Low Impact Forestry- Profiles

Calvin Schaefer

Church’s Corner
300 acres
Ecoregion - Southern Uplands
Ecodistrict - Caledonia

The roads that lead to Calvin Schaefer's woodlot at Church’s Corner, bring the traveller from a rolling farms and woodlands, into a steep hilly forested landscape etched by fast flowing streams headed for the sea. Church’s Corner is south of Elgin in Albert County. It backs on Crown Land, which in turn abuts the wilderness portion of Fundy National Park.. Mr. Schaefer points out, "My closet neighbour directly south of me is in Nova Scotia."

This upland plateau of Albert County is part of the Southern Uplands Ecoregion, which also covers the northwestern section of New Brunswick. The high elevation provides a climate that is conducive to tolerant hardwood and mixed wood communities. The proximity of the Bay of Fundy, tends to moderate the climate in both the summer and winter and contributes to high levels of precipitation.

The upland plateau defines the Caledonia Ecodistrict. On less disturbed sites in this region, forests of sugar maple, yellow birch, white ash, ironwood, beech, red spruce, hemlock and white pine. On the gentle slopes and upland flats, mixedwood communities of red spruce, yellow birch, red maple and some balsam fir can be found. In the valley bottoms and on the wetter flats, pure stands of spruce and fir are common. The region has a long settlement and timber harvesting history. On cut-over areas shade intolerant species such as white birch dominate in combination with some balsam fir, white spruce and poplar.

"There is no doubt that these woodlots have a climate that is far different for Petitcodiac or even Elgin which is only a few miles away. In the summer we will be working up here, the sun will be shining, but when you stop for lunch you want to put your jacket on to be comfortable. If you went down to Elgin or Petitcodiac the heat would knock you down. Getting back up on the mountains to go to work is pretty inviting."

Despite the similarities in elevation and climate and the species distribution between the uplands in Madawaska County and the uplands in Albert County, the development and growth of the trees seem markedly different. Height growth in Albert County does not appear to be as good as in Madawaska. This might be accounted for by a difference in soils and soil fertility. The Albert County geology derives from volcanic rock which weathers slowly whereas in Madawaska soils are derived from sedimentary rock which erodes more readily forming deeper, more fertile soils. The influence of sea salt and airborne pollution common in this region may also contribute to poorer growing conditions in this district.

Mr. Schaefer's family still lives on the same farm and woodlot that was settled by his great grandfather who immigrated from Germany. Schaefer grew up working on the farm with animals and working in the woodlot with his father, to get wood for the home, the sugar camp and occasionally to sell as logs or pulpwood. "I was raised with a peeling spud in my hand" he says recalling his boyhood working experience.

Mr. Schaefer owns three, 100 acre woodlots, including the original 100 acre woodlot that was granted to his great-grand father Mr. Schaefer's three sons grew up working with him in the woods, and even now with their own careers established, are called out to help when the sap is running. Mr. Schaefer recently became a grandfather himself and wonders if this new generation will continue the family’s interest in the woodlots.

Horses, Tractors and Timberjacks

As a teenager and a young adult Mr. Schaefer worked in the woods to make his living, both for harvest contractors and contracting on his own. Because he grew up working with horses, he developed a deep respect for horse logging and contracted logging with horse around Albert County. Mr. Schaefer still owns a pair of heavy horses, but at 50 years of age he is finding that his body isn't so keen to follow a yarding horse all day like it did a decade or two ago. He explain that it is also very hard to find workers that know how to drive a horse or to cut for horse yarding. After he bought a farm tractor and forestry trailer with a loader, he started leaving the horses in the barn. He used the tractor and trailer for several years, but found it was not effective on the steep terrain.

"I use a 230 Timberjack skidder now. I can start it up and shut it off when ever I want. It has it has a solid foot print and power to pull a good load. The ground can be rough and rocky and steep slope is pretty well guaranteed around here, in fact most of the wood left to cut is on slope where conventional horse, farm tractor or forwarder harvesting couldn't get to."

Producing Syrup Influences Woodlot Management

Maple syrup production is a traditional woodlot product of the highlands of Albert county, and is a major activity on the Schaefer woodlot. Mr. Schaefer says his sugar bush is made up of "more than 3000 and less than 4000 on pipeline and cans." Work on the bush starts with "tapping in" in early March and work continuing through to May. Marketing maple product continues through the rest of the year, but at a far less hectic pace.

