Cutting down trees and what to do with them

When making room to farm, you may need to cut down some trees. What you do with the trees once you have cut them down varies according to need. Our heating is supplemented by our woodstove. When I cut down maple, oak, poplar, or birch, I cut it up for firewood. I could easily just as well cut logs into longer lengths, drill holes in them and inoculate with mushroom spores. Someday soon, I will try my hand at mushroom culture. If the trees were small and I had a chipper, chipping the wood for animal bedding, composting high nitrogen materials, or mulching would be a good use. However, getting a chipper is for another day. In the past when I cut down pine, I wouldn’t keep it for the wood stove, I would burn it in the back field as brush. The ash being high in calcium and other minerals are good for our calcium poor soils (thanks to acid rain). Growth of crops where the ash is spread has always been better. More recently when I burn brush, I do it on a rainy day. With big piles and flames going 30-40 feet in the air, a good fire suppressing rain is nice to prevent torching more than just the brush pile. Prior to all the hot coals completely combusting to ash, I spread them out with a rake and let the rain extinguish them. The left over charcoal can then be tilled into the ground and incorporated as biochar for making homemade terra –preta soil. Instead of slash and burn, I am now looking at slash and char. My soil in the back field is low in organic content in some places and the incorporation of char is the fastest way to increase soil carbon content. When char is added, you also need to have high nitrogen fertilizer added, otherwise the skewed carbon:nitrogen ratio will inhibit rather than help plant growth. Slash and char is an ongoing project and I will write more on it later. This past fall, I found another use for the pine. I made my own split log fence. I put a section up along the driveway. This upcoming year, I will do some more, but with higher posts and with some electric wire along the top for some livestock. More later on making your own split log fence- its really easy!