Tree maintenance of property

[southpaw]

Have 10 acres that I am trying to manage the trees on and sometimes wonder what mistakes I am making as my work progresses

My goal is to save all the hard woods like red oak , black locust , ash and a few maple trees ........also there is around 25 or so black walnut trees that I have been
pruning through the years , have a couple that I harvest the nuts from when I feels like doing that labor intensive chore ....last year I just let the squirrels have them

Most of my work is taking down tall spindly white and jack pines that are either storm damaged , diseased / dead and crowding out my new growth hard woods

I'll leave most of the stumps about 2 ft high so in a few years they can be pushed or pulled over as they rot , this is on stumps up to 6" anything bigger I flush cut to the ground ,
lot of work and do my share of chain sharping but it's nice to not look or trip over stumps

My original plan was to remove all the pines on the property but that is a lot of work and now thinking that might be a mistake , do the pines actually provide a competition for the hardwoods and is there any benefit in leaving them in the mix of woods ?

Guess I am asking what is the best way to thin them out and have my hardwood tress grow better , I do thin the hardwoods also with a brush cutter so it's not just a jungle of small spindly trees & bramble.......I spend a lot of time on this and have for years now but know there are some mistakes I am making in my methods just not certain what those mistakes are though , I have sthil gas powered pole pruner and cut any limbs I can reach on those jack pines as they to me are just a nasty trees to me crowding out new growth hardwoods
Am I happy with my results after 25 years of doing this ........somewhat but know it can be better

Any comments welcome and advice appreciated in advance

 

[gumneck]

Some pics would help someone that's doing the same thing or close better help you. Would also just be good to see what you have anyway. What equipment do you have to help cut unwanted trees from growing? Pines here can get to 12-15 ft in 4 years if left unchecked.

 

[southpaw]

Mostly have hand tools like chainsaws , sthil brush cutter with attachments , bachtold 24" brush cutter ATV's and a beater 4wd pick-up truck

The pick up truck I bought brand new in 1999 but not road worthy anymore so it just gets used around here

So all my work is very labor intensive but as long as I don't take on too much at once I am ok , just finished a 100ft X 75ft section and that took a week to complete but I am retired and it's a great workout , roughly 4 hours a day then on to other things around here

Yes the pines grow fast an I just rip them out with the ATV when they are a couple feet tall and the smaller ones the brush cutter chews up easy enough

All the wood I cut down goes to guy with a wood boiler , I use to compost all the tops as I had a backhoe for 20 years and was easy to flip the piles a few times a year plus had a landscaping outfit dump all their grass clippings out here , still have some big piles of black dirt from doing that and it sure is nice to have sitting around

 

[Greenie]

I've owned 21 acres in Maine for 21 years - it's half grown over pasture and half a mature white pine, maple and white birch forest with a few mature oaks mixed in. I cut out balsam fir - which grows quickly but often has a rotten center. I cut out small brush and leave the oak saplings. The pasture has been pretty much reclaimed - all the alders are gone - their stubs rotted quickly. Gray birch and red maple stumps take a long time to decompose but I can mow parts of the reclaimed pasture now.
Back in the 1970's Maine financially rewarded planting softwoods on old fields, what this turned into 45 years later is a pine weevil damaged stand on bushy & crooked white pines good only for hog fuel that I can't even give away. I can probably take 6 cords of red maple for home heating indefinitely while I aesthetically do timber stand improvement. I've built a road which is plowed and is suitable for walking in the winter when the snow is deep.

 

[southpaw]

Yeah it's a lot of work no way around it

 

[HumBurner]

Yeah it's a lot of work no way around it

*fun