His maple husbandry background is reflected in Mr. Schaefer's woodlot 'fibre' management philosophy and has a marked impact on his management activities. "You never cut a healthy Hard Maple tree, no matter where it is." As a result, there are isolated maples as well as small patches that some day may become part of the ever expanding maple sugar operation.

Mr. Schaefer does have grave concerns about the health of his maple bush. "We are getting a higher and higher incidence of dieback from the top in the maples. I don' t know why, although there is lots of speculation on things from acid rain and air pollution to climate stress, to global warming. No one has an answer but I know we are losing trees like never before. I think that ozone depletion may be the cause. I think that the sun's rays are harsher than they used to be. I grew up working outdoors and the sun never used to bother me, now when the sun gets high it doesn't feel good, I want to get out of the sun. The leaves don't have any option they have to take it. That maybe part of the problem with the maples."

Outside of holding on to just about every sugar maple tree, Mr. Schaefer's woodlot management philosophy leads him to maintain a diversity of species on the woodlot, and rely primarily on natural regeneration to restock cut over areas. Along with a reliance on natural regeneration, Mr. Schaefer and his family have inter-planted some jack pine, red pine and spruce, "as an experiment, just to see what they will do". "One thing the pines will do is attract moose. They walk around the woodlot and when they find a pine they just mangle them."

Mr. Schaefer says he was taught that it was important to keep the woodlot in good productive health, never clearcut unless whole stand over mature and there were young trees that were going to continue to grow on the area. He feels that his management has met this principal, with the exception of the need to harvest excessively during the spruce Budworm epidemic in the seventies. "We logged with horses right up to ten or so years ago. With horse we were able to work through the stands and take out the mature wood and leave lots of intermediate aged trees and lots of regeneration. But when the Budworm was here, in some stands you had to simply cut it or lose it."

"Those big trees will come down so fast they will chase you out of the woods"

Mr. Schaefer's traditional cutting method in softwoods and mixedwood stands was to remove the largest and the oldest trees and leave smaller trees to grow. He ran into a problem with this traditional method when he tried to qualify an SNB Wood Co-op Program. "They wanted me to leave big mature spruce, along with the intermediate sized trees and the regeneration. We would look at the annual growth ring increment on the stump of the big trees, and see that they were putting on good volume, then we would look at intermediate tree's growth and see that it was not as good as the biggest trees. So their reasoning was to keep the big fast growers and gain more value faster, and take some of the smaller trees and give room for the remaining trees to grow faster. Well you just can't do that here on these rocky hills. Once you start opening up those stands and the winds can get in, those big trees will come down so fast they will chase you out of the woods. Our soil is very thin and trees will blow down real quick."

"I find that when I do a selection harvest I have to be very careful to keep a uniform crown height on the trees that I leave. I also tend to want to leave patches of crop trees fairly tightly packed so they will help keep each other standing. I also want to keep good hardwoods not only for the mix of species, but also because they can stand more wind and will help keep the spruce standing."

Walking through an area of forest that had been selection harvested, a blown down spruce shows the thin root mat and a meagre amount of organic soil that had covered the shattered granite rock where the tree had stood. The crop trees were in scattered patches with uniform heights. The initial selection harvest was done in 1992 with a follow up to clean up blow downs in 1995. Looking at a few toppled and broken stems, Mr. Schaefer plans to do another clean up in 2000.

"The idea of having a little help to do selection harvesting is great, but I think that you have to look a lot closer at local conditions, things like soil and wind-firmness. It is not practical for me to consider to do a selection harvest on my land the same way you would do a selection harvest in Petitcodiac or Sussex, the woods are really very different."

Mr. Schaefer's woodlot management philosophy also advocates no clear-cut harvesting, at least until the natural regeneration is well established. Like most New Brunswick woodlot owners he had to forgo this principle when the spruce budworm epidemic was at it's height in the seventies. Those areas that were clearcut when he was chasing the budworm have regenerated and were pre-commercially thinned in 1992. Now the thinned balsam fir are growing rapidly, with some stems already achieving studwood specifications. Despite the good growth to present, he does expect that he may have to chase the budworm again someday.

