By Eric Jenks

The great thing about owning a woodlot is the options available for managing it to reach the goals you have. However, all those choices can sometimes cause hesitation or even paralysis because you “can’t see the forest for the trees.” Working with a forester enables you to see the best choices more clearly and build a management plan that can help you reach both your short- and long-term goals. Eric Stawitzky, a 25-year veteran of forestry and owner of Pioneer Forestry, LLC in Jamestown, New York, says there are several things to consider when choosing a forester. “Experience plays a part, obviously,” said Stawitzky. “Getting someone who has been through a number of different scenarios is useful. If you’re trying to find a forester, reaching out to state agencies for cooperating foresters and/or members of professional organizations like The Society of American Foresters (SAF) is a place to start. If they’re qualified to meet these designations, it means they are continuing to educate themselves on relevant topics which will provide the landowner with the quality of service they deserve. In the end you need to find someone to trust, and that’s never an easy thing to do.” “There are lots of scenarios when someone calls me to talk about their forestland and what help they may need,” said Stawitzky. “My first questions for the landowner are what are your goals and objectives, and how are you looking to manage the area. It’s recommended that the landowner be as open as possible about want they want their property to be. That phone call can be a good way to help them become more educated on options that are available, but the best advice comes when I get a chance to get my boots on the ground and inspect the property. It’s best if the landowner can join me because it gives them the opportunity to address and discuss in more detail specific areas within the ownership. That visit connects the dots between desires and obtainability, considering the health and quality of the forest currently.” When landowners have an onsite visit, they are encouraged to listen as much as possible. “They should try to be a sponge, so that they can learn from the forester about all of the different management possibilities and scenarios available for their property,” said Stawitzky. “Every property has issues, both good and bad. Creating a management plan is about getting a thorough understanding of what those issues are and what to do to improve the property over the long term. Once understood, immediate goals and objectives might need to be adjusted to have any chance of meeting long-term agendas. Be adaptable.” Another thing to keep in mind while working with a forester is it can take time to accomplish major ecological changes to a forested property, and not everything goes as planned. “Once the forester interview process is complete, you should have a better overall sense of what you have, what you want, and how to potentially accomplish it,” said Stawitzky. “Don’t ever be forced or pressured into making a forest management decision. It’s taken years – sometimes decades – for a forestland to get to the level it’s at. However, there are also events that can make changes to your plan almost instantly. For example, the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is an invasive insect that has altered a lot of goals and objectives for forested ownerships. Things change no matter how good you are in managing your property. My goal as a forester isn’t to overwhelm you with possibilities but to help you think about your property more than you ever have before while providing all available scenarios so you can choose the right approach for you.” 

