The Spring Cleaning Toolkit

Now that the snow is almost gone, it's a great time to get out on your Reservation and do a little spring cleaning. What are the best tools to take with you on a spring cleaning foray? I like a shovel or hoe of some sort, a hand saw, and a plastic trash bag at this time of year... and here's what I use them for:

1. Clean out Culverts - if there are any culverts on the roads and/or trails on your reservation, spring is a good time to make sure they're running free. Culverts can easily plug with sediment and debris over the course of fall and winter, and if they block the flow of water completely, the consequences can be disastrous. Use your shovel or hoe to scrape debris out of the culvert's intake and outflow as best as you can.

culvert failure

2. Clean Waterbars & Drainages - The upslope side of trail waterbars should have a nice drainage channel to divert water off trail. If those on your property have filled in with dirt, leaves, or other debris and are flush with the bar itself, they're due for a cleaning. Scrape out any accumulated debris with your shovel or hoe and restore the drain channel. Be sure it extends well off the side of the trail so the water won't just pour back on the trail a little further down!

a waterbar (looking downslope) with cleaned drain channel (Photo: P. Ellis)

3. Take out the Trash - After all that dirty snow melts, you will inevitably find trash items (cans, bottles, food packaging) along your property's road frontage, and possibly along trails as well. Remembering to bring a plastic trash bag with you is a good idea at any time of year, since you can whip it out to hold all those yucky rubbish items when you run into them.

4. Watch for Windfall - Winter storms often leave branches, large limbs, and sometimes even whole trees across the trail system. Early spring is a great time to get out and make sure the trail is passable for recreational users. Here's where your handsaw will come in handy... use it to help you saw larger branches and remove them from the trail corridor. If large trees have fallen, you may use a chainsaw as long as you have completed SPNHF's Chainsaw Safety and Maintenance Workshop and feel you have the skills to remove the tree safely. If not, alert Forest Society staff to the problem and we'll do our best to get out and clear the trail as soon as we can!

Winter Blowdown - only tackle these if you feel confident you can do it safely (photo: L. Martin)

Sweet Spring Season

At the close of each winter, when the nights are still below freezing and the days above, it's that time again. Time for New Hampshire's sugar maples to be pressed into service to provide their sweet sap for reduction into golden maple syrup, in turn to be poured over the nation's pancakes, french toast, and other breakfast edibles.

Maple syrup is undeniably a forest product, just as lumber, wood chips and paper are - and the harvesting of sap from maples each spring is also a form of local and sustainable agriculture. Despite this, management of an active sugarbush can run counter to other common timber management objectives - in a sugarbush, sugar maples are favored over all other species, creating a kind of monoculture, and tap holes certainly decrease the value of maple logs if the area were ever harvested. Although we wouldn't want a sugaring operation on every northern hardwood forest SPNHF owns, the Forest Society does have several sugarwoods on it's reservations. The Rocks Estate in Bethlehem has one, complete with a maple museum and operating sugarhouse to let visitors experience all aspects of maple sugaring from tapping to sap collection to boiling and syrup draw-off. The Forest Society also leases portions of a few reservations (primarily those in the sweet soils of the CT river valley like Nemiah Forest in Lyme or Yatsevitch Forest in Plainfield/Cornish) to maple producers to operate as sugarwoods. So if you see sugaring lines on the Forest Society reservation you monitor for us, be sure to check with SPNHF Land Management staff to make sure this is part of an active lease agreement!

Taylor Brother Sugarhouse in Meriden, NH. Some of the sap they're boiling comes from trees on the Yatsevitch Reservation in Cornish & Plainfield.