In the mid nineties Mr. Schaefer completed a semi-commercial thinning on a stand of white and red spruce that had grown up on an old field. Once again, one of his greatest concerns with the operation was to be very careful not to open the stand up and allowing the wind into the stand. "The trees were growing very close together and the rooting was extremely shallow. I used the tractor and loader trailer, and made sure the trails were narrow and that thinning was light. It is nearly time to come back and get a few more. One thing about the first thinning it got some regeneration started."

Woodlot Management Business

Mr. Schaefer has developed a woodlot management business with landowners in his neighborhood, to manage the harvesting and silviculture on their woodlots. He has arrangements with several woodlot owners and handles the management on several hundred acres. He does some of the harvesting work himself, but also has a reliable skidder crew that harvest with good standards and they are brought in to work for a period every year.

Mr. Schaefer also takes care of arranging for silviculture work on woodlots. " A woodlot owner saw pre-commercial thinning work and was very pleased with the job. I told him that the ten acres of thinning would return the owner more money in 10 years time than what had been harvested from 20 acres in the past couple of years."

Mr. Schaefer is going forward with management work on his most recently purchased woodlot. The woodlot has a lot of over-mature poplar and spruce. These over-mature stands have well established natural regeneration.
"My priority is to harvest the over-mature wood before it goes down. Any where there is a patch of younger wood I'm going around it. Some spots have to be cut pretty hard but as long as I go along careful and stick to the trails I will have lots of regen to work with."

Mr. Schaefer is an avid hunter and likes to see wildlife on his woodlots. The stand diversity across the woodlots has resulted in diverse and healthy animal and bird populations. However he is somewhat concerned that the woodlots may be getting a higher rate of moose visitation than would naturally be the case. He points to the clearcutting, plantations and other forestry disturbances on the Crown lands to the south of his land. "I am concerned that the moose are losing habitat on the Crown land and are coming here where the habitat is more diverse. I love to see moose here, but I am concerned about the intensity of their browsing on my regeneration." As for the incidence of moose and deer in the Sugar Bush, he shrugs that the occasional pass of a large ungulate and the resultant destruction of the pipelines is simply part of the maple syrup business.



