A thought- if it’s safe to do so, leave some standing dead trees for wildlife habitat - dead wood is really important for biodiversity and standing dead wood will host different species from lying dead wood. It would be great to see an update 7 years after you did this video!
I'm a girl and have 21 acres of Ancient Oak . I have a 4 inch chainsaw and hand saw and slowly working my way through maintaining it and freeing up from overgrowth. I make piles of branches etc. for the wildlife and big branches to decompose back into the ground . It's amazing how finely tuned it all is .. In the summer it grows crazy with wildflowers etc and come winter all gone . It's hard work on my own , but will continue until I meet my nature loving bae .
Looking to do exactly this to our property, were in an area that gets hit by hurricanes somewhat regularly. We have a decent amount of larger trees on 5 acres but is mostly overgrown with brushy, scraggly trees that are only a few inches in diameter but are over 12 foot tall. Can barely walk through and not many of the trees look healthy, videos like this are going to help us learn how to raise the quality of our wooded areas, thanks!
This was very helpful thank you. I am doing the same here myself on 35 acres in the catskills it has been in my family for 4 generations and mostly unmaintained during that time. A lot of work to be done indeed but worth it. Good luck with your property. Look forward to seeing more videos.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I'm glad the video could be of some help. If you're anything like me, you don't mind time spent in the woods running a chainsaw and improving the quality of your land. Best of luck with your project as well!
Glad to hear you leaving stuff after the cut - Burn some for heat, campfires etc...but I now feel like a "burn pile" is just a waste of bio-mass that could otherwise be left or scattered to feed the soil and insects and even larger animals. I used to think it was a normal part of clean-up, but after taking the time to research and learn about the dynamics of healthy soils and the connection of it's plant/insect/animal inhabitants I have changed my opinion. Thanks for sharing, looks like fun!
Beautiful property. I have been doing small-scale logging for 45 years as can be seen on my channel. I am a good steward of the land and glad to see you put though and care I to your property. Thanks for sharing
Awesome video and explaination of your approach. We bought a log/stone house on 5 acres this year, 3-4 of it is wooded like what I see here. I've already started mulching up old leaves, gathering old branches and rocks so I can mulch it down to the dirt and then thin it like you said. I'm gonna see what progress you've made in the last 4 years :)
Well this is a find and I’ll will subscribe. I recently bought 75 acres of completely wooded property in the eastern Midwest. It has been logged for the huge stuff but it is still very dense with plenty of walnut, birch, smaller oaks etc. In two weeks a state forestry engineer is meeting with me on the property to talk with me about a plan. This video, although I haven’t watched it but have read the description, I am sure is going to help me be better prepared for that meeting. Also, the other videos that are beneath this one are going to be helpful too. Now it’s time to watch this one!
+St. Isidore's Farm Irish are far and wide,keep up the good work you are blessed with that property, I'm living in concrete jungle but some day that will change lol,
It was a progression for us, from living downtown, to the suburbs, to further out of town, to now - finally being out in the country. So maybe some day will come sooner than later!
Great video, Deacon and Isaac! Something about this reminds me of that scene in The Count of Monte Cristo is telling his fellow prisoner/old about how he's counted each and every stone in his cell (supposedly 72,519!), and the old man says, "yes, but have you named them yet." I always think that I would want to name the trees on my property, or at least the choicest tree on the property. Old Testament names for sure.
Invest in a hard hat, it will save you from a headache. Personally I use a rock climbing hard hat, its very lightweight and has a chin strap so you can still look up and not lose your hat all the time.
Sir, Is it worth trying to save some of the grape vines or should they be gotten rid of. I would like to save some of them. We are having the same situation. They are wrapping around trees and small trees. I lopped several small trees down today. They needed to come down anyway. They were dead.
