A forest lovingly tended - a woodland owner's description of his forest farm

American Forests, Autumn, 1996 by Henry S. Keman

For a woodland owner, 50 years is a long look ahead but not a long look back. Even now, thoughts and memories of my forest farm in upstate New York turn most vividly to my first encounter with it. The season was bleak and gray - early winter between the fall of leaves and snow. I was near an upper branch of the Susquehanna on the Allegheny Plateau between the Catskill Mountains and the Finger Lakes. I was searching because I wanted out of the urban fringe that was threatening the woods where I had grown up.

My chosen trees were to be northern hardwoods: maple, ash, cherry, beech, and birch. There were to be conifers: pine and hemlock. I even dared to hope for spruce and fir such as I had known in the Laurentides of Quebec. Other hopes were for a lake and a river, springs, brooks, waterfalls, and pools. There would have to be open fields to plant or watch grow back to forest. I wanted some old-growth timber to guard and enough second-growth forest of timber size to give financial support and substance to a plan of management.

For all my savings and a bit more, just such a congeries became mine. The type map showed 1,176 acres, about half in forest and half open or in stages of regrowth.

Even with my background in forestry, it was an abrupt change from office employment to self-employment in a rural setting of fierce winters and scarce means of making a living. An ax was my first support, then a sawmill, then enough overseas consulting to carry forward the undertaking of a long and close association with a woodland.

The financial rewards have been few. Real property taxes are high in New York, and the most lucrative wood markets are far away. Much of my forest's soil is thin, poorly drained, and derived from nutrient-deficient siliceous rock. Two centuries of exhaustive pioneer farming have caused much soil to be compacted and eroded.

Nevertheless, the forest has a lake and a bog, the haunts of many species of wildlife. The outlet to the valley drops 600 feet of falls and pools. The ravine's sides, too steep for horse logging, have retained some old-growth maple and basswood and white pine of shipmast size, along with red spruce, hemlock, and ash. At one time the stream's power must have ground corn and sawed logs. There are traces at the bottom of a millrace, now dry and long abandoned to brush and second-growth forest. Along overgrown logging roads that now lead nowhere are piles of hemlock bark, peeled and stacked for a long-gone tannery - still sinking into the forest floor at least a century later.

The most recent extensive logging on my land took place during the early 1920s. I have allowed the timber volume to build up and have designated areas and specific trees to be left unharvested. The trees I favor are those that stand out for their rarity, their size, and their beauty, as well as those that constitute a scattering of big old culls for the pecking, nesting, denning, and perching of wildlife. The result of such restrictive preferences is less income but more satisfaction. Without a final harvest, I have sold trees for sawing, pulping, peeling, and burning. The rewards of thinning more than 500 acres of poles and saplings, and planting 50 acres of pine, are splendid stands of trees, tall and straight.

My forest has much to offer besides outdoor work. Wood heats the building that was once my sawmill and is now my residence. There are plenty of wild apples for cider, blueberries for pies, leeks for soup, wild ginger for ice cream, ginseng for tea, and butternuts for cake. There are bass in the lake and trout in the river. My forest is open under permit for hunting, fishing, trapping, hiking, and riding horses. My rewards are the satisfaction of sharing and plenty of venison. My forest's motto - "Drier Firewood, Straighter Maple, Bigger Pickerel, Sweeter Blueberries" - mentions but a small part of the whole.

- Henry S. Kernan

AMERICAN FORESTS' member Henry Kernan first wrote for the magazine in 1945.