		*Calvin Schaefer* Church’s Corner 300 acres Ecoregion - Southern Uplands Ecodistrict - Caledonia
The roads that lead to Calvin Schaefer's woodlot at Church’s Corner, bring the traveller from a rolling farms and woodlands, into a steep hilly forested landscape etched by fast flowing streams headed for the sea. Church’s Corner is south of Elgin in Albert County. It backs on Crown Land, which in turn abuts the wilderness portion of Fundy National Park.. Mr. Schaefer points out, "My closet neighbour directly south of me is in Nova Scotia." This upland plateau of Albert County is part of the Southern Uplands Ecoregion, which also covers the northwestern section of New Brunswick. The high elevation provides a climate that is conducive to tolerant hardwood and mixed wood communities. The proximity of the Bay of Fundy, tends to moderate the climate in both the summer and winter and contributes to high levels of precipitation. The upland plateau defines the Caledonia Ecodistrict. On less disturbed sites in this region, forests of sugar maple, yellow birch, white ash, ironwood, beech, red spruce, hemlock and white pine. On the gentle slopes and upland flats, mixedwood communities of red spruce, yellow birch, red maple and some balsam fir can be found. In the valley bottoms and on the wetter flats, pure stands of spruce and fir are common. The region has a long settlement and timber harvesting history. On cut-over areas shade intolerant species such as white birch dominate in combination with some balsam fir, white spruce and poplar. "There is no doubt that these woodlots have a climate that is far different for Petitcodiac or even Elgin which is only a few miles away. In the summer we will be working up here, the sun will be shining, but when you stop for lunch you want to put your jacket on to be comfortable. If you went down to Elgin or Petitcodiac the heat would knock you down. Getting back up on the mountains to go to work is pretty inviting." Despite the similarities in elevation and climate and the species distribution between the uplands in Madawaska County and the uplands in Albert County, the development and growth of the trees seem markedly different. Height growth in Albert County does not appear to be as good as in Madawaska. This might be accounted for by a difference in soils and soil fertility. The Albert County geology derives from volcanic rock which weathers slowly whereas in Madawaska soils are derived from sedimentary rock which erodes more readily forming deeper, more fertile soils. The influence of sea salt and airborne pollution common in this region may also contribute to poorer growing conditions in this district. Mr. Schaefer's family still lives on the same farm and woodlot that was settled by his great grandfather who immigrated from Germany. Schaefer grew up working on the farm with animals and working in the woodlot with his father, to get wood for the home, the sugar camp and occasionally to sell as logs or pulpwood. "I was raised with a peeling spud in my hand" he says recalling his boyhood working experience. Mr. Schaefer owns three, 100 acre woodlots, including the original 100 acre woodlot that was granted to his great-grand father Mr. Schaefer's three sons grew up working with him in the woods, and even now with their own careers established, are called out to help when the sap is running. Mr. Schaefer recently became a grandfather himself and wonders if this new generation will continue the family’s interest in the woodlots. Horses, Tractors and Timberjacks As a teenager and a young adult Mr. Schaefer worked in the woods to make his living, both for harvest contractors and contracting on his own. Because he grew up working with horses, he developed a deep respect for horse logging and contracted logging with horse around Albert County. Mr. Schaefer still owns a pair of heavy horses, but at 50 years of age he is finding that his body isn't so keen to follow a yarding horse all day like it did a decade or two ago. He explain that it is also very hard to find workers that know how to drive a horse or to cut for horse yarding. After he bought a farm tractor and forestry trailer with a loader, he started leaving the horses in the barn. He used the tractor and trailer for several years, but found it was not effective on the steep terrain. "I use a 230 Timberjack skidder now. I can start it up and shut it off when ever I want. It has it has a solid foot print and power to pull a good load. The ground can be rough and rocky and steep slope is pretty well guaranteed around here, in fact most of the wood left to cut is on slope where conventional horse, farm tractor or forwarder harvesting couldn't get to." Producing Syrup Influences Woodlot Management Maple syrup production is a traditional woodlot product of the highlands of Albert county, and is a major activity on the Schaefer woodlot. Mr. Schaefer says his sugar bush is made up of "more than 3000 and less than 4000 on pipeline and cans." Work on the bush starts with "tapping in" in early March and work continuing through to May. Marketing maple product continues through the rest of the year, but at a far less hectic pace. His maple husbandry background is reflected in Mr. Schaefer's woodlot 'fibre' management philosophy and has a marked impact on his management activities. "You never cut a healthy Hard Maple tree, no matter where it is." As a result, there are isolated maples as well as small patches that some day may become part of the ever expanding maple sugar operation. Mr. Schaefer does have grave concerns about the health of his maple bush. "We are getting a higher and higher incidence of dieback from the top in the maples. I don' t know why, although there is lots of speculation on things from acid rain and air pollution to climate stress, to global warming. No one has an answer but I know we are losing trees like never before. I think that ozone depletion may be the cause. I think that the sun's rays are harsher than they used to be. I grew up working outdoors and the sun never used to bother me, now when the sun gets high it doesn't feel good, I want to get out of the sun. The leaves don't have any option they have to take it. That maybe part of the problem with the maples." Outside of holding on to just about every sugar maple tree, Mr. Schaefer's woodlot management philosophy leads him to maintain a diversity of species on the woodlot, and rely primarily on natural regeneration to restock cut over areas. Along with a reliance on natural regeneration, Mr. Schaefer and his family