New subscriber, enjoy channel great content. Is the music this loud in all of your videos? Maybe many people like it, but for me constantly having to adjust volume while watching videos is a pain. I've noticed it on several other channels as well. I just dont like getting blasted out of my chair while trying to enjoy an informative outdoor video. Thank you
Just stumbled upon your channel and subscribed. We're out in winston Salem. We have a couple of acres behind our house we need to clean up. It's hard to determine what trees to thin sometimes, but we hope to steward our land well. Do you have any more resources on tree health you can point us to?
Welcome to our channel and all of our random farm "adventures." Thank you for subscribing. As to resources on tree health, we've found thing as a result of trying to figure out what was going on. The forest service has resources as does Ag Extension from NCSU. Most of what we have cleared is obviously damaged. As to the red oaks dying, the guys from forest department that came out to look at our woods said they're just weak trees and often just die. Sorry I can't be of more help.
Well this is a find and I’ll will subscribe. I recently bought 75 acres of completely wooded property in the eastern Midwest. It has been logged for the huge stuff but it is still very dense with plenty of walnut, birch, smaller oaks etc. In two weeks a state forestry engineer is meeting with me on the property to talk with me about a plan. This video, although I haven’t watched it but have read the description, I am sure is going to help me be better prepared for that meeting. Also, the other videos that are beneath this one are going to be helpful too. Now it’s time to watch this one!
Lot of work and firewood ahead! Great info. We have very similar goals. We have a lot of invasive under growth like buck thorn we are trying to get out. Loved the video!
Thankfully, I truly enjoy going out and working in the woods, as I know you do! It will be a long term project, but one I always look forward to - especially at the end of a day at work indoors. My goal is often to just go out and run through one tank of gas.
Good comment about cutting and leaving the branches on the ground to rot. That's what feeds the earth. I began working with my 30 acre wood lot 40 years ago. Took me a few years to understand how important it was to NOT burn the refuse.
I'm working on the 1 acre of wooded area on our property, the other 4 is pasture. I'm all by myself on this project with nothing but a cordless Sawzall and a Stihl 026 I got back in high-school. No tractor. No atv. Just me. Sooo much work but I love it! It was definitely an old farm that was clear cut and has some white pine old growth but a bunch of deadies, leaners and undergrowth that is killing the pines.
Thanks for the video. I've got 50 acres, never gonna come close to thinning it all myself, but I'm going to try. It's the perfect contrast to sitting at a computer all day. I recommend trying a battery chainsaw, or even using a portable generator (e.g. Yamaha) and electric chainsaw. That's what I do, and it's so quiet, clean, and easy. No engine maintenance on the saw. Take care, and enjoy your land!
Well done for having what sounds like exactly the right approach but one you seem to have come up with on your own account? The things you describe are exactly what woodland owners in England are encouraged to do in order to bring their woods into positive management. As a forester who’s spent my career working in the UK it is fascinating for me to see the parallels with your part of the US.
@@StIsidoresFarm Don't pay any attention to that nonsense about not owning a chainsaw. Anyone with a forest has to have one. The key is knowing when to use it and when not to use it. I like the Husky 353. Light enough to lug around but powerful enough to take down a 16 inch tree.
The trees help us breathe fresh air. I have 1.5 acres of trees I need to thin out. There are hundreds of small dying ones and healthy ones that must be cut down to increase nutrient availabilty to the larger healthy trees. There are numerous large standing dead trees that must be cut down. I have a planned large area for creating an orchard. I want to chip up all felled trees as ground cover and biomass improvement because of high clay content. Due to wind storms there are several 2' diameter that have fell which is a fire wood resourse. I also want to clear out thousands of fallen branches for shipping and fire prevention. As a retired veteran it will give me something to do and also to improve the boimass of the soil.
We are pretty much in the same situation and have the same focus. We burn firewood as our exclusive heat source so I get it in regards to needing to harvest certain trees and big dead oaks are hard to just leave. I would urge you though, to leave some snags as nesting cavity trees.
Good video Sir, I have an unmanaged wood back in Wales (England) on a much smaller scale approx 2 acres and mainly wooded and I have the same issues. On the plus side lots of fire wood.