NYFOA and NYTF recently sat down with the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) to talk about the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) and the financial and management opportunities that EQIP can provide to forest owners and their properties. “EQIP is a program offered through the USDA NRCS,” said Shanna Shaw, Area Resource Conservationist. “It’s considered to be a part of the Farm Bill that is authorized every five years. EQIP offers an array of options to landowners and farmers looking for financial assistance to do conservation work with their properties. There are various categories and funding opportunities available, but we’ll focus here on forest and habitat work.” NRCS Area Biologist Mike Shaw added, “We can also pay for timber stand improvements that promote new growth. Selective harvesting of timber can open the woods up to more sunlight to get regeneration started with other species as well.” Timber thinning can be funded if it improves the overall health of the area. “If you’re looking to do a stewardship plan and it specifies that doing a thinning is needed because of a concern over degraded plant condition, or you’re trying to make sure you have a healthy forest that is disease resistant and things like that, there are funding opportunities,” said Shanna Shaw. While EQIP has some specific target species of both fauna and flora, these conservation goals can often line up with other goals for landowners. “A lot depends on the goal of the participant and the specific goals they have for their property,” said Nicole Kubiczki, Resource Soil Scientist. “We can offer technical assistance at any point to help a landowner, both in guiding them and helping them achieve that financially.” Mike Shaw added, “Our young forest initiative is geared toward golden wing warblers, eastern cottontails, black-billed cuckoo, North American woodcock, and brown thrasher.” However, these species share habitat with many others, including game species. “You might not be interested in woodcock, but the same habitat will support deer, turkey, and grouse to name a few,” said Kubiczki. “We can marry the objectives of the agency with the objectives of the landowner, if someone wants to gain species for hunting versus others that NRCS might identify.” EQIP isn’t just for managing habitat types. Using an energy audit from NYSERDA, for example, maple syrup producers can apply to replace equipment for efficiency purposes. “For people managing a sugarbush or working on maple production, there are things we can do for them with energy savings,” said Mike Shaw. “For example we helped replace a reverse osmosis system with a newer, more efficient system. The first season in use we saved one farm 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel. It’s not limited to that though. Evaporators, arches, it runs the whole gamut of stuff to help with. Another example is when I helped a farm with their vacuum system. We replaced it with a variable motor system that was more efficient.” For those who want to pursue funding, the first step is contacting the nearest USDA service center in your area. “Contact your local rep for your county, and from there there’s a conversation to be had,” said Kubiczki. “NRCS will ask what your objectives are — for example, growing specific trees, controlling invasive species, managing a sugarbush. From there, NRCS needs to assess soils, streams, and other landscape features, not only geographically, but in terms of meeting the objectives. NRCS will go to the property, walk the site, and then suggest practices that would lend the landscape to meeting goals. There are a suite of practices that are combined to arrive at an objective. If there are any resource concerns for plant or animal habitat condition that isn’t ideal, we will go over ways to enhance that. From there, we or a forester can work with the landowner to write a conservation plan and then a contract.” While some grassland and species-specific projects do require a certain amount of acreage, NRCS works with properties of all sizes. “Forestry projects have no size limits,” said Kubiczki. “Some projects have been as small as an acre.” That said, the program funding is competitive to receive. “Each part of the state gets a budget, and everyone in that area that applies competes against each other,” said Shanna Shaw. “It’s a competitive process with a ranking system based off questions answered about the property and its goals. The financial allotment given out is funded by starting at the top-ranked applicants and moving downward until the funding is gone for the year. For those working at NRCS, there are rewards beyond the conservation work that take place. “The feedback from landowners that we get is awesome and is what keeps us going,” said Kubiczki. “Seeing aspen regeneration after a clearing photo, getting video and photos from folks from their trail cams — a lot of the work done translates into wonderful memories. One applicant was so thrilled to take their grandson out and have a successful archery hunt, and they were so happy that it was in the area that we had helped them improve. We talk about the species and fauna and flora, but we also have to talk about the sense of pride in having an impact and getting to be outside.” Shanna Shaw added that the USDA has many other opportunities besides EQIP for landowners. “Don’t think of USDA as being just for dairy or orchards or meat inspectors,” said Shaw. “From wetlands work to habitat growth to forestry or pollinator needs, we’re here to help. Start with your field office and we’ll hook you up to get your project going.” Click here to find your nearest USDA service center . Click here to learn more about EQIP .

Gretchen A. McHugh, a mother, musician, teacher, journalist and photographer who turned her love of good food and nature into a popular cookbook for outdoors enthusiasts, died Thursday, August 20, at The Slate Valley Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Granville, New York. She was 78 years old and suffered from frontotemporal dementia. Ms. McHugh lived in Granville.  Throughout her life, Gretchen McHugh was an avid hiker and canoeist, taking her two children and dogs on wilderness trips throughout the upper Midwest and, after moving to New York from Michigan in 1979, to the Hudson Valley, the Catskills and the Adirondacks. The rigors of raising children and preparing tasty, inexpensive food in the wild led her to study cooking and, finally, to write the defining outdoors cookbook, The Hungry Hiker’s Book of Good Cooking, which was published by Alfred A. Knopf from 1982 to 2007. The book was republished by her family in November, 2012, and is available online. In New York, Ms. McHugh worked in publishing before joining the staff of The Riverdale Press in The Bronx, where she was a reporter, photographer and editor of the paper’s Life Style section. In 1989 the New York Press Association named her Photographer of the Year and one of her articles was singled out as Best Feature Story. She also taught English literature at Bronx Community College. She spent many days sailing the Hudson River as a volunteer editor and photographer for Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Foundation and traveled to Northern Quebec to document the lives of Native Americans who were fighting expansion of a hydropower project on the Great Whale River. In 2004 she exhibited a collection of photographs titled Harnessing the Hudson, on the use of water power in the mills and factories on the edge of the Adirondacks. The show was mounted in collaboration with The Chapman Museum and the Folk Life Center of Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, New York. Her love of the outdoors drew her out of New York City in 1993, when she settled in a 200-year-old farm house — with associated barns, fields and woodlot — in Granville, NY. She restored the barns and the house, learned the details of forest management, enrolled the woodlot in the New York Tree Farm System and became active in the New York Forest Owners’ Association. She was later treasurer of NYFOA’s Southern Adirondack Chapter. She taught English at Adirondack Community College and taught piano to private students. A native of Birmingham, Michigan, Gretchen Ann Ruhl was the third of four daughters; their maternal grandfather Joseph Simms was born in Bohemia — now part of the Czech Republic — and became a prominent glass artist and engraver in Detroit. Gretchen studied piano from an early age and attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts and Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1963, where she was a member of the Shakespeare Society and made many lifelong friends. She received an MA from the University of Michigan and taught English and piano in the Detroit area. Her marriage to psychiatrist Dr. James McHugh ended in divorce. She is survived by two sisters, Mary Edwards of Hendersonville, North Carolina, and Kathryn Allen of Northville, Michigan; her daughter Jennifer McHugh, her husband Jack Hedin and their children, Emmet, Oscar and Jasper Hedin of Winona, Minnesota; her son J. Murray McHugh, his wife Jinna and their children, Ashleigh, of Los Angeles, and Benjamin, of Granville, many nieces and nephews and her husband, John Sullivan of Chestertown, New York. Services and interment will be private. Gretchen’s family offers profuse thanks to the many staff members at The Slate Valley Center for their good cheer and many years of devoted care. Donations in Gretchen’s memory may be made to The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, 724 Wolcott Ave., Beacon, NY 12508.