have inter-planted some jack pine, red pine and spruce, "as an experiment, just to see what they will do". "One thing the pines will do is attract moose. They walk around the woodlot and when they find a pine they just mangle them." Mr. Schaefer says he was taught that it was important to keep the woodlot in good productive health, never clearcut unless whole stand over mature and there were young trees that were going to continue to grow on the area. He feels that his management has met this principal, with the exception of the need to harvest excessively during the spruce Budworm epidemic in the seventies. "We logged with horses right up to ten or so years ago. With horse we were able to work through the stands and take out the mature wood and leave lots of intermediate aged trees and lots of regeneration. But when the Budworm was here, in some stands you had to simply cut it or lose it." *"Those big trees will come down so fast they will chase you out of the woods"* Mr. Schaefer's traditional cutting method in softwoods and mixedwood stands was to remove the largest and the oldest trees and leave smaller trees to grow. He ran into a problem with this traditional method when he tried to qualify an SNB Wood Co-op Program. "They wanted me to leave big mature spruce, along with the intermediate sized trees and the regeneration. We would look at the annual growth ring increment on the stump of the big trees, and see that they were putting on good volume, then we would look at intermediate tree's growth and see that it was not as good as the biggest trees. So their reasoning was to keep the big fast growers and gain more value faster, and take some of the smaller trees and give room for the remaining trees to grow faster. Well you just can't do that here on these rocky hills. Once you start opening up those stands and the winds can get in, those big trees will come down so fast they will chase you out of the woods. Our soil is very thin and trees will blow down real quick." "I find that when I do a selection harvest I have to be very careful to keep a uniform crown height on the trees that I leave. I also tend to want to leave patches of crop trees fairly tightly packed so they will help keep each other standing. I also want to keep good hardwoods not only for the mix of species, but also because they can stand more wind and will help keep the spruce standing." Walking through an area of forest that had been selection harvested, a blown down spruce shows the thin root mat and a meagre amount of organic soil that had covered the shattered granite rock where the tree had stood. The crop trees were in scattered patches with uniform heights. The initial selection harvest was done in 1992 with a follow up to clean up blow downs in 1995. Looking at a few toppled and broken stems, Mr. Schaefer plans to do another clean up in 2000. "The idea of having a little help to do selection harvesting is great, but I think that you have to look a lot closer at local conditions, things like soil and wind-firmness. It is not practical for me to consider to do a selection harvest on my land the same way you would do a selection harvest in Petitcodiac or Sussex, the woods are really very different." Mr. Schaefer's woodlot management philosophy also advocates no clear-cut harvesting, at least until the natural regeneration is well established. Like most New Brunswick woodlot owners he had to forgo this principle when the spruce budworm epidemic was at it's height in the seventies. Those areas that were clearcut when he was chasing the budworm have regenerated and were pre-commercially thinned in 1992. Now the thinned balsam fir are growing rapidly, with some stems already achieving studwood specifications. Despite the good growth to present, he does expect that he may have to chase the budworm again someday. In the mid nineties Mr. Schaefer completed a semi-commercial thinning on a stand of white and red spruce that had grown up on an old field. Once again, one of his greatest concerns with the operation was to be very careful not to open the stand up and allowing the wind into the stand. "The trees were growing very close together and the rooting was extremely shallow. I used the tractor and loader trailer, and made sure the trails were narrow and that thinning was light. It is nearly time to come back and get a few more. One thing about the first thinning it got some regeneration started." Woodlot Management Business Mr. Schaefer has developed a woodlot management business with landowners in his neighborhood, to manage the harvesting and silviculture on their woodlots. He has arrangements with several woodlot owners and handles the management on several hundred acres. He does some of the harvesting work himself, but also has a reliable skidder crew that harvest with good standards and they are brought in to work for a period every year. Mr. Schaefer also takes care of arranging for silviculture work on woodlots. " A woodlot owner saw pre-commercial thinning work and was very pleased with the job. I told him that the ten acres of thinning would return the owner more money in 10 years time than what had been harvested from 20 acres in the past couple of years." Mr. Schaefer is going forward with management work on his most recently purchased woodlot. The woodlot has a lot of over-mature poplar and spruce. These over-mature stands have well established natural regeneration. "My priority is to harvest the over-mature wood before it goes down. Any where there is a patch of younger wood I'm going around it. Some spots have to be cut pretty hard but as long as I go along careful and stick to the trails I will have lots of regen to work with." Mr. Schaefer is an avid hunter and likes to see wildlife on his woodlots. The stand diversity across the woodlots has resulted in diverse and healthy animal and bird populations. However he is somewhat concerned that the woodlots may be getting a higher rate of moose visitation than would naturally be the case. He points to the clearcutting, plantations and other forestry disturbances on the Crown lands to the south of his land. "I am concerned that the moose are losing habitat on the Crown land and are coming here where the habitat is more diverse. I love to see moose here, but I am concerned about the intensity of their browsing on my regeneration." As for the incidence of moose and deer in the Sugar Bush, he shrugs that the occasional pass of a large ungulate and the resultant destruction of the pipelines is simply part of the maple syrup business.