Are you concerned with over managing the wild areas? As I understand it most woodland creatures enjoy the use of thickets and such. As I understand it deer bed down in thickets and such. Cutting it all down my run your wild life off. I am not any sort of pro on woodland management or anything, jsut expressing thoughts on what I have seen in other vids here on youtube.
Great question. We only have 10 acres of woodlands, but they are surrounded by unmanaged forests (at the time I write this) and pastures. When I suggest we are trying to manage for wildlife, it is by eliminating damaged saplings and trees that are not beneficial for either firewood or mast for deer and wild turkey. So we're trying to keep all of the acorn and nut producing trees, and trees that flower prolifically for our honeybees. On that point, it won't be long before we'll have 10 acres that will nearly be covered by acorns in the fall - which we hope will serve as a natural attractant. Additionally, some of the clearing is to allowing for shooting lanes for hunting. We did end up having two men from the NC Forest Service come out and both said to keep doing exactly what we were doing. Hope this helps! Thanks for watching and commenting. God bless!
The best way to get more deer is to cut down and remove big trees. The sunlight in those openings create the thickets of small growth which the deer can reach to eat and hiding places.
It seems counterintuitive to "cut-down" in order to improve a forest, but attend a few forestry classes at your local extension office and it will make more sense. It really depends on what your personal goals are for the property as to the extent of your management. Woods are very resilient but it does take time to happen so meeting with professionals from the division of forestry, department of natural resources, fish and game, wildlife biologists, etc. will help give the insight into what management strategies are right for your property :) There are a handful of free programs and even financial assistance to aid in maintaining, preserving, and establishing privately owned forest land!
Everything about this video just makes me happy...the opening guitar, the closing...the speedy chainsaw chop, the slowmo explanations and suggestions and especially letting the wood & cuttings just lay for decomposition and return to the ground. Two questions 1) Has your bridge ever been in danger of washing out? 2) When I cut back, it's like it comes back twice as bushy and bad. Any easy solution? or is a farmer's work never done? (I know the answer to that, but thought I'd ask about the cutback)
Thanks! Happy to read that it makes someone happy. What a wonderful thing to say. The bridge has not washed out, and to our observations has little to no chance of ever doing so. It is about five feet above the small stream, and even in the heaviest and longest of rains, it doesn't rise more than a few inches. As to sapling coming back (for us it is maples and sweet gums), the only real way to permanently get rid of them is to completely remove the stump and roots. The next best bet would be to severely damage the stump/roots with some sort of axe or pick. Unless of course you're not opposed to a chemical approach like brush b gon - that would be another route. My view is that the farmer's work is never done. It is a constant battle against nature trying to reclaim the land. Thankfully, I enjoy the battle. :-) Thank you again for watching and commenting!
A thought- if it’s safe to do so, leave some standing dead trees for wildlife habitat - dead wood is really important for biodiversity and standing dead wood will host different species from lying dead wood.
It would be great to see an update 7 years after you did this video!
I'm a girl and have 21 acres of Ancient Oak . I have a 4 inch chainsaw and hand saw and slowly working my way through maintaining it and freeing up from overgrowth. I make piles of branches etc. for the wildlife and big branches to decompose back into the ground . It's amazing how finely tuned it all is .. In the summer it grows crazy with wildflowers etc and come winter all gone . It's hard work on my own , but will continue until I meet my nature loving bae .
Looking to do exactly this to our property, were in an area that gets hit by hurricanes somewhat regularly. We have a decent amount of larger trees on 5 acres but is mostly overgrown with brushy, scraggly trees that are only a few inches in diameter but are over 12 foot tall. Can barely walk through and not many of the trees look healthy, videos like this are going to help us learn how to raise the quality of our wooded areas, thanks!
This was very helpful thank you. I am doing the same here myself on 35 acres in the catskills it has been in my family for 4 generations and mostly unmaintained during that time. A lot of work to be done indeed but worth it. Good luck with your property. Look forward to seeing more videos.
