Book on Woodlot Management

Devoured a book on woodlot management, a birthday gift from Carroll, which started this blogger thinking about the idea of managing our newly purchased property as a woodlot and all it entails.

The book entitled Woodlot Management by Bruno Wiskel is about most aspects of operating a small woodlot operation that is more on a personal level. The book is in total 134 pages long including glossary and everything. It does not go too indepth into all the varieties and options of the management practice but provides numerous accounts of personal experience, practice and ideas. It is certainly an excellent introduction that will give the reader a feeling of what it is like to be a woodlot owner along with the family oriented activities etc.

Above all it is based on experience of a practising woodlot manager. The author lives and operates in Alberta Canada.

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Woodlot Management, 1995, Bruno Wiskel and Lone Pine Publishing, Edmonton, Vancouver and Redmond WA. ISBN 1-55105-067-6.

Staking out

Carroll and I spent the entire afternoon at the property. With the new weedwacker I made a trail through the tall wild parsnips to our preferred house site. We staked out the periphery of where our house would be located, and set up a screened tent fly to provide some reprieve from the horse flies and deer flies which are voracious around here. At this point we started building our house. This is or will be covered in another blog.

The woods were very difficult to pass through if you did not stick to the paths. This is largely due to the damage caused by the 1998 Ice storm that beset this entire area. Consequently many tree tops were broken and branches were hanging down low make passage very difficult.

Closing Day

Today we took ownership of the property after meeting with the lawyers and settling the accounts.

Manitoba Maple

From the aerial photos found an area of trees that had pronounced light green foliage. This turned out to be a patch of very concentrated Manitoba Maple Trees [Acer negundo L.], also called Box Elder. After inspection from the ground found remains of buildings like cement floors and pieces of hardware lying around. etc. which explains the existence of the manitoba maples. They tend to take root next to buildings.

Fly over

Took the afternoon off from work and with a friend who has a pilots licence rented a small plane, flew over the property for some aerial views and photos.

Signed the Papers

Carroll and I signed the papers for the transfer of the property today.

Wild Parsnip

Visited the property out near Kars today and came across areas of high concentrations of wild Parsnip [Pastinaca sativa]. I remember this weed well as a youth when we called it poison parsnip since it would cause a skin rash if the sap touched your skin.

Found land for sale

Found an interesting piece of land for sale located south of Roger Stevens Rd. near Kars. The description states that there is 11 acres of conservation land and about 10 cleared all told.