When the soil is protected by a complete leaf canopy, the forest crop may be considered as established, and the after-treatment will consist of judicious thinning.
[3. HOW TO TREAT THE WOOD LOT.]
In the northeastern States it is the custom to have connected with the farm apiece of virgin woodland, commonly called the wood lot. Its object primarily is to supply the farmer with the firewood, fence material, and such dimension timbers as he may need from time to time for repairs on buildings, wagons, etc.
As a rule, the wood lot occupies, as it ought to, the poorer part of the farm, the rocky or stony, the dry or the wet portions, which are not well fitted for agricultural crops. As a rule, it is treated as it ought not to be, if the intention is to have it serve its purpose continuously; it is cut and culled without regard to its reproduction.
As far as firewood supplies go, the careful farmer will first use the dead and dying trees, broken limbs, and leavings, which is quite proper. The careless man avoids the extra labor which such material requires, and takes whatever splits best, no matter whether the material could be used for better purposes or not.
When it comes to the cutting of other material, fence rails, posts, or dimension timber, the general rule is to go into the lot and select the best trees of the best kind for the purpose. This looks at first sight like the natural, most practical way of doing. It is the method which the lumberman pursues when he "culls" the forest, and is, from his point of view perhaps, justifiable, for he only desires to secure at once what is most profitable in the forest. But for the farmer, who proposes to use his wood lot continuously for supplies of this kind, it is a method detrimental to his object, and in time it leaves him with a lot of poor, useless timber which encumbers the ground and prevents the growth of a better crop.
Our woods are mostly composed of many species of trees; they are mixed woods. Some of the species are valuable for some special purposes, others are applicable to a variety of purposes, and again others furnish but poor material for anything but firewood, and even for that use they may not be of the best.
Among the most valuable in the northeastern woods we should mention the white pine—king of all—the white ash, white and chestnut oak, hickories, tulip tree, black walnut, and black cherry, the last three being now nearly exhausted; next, spruce and hemlock, red pine, sugar maple, chestnut, various oaks of the black or red oak tribe, several species of ash and birch, black locust; lastly, elms and soft maples, basswood, poplars, and sycamore.