Thank you for watching and commenting! I'm glad the video could be of some help. If you're anything like me, you don't mind time spent in the woods running a chainsaw and improving the quality of your land. Best of luck with your project as well!
Glad to hear you leaving stuff after the cut - Burn some for heat, campfires etc...but I now feel like a "burn pile" is just a waste of bio-mass that could otherwise be left or scattered to feed the soil and insects and even larger animals. I used to think it was a normal part of clean-up, but after taking the time to research and learn about the dynamics of healthy soils and the connection of it's plant/insect/animal inhabitants I have changed my opinion. Thanks for sharing, looks like fun!
Beautiful property. I have been doing small-scale logging for 45 years as can be seen on my channel. I am a good steward of the land and glad to see you put though and care I to your property. Thanks for sharing
Awesome video and explaination of your approach. We bought a log/stone house on 5 acres this year, 3-4 of it is wooded like what I see here. I've already started mulching up old leaves, gathering old branches and rocks so I can mulch it down to the dirt and then thin it like you said. I'm gonna see what progress you've made in the last 4 years :)
Well this is a find and I’ll will subscribe. I recently bought 75 acres of completely wooded property in the eastern Midwest. It has been logged for the huge stuff but it is still very dense with plenty of walnut, birch, smaller oaks etc. In two weeks a state forestry engineer is meeting with me on the property to talk with me about a plan.
This video, although I haven’t watched it but have read the description, I am sure is going to help me be better prepared for that meeting. Also, the other videos that are beneath this one are going to be helpful too. Now it’s time to watch this one!
Nice video, man! Keep up the good work and thank you for the good information and inspiration.
Thank you, Jamie! Appreciate the feedback. Blessings to you!
I’ve always wanted to own a forest and clean it up like this!!
Great video keep it up from Ireland
Ireland! The land of my ancestors! Thank you for watching and commenting - I really appreciate it. Blessings to you and yours.
+St. Isidore's Farm Irish are far and wide,keep up the good work you are blessed with that property, I'm living in concrete jungle but some day that will change lol,
It was a progression for us, from living downtown, to the suburbs, to further out of town, to now - finally being out in the country. So maybe some day will come sooner than later!
Great video, Deacon and Isaac!
Something about this reminds me of that scene in The Count of Monte Cristo is telling his fellow prisoner/old about how he's counted each and every stone in his cell (supposedly 72,519!), and the old man says, "yes, but have you named them yet." I always think that I would want to name the trees on my property, or at least the choicest tree on the property. Old Testament names for sure.
Yes, I can certainly call to mind all of the choicest trees on our property. Haven't named them - yet!
"Salix" is the genus name for willow. The "nightmare vine" he's talking about is probably Smilax a.k.a. greenbriar, catbriar, et al
Invest in a hard hat, it will save you from a headache. Personally I use a rock climbing hard hat, its very lightweight and has a chin strap so you can still look up and not lose your hat all the time.
Great suggestion! Thanks!
Eye protection is even more important
Eye protection is mandatory, usually sunglasses for me.
Sir, Is it worth trying to save some of the grape vines or should they be gotten rid of. I would like to save some of them. We are having the same situation. They are wrapping around trees and small trees. I lopped several small trees down today. They needed to come down anyway. They were dead.
This is exactly what I was looking for and it’s amazing that such a good video exists here. Thank you so much!
New subscriber, enjoy channel great content. Is the music this loud in all of your videos? Maybe many people like it, but for me constantly having to adjust volume while watching videos is a pain. I've noticed it on several other channels as well. I just dont like getting blasted out of my chair while trying to enjoy an informative outdoor video. Thank you
Must admit not paying as close attention to it in the past, but try to now. Understand not wanting to adjust sound levels with a video.
