Harvesting timber is critical in maintaining the health of a forest.
A properly planned harvest can provide you with many benefits. Stewardship of our acreage provides us with lumber to mill and wood for cooking and heat. In addition to these benefits, managing our forests correctly enhances forest health and appearance thus adding to the property's value.
Harvesting trees with a game plan will help the land become more productive, deliver a healthier wildlife habitat, increase recreational access, and improve water quality.
The Adirondack Mountain Region of Upstate New York is where our property is situated. This 6,000,000-acre mountain range has been blessed with pristine forests. These forests have been harvested commercially for hundreds of years. The DEC, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, now oversees the logging industry in this area.
Last week I just happened upon The Miller Brothers. They had been logging a 1400-acre, privately owned plot of land. Being Amish, Petrol-powered farm equipment is mostly forbidden. Their method of logging included using Draft Horses to get the timber out of the forest.
Being captured by this old-school practice, I decided to pull over and see if the gentleman in the pic above was a friendly chap. Once I broke the ice, he was more than happy to have a conversation with me, answering many of the questions I posed. Meet Starlight and Emma, a pair of Draft horses doing the heavy lifting. The Miller brothers have three teams of these remarkable horses on the job. The other two teams were out in the forest.
As I approached these Draft horses I was dumbstruck by their size and muscular body. These horses are of the Percheron breed and weigh between 1,400 to 2,000 pounds.
Ira told me that Draft horses wear a special horseshoe, one designed for soft ground. The Keg horseshoe is commonly used as it provides extra traction.
This is the carriage that the horses are hitched to.
A closeup of the carriage shows the chains that are attached to the logs. The steel wheels were about 8 inches in width.
This is the old barn where the horses are housed when they are not working.
Here are some of the logs that were harvested.
For over a mile stretch of roadway, piles like this were everywhere. Ira said that they had been harvesting the Ash trees from the forest since October of 2022. All of these pics were taken on February 21, 2023. He explained that with the lack of snowfall this year, they were able to work through much of the winter.
Ira told me that up to date they had pulled out over 120,000 linear feet of timber from the 1400 acres, and he expected to be there for another couple of weeks. That figure of 120,000 linear feet equates to almost 23 miles, simply amazing. He also stated that the three teams of horses they had could each pull about 1,800 pounds at a time.
I asked him if he had a business card.
He then hustled into the barn and gave me one of his cards. He explained that one of his brothers was no longer part of the crew for he had opened a sawmill. You can see where his brother's name was scratched from the card. He then stated that he doesn't have a phone or any internet service and that if I wanted to get in touch with him I could just mail a postcard to the address found on the business card.
Prior to taking any of the pictures you see here, I asked Ira if that would be okay. He said that would be fine just as long as I didn't take any pictures that showed his face.
If you would like to see one of these tree harvesters in action, check out the link below. What a piece of machinery.
This outfit was harvesting spruce trees. More than likely this wood would be brought to a sawmill and milled into framing material, 2x4s, and other dimensional lumber used to frame houses and other stick-built structures.
There were several mountains of logs along the roadside.
Unlike the wood pulled from the forest by the Draft Horses and laid side by side, these logs were neatly piled by a different piece of machinery called a Grappler.
With the forest being so dense, this grappler had its lights on.
