was a great day to be out working...man are my arms sore...good feeling....took down a bunch of blk locus for fence post I'm putting in this spring....took out a bunch of double maples...ones growing ground up...took out worst of two....thinned out the oak flats a bit...and found a large bedding area,,,urin and droppings in a few beds...still alot of snow in the woods here

I put in a fence about 30 years ago using black locust posts. They're still there and still strong as iron. That was without any creosote or any other kind of preservative. Also, some of them are in standing water. The problem is that I had to go to another guy's place to get them. Our area has been cleaned out of them from back in thedays when we still had farming in the area. Those things sure are murder on the saw.

[growalot]

hey Doc...we'er having a debate...Mr B. says put them in the ground bark and all...I say debark and air dry until spring... thoughts ? seeing you've used them

[Doc]

I de-barked mine. I think it has to help because bark only gives a place for bugs to live, and for water to be held against the wood. Neither situation would be good for making them last a long time. I guess I never really heard what the old-timers used to do, but I do remember my Dad spending hours peeling posts, so he must have heard that it was the thing to do.

My posts didn't sit around for more than a few weeks before they were in the ground. I'm not sure whether letting them dry would make much difference. But anyway you probably won't be doing anything with them until spring, so it sure won't hurt anything.

[growalot]

Thanks...kinda wish I wasn't right on this one...lol...Yep they are hell on the pruning saw...remember...only saw I'm allowed to use when he's not home...besides my DR but the snow keeps that in the barn...so I'll cut down a few more...then measure the 9ft and cut posts...these are small enough that bottom 9ft will be corner and 40ft post marks..... with the smaller sized ones being the 20ft posts mark...I have heavy 8ft steel post for the ones inbetween...a post every 10ft...the fencing is a goat fencing 48 ins high...then I will have solar electric bands above that from a fencer we bought years ago...I also need taller posts for the hundreds of ft in 6-8ft chain link I've been collecting over the years...that to fence in the area farthest from the road....

This will line ...for now 900ft of one side of the property....significantly changing the movement patterns of turkey and deer and inhibiting the dog and poacher problem I have in that area to a degree...and opening up another acre of land to work

[Doc]

Sounds like a massive project. I don't envy you with that pruning saw on locust trees. I have seen good chainsaws dull up in nothing flat on that stuff.

[growalot]

I just got back from marking and stripping the bottom 3ft of a bunch of them...my handy little hatchet worked slick...then I realized there are a bunch of smaller standing dead ones...so I went to town stripping the bark off of those as well...so far I have enough to cover 660 ft...Mr. B bought me 5 extra blades for my pruner...I have two beaver blades for the DR....theres always a few blades getting sharpened

The hard part is to get the holes dug...for what I'm saving on fence posts...I can purchase a 3pt posthole digger..but I still may try using the bucket first...seeing everything I read suggests a back fill of gravel first...... then back fill with the soil dug out...but I'm no slouch with a hand PH digger...that's how I did the goats pasture the dogs kennel and the hog pen...certainly helps with the bow hunting by fall...lol

[Doc]

I would consider checking with one of these rental places to see if you can rent a posthole digger for your tractor. If you are doing a bunch of them, that is the only way to go. And unless you see this as an on-going activity, it really doesn't pay to buy one. They're not very cheap. We already had a digger that went on the back of my Ford 8N. It made the job very easy.

As far as how the holes are back-filled, I never put anything back but the dirt that came out of the hole. I can understand the idea of using gravel, but where I was putting the fence, that wouldn't have been a very practical thing to even consider. I'll tell you what the grape farmers do. They now have a device that mounts on the back of a tractor called a post pounder that simply drives the posts into the ground like a pile-driver. It works pretty darn slick. Of course it would have to work well when you consider how many posts those guys put in. That eliminates all digging and back filling and puts in a very solid post. If you have any grape farmers in the area, you might try renting their services for an afternoon. I'm not sure if they would do it for you or not but it might be worth a try. I put in another section of fence of "driven" posts where I used purchased creosoted cedar posts from Agway. I drove those in by hand with a post mall. Now that was a job.....lol. That's not something that I would be even considering or recommending today. That wasn't fun.

[growalot]

Ya being in Construction Mr B has had the Fencing companys come in with those post drivers...they zip right through a job...the 3pts new are around 600.with bits ....between the camp/// home and sons place it would be used a lot and more that pay for it's self...when the contractor set the poles for the deck roof...he hired a local guy....16 years ago they charged 15.00 per hole...I would think thats gone up a bit over ther years....Good ideas though thanks