Just stumbled upon your channel and subscribed. We're out in winston Salem. We have a couple of acres behind our house we need to clean up. It's hard to determine what trees to thin sometimes, but we hope to steward our land well. Do you have any more resources on tree health you can point us to?
Welcome to our channel and all of our random farm "adventures." Thank you for subscribing. As to resources on tree health, we've found thing as a result of trying to figure out what was going on. The forest service has resources as does Ag Extension from NCSU. Most of what we have cleared is obviously damaged. As to the red oaks dying, the guys from forest department that came out to look at our woods said they're just weak trees and often just die. Sorry I can't be of more help.
Awesome video. What part of NC are you guys in?
Thanks! Central NC, but what friends who come to visit from Raleigh refer to as "Southern Virginia."
We're in the Piedmont area and have some land in south VA as well. The more work I do the more I see I have to do. Keep up the great videos!
Well this is a find and I’ll will subscribe. I recently bought 75 acres of completely wooded property in the eastern Midwest. It has been logged for the huge stuff but it is still very dense with plenty of walnut, birch, smaller oaks etc. In two weeks a state forestry engineer is meeting with me on the property to talk with me about a plan.
This video, although I haven’t watched it but have read the description, I am sure is going to help me be better prepared for that meeting. Also, the other videos that are beneath this one are going to be helpful too. Now it’s time to watch this one!
Lot of work and firewood ahead! Great info. We have very similar goals. We have a lot of invasive under growth like buck thorn we are trying to get out. Loved the video!
Thankfully, I truly enjoy going out and working in the woods, as I know you do! It will be a long term project, but one I always look forward to - especially at the end of a day at work indoors. My goal is often to just go out and run through one tank of gas.
Don't be too worried about the buckthorn. I had lots on my land 40 years ago and as the good trees grew the buckthorn was killed off by shade.
Good comment about cutting and leaving the branches on the ground to rot. That's what feeds the earth. I began working with my 30 acre wood lot 40 years ago. Took me a few years to understand how important it was to NOT burn the refuse.
I'm working on the 1 acre of wooded area on our property, the other 4 is pasture. I'm all by myself on this project with nothing but a cordless Sawzall and a Stihl 026 I got back in high-school. No tractor. No atv. Just me. Sooo much work but I love it! It was definitely an old farm that was clear cut and has some white pine old growth but a bunch of deadies, leaners and undergrowth that is killing the pines.
Thanks for the video. I've got 50 acres, never gonna come close to thinning it all myself, but I'm going to try. It's the perfect contrast to sitting at a computer all day.
I recommend trying a battery chainsaw, or even using a portable generator (e.g. Yamaha) and electric chainsaw. That's what I do, and it's so quiet, clean, and easy. No engine maintenance on the saw. Take care, and enjoy your land!
Well done for having what sounds like exactly the right approach but one you seem to have come up with on your own account? The things you describe are exactly what woodland owners in England are encouraged to do in order to bring their woods into positive management. As a forester who’s spent my career working in the UK it is fascinating for me to see the parallels with your part of the US.
Great video!! Been doing the same on my property in northern michigan. Cutting out all dead, deformed, and deseased trees. Keep up the great work!! 🌲
Great video. Curious as to what do you do with all the creepers, vines, dead wood etc once it is on the ground? Thanks.
The vine you didn’t know the name of sounds like a honeysuckle as we call it in the UK
Hoping Isaac eventually learned the art of panning the camera up lol
You shouldnt own a chainsaw.
I shouldn't? Any particular reason?
@@StIsidoresFarm Don't pay any attention to that nonsense about not owning a chainsaw. Anyone with a forest has to have one. The key is knowing when to use it and when not to use it. I like the Husky 353. Light enough to lug around but powerful enough to take down a 16 inch tree.
Very useful video
Good job
We have 25 Acres that we just bought last year. This is a great video! Very inspiring.
Thank you for this video. Learned a lot. Going to chop my latest clearing efforts smaller so they can start breaking down on the ground.