2020 has been a year of challenges and changes for most of the world, as Covid-19 reshapes how we interact on a daily basis with others. While being out in the woods can help remove yourself from some of that stress, producers of all kinds have had to react to changing markets and sales in the face of economic downturns and upswings this year. For maple producers, Covid-19 is just another challenge to tackle, as the weather is the main fickle and unpredictable part of the business. Mapleland Farms (MLF), a maple producer in Salem, NY, with over 18,000 taps and hundreds of acres to manage, the 2020 season has been about adapting to new market conditions and keeping up with a growing woodlot. “Covid-19 has certainly changed what we’re selling the most of right now,” said Dave Campbell, co-owner of MLF. “Liquid Syrup sales are up for home delivery, and candy sales are down because restaurants and other businesses have been closed up. That’s starting to change as businesses reopen and place orders again. Covid-19 has changed the way that we’ve been marketing our product for the past few months quite a bit. We’re lucky that we’re diversified enough in different markets that we’ve been able to adjust and keep moving products, unlike some other producers that may only have a retail operation for their own products that have had to shut down.  Beyond Covid-19, MLF has dealt with a changing mark for when the season begins due to weather fluctuations. “We started the earliest ever for us this year,” said Campbell. “We made syrup on the 12th of January. We’ve had more wind and tree damage this past year than normal as well. The vacuum that we were drawing on our lines to get the sap from the trees was lower than normal at the beginning of the season due to all of the damage. Once we repaired the lines though, the vacuum levels held up for the season, and the taps stayed clean throughout what was a longer and more drawn out season than normal. Overall the season’s crop was down from the last couple of years though. The sugar content was lower than average even though we handled just about the same volume of sap as normal. This was also MLF’s third season as a NY Grown and Certified producer. “It’s not something that we did to grow our brand, people pretty much already knew who we are,” said Campbell. “But I think it’s important to make consumers aware of what a quality brand does to be considered NY Grown and Certified, and that it show that we’re taking care of our woods and waste water in the right ways. This year we’ve actually been talking with NY Audubon to develop a pilot program to create bird friendly woodlots. They came out last summer to scout one of our woodlots and again surveyed it during the winter. We haven’t heard much about the progress on the project currently, but we’re excited to be part of it. They were pleased with the diversity of birds that they found on our woodlot. For those that are interested in scaling up, Campbell had some tips. “It’s taken us a lifetime to develop our marketing,” said Campbell. “You have to look at how to do things efficiently if you’re going to try and sell in bulk. Quebec had a record crop up there this year and they make 80% of the world supply, so there’s a lot of bulk on the market driving prices down right now. If you take the time to invest in making value added products and can find a market for it, there’s a lot more profit in that end of the business.”

Photo by Dan Newman