The trees help us breathe fresh air. I have 1.5 acres of trees I need to thin out. There are hundreds of small dying ones and healthy ones that must be cut down to increase nutrient availabilty to the larger healthy trees. There are numerous large standing dead trees that must be cut down. I have a planned large area for creating an orchard. I want to chip up all felled trees as ground cover and biomass improvement because of high clay content. Due to wind storms there are several 2' diameter that have fell which is a fire wood resourse. I also want to clear out thousands of fallen branches for shipping and fire prevention. As a retired veteran it will give me something to do and also to improve the boimass of the soil.
We are pretty much in the same situation and have the same focus. We burn firewood as our exclusive heat source so I get it in regards to needing to harvest certain trees and big dead oaks are hard to just leave. I would urge you though, to leave some snags as nesting cavity trees.
Good video Sir, I have an unmanaged wood back in Wales (England) on a much smaller scale approx 2 acres and mainly wooded and I have the same issues. On the plus side lots of fire wood.
I loved your video . . I've been looking for something like this. Gonna save it. Thank you
The cut trees will rot and add organic materials. That helps retain moisture and development in the soil.
Some much useful information! Great video and well done.
woods look well managed good visibility
Are you concerned with over managing the wild areas? As I understand it most woodland creatures enjoy the use of thickets and such. As I understand it deer bed down in thickets and such. Cutting it all down my run your wild life off.
I am not any sort of pro on woodland management or anything, jsut expressing thoughts on what I have seen in other vids here on youtube.
Great question. We only have 10 acres of woodlands, but they are surrounded by unmanaged forests (at the time I write this) and pastures. When I suggest we are trying to manage for wildlife, it is by eliminating damaged saplings and trees that are not beneficial for either firewood or mast for deer and wild turkey. So we're trying to keep all of the acorn and nut producing trees, and trees that flower prolifically for our honeybees. On that point, it won't be long before we'll have 10 acres that will nearly be covered by acorns in the fall - which we hope will serve as a natural attractant. Additionally, some of the clearing is to allowing for shooting lanes for hunting. We did end up having two men from the NC Forest Service come out and both said to keep doing exactly what we were doing. Hope this helps! Thanks for watching and commenting. God bless!
The best way to get more deer is to cut down and remove big trees. The sunlight in those openings create the thickets of small growth which the deer can reach to eat and hiding places.
It seems counterintuitive to "cut-down" in order to improve a forest, but attend a few forestry classes at your local extension office and it will make more sense. It really depends on what your personal goals are for the property as to the extent of your management.
Woods are very resilient but it does take time to happen so meeting with professionals from the division of forestry, department of natural resources, fish and game, wildlife biologists, etc. will help give the insight into what management strategies are right for your property :)
There are a handful of free programs and even financial assistance to aid in maintaining, preserving, and establishing privately owned forest land!
well well small world thanks again for another great informative video
Thanks!
Everything about this video just makes me happy...the opening guitar, the closing...the speedy chainsaw chop, the slowmo explanations and suggestions and especially letting the wood & cuttings just lay for decomposition and return to the ground. Two questions 1) Has your bridge ever been in danger of washing out? 2) When I cut back, it's like it comes back twice as bushy and bad. Any easy solution? or is a farmer's work never done? (I know the answer to that, but thought I'd ask about the cutback)
Thanks! Happy to read that it makes someone happy. What a wonderful thing to say. The bridge has not washed out, and to our observations has little to no chance of ever doing so. It is about five feet above the small stream, and even in the heaviest and longest of rains, it doesn't rise more than a few inches. As to sapling coming back (for us it is maples and sweet gums), the only real way to permanently get rid of them is to completely remove the stump and roots. The next best bet would be to severely damage the stump/roots with some sort of axe or pick. Unless of course you're not opposed to a chemical approach like brush b gon - that would be another route. My view is that the farmer's work is never done. It is a constant battle against nature trying to reclaim the land. Thankfully, I enjoy the battle. :-) Thank you again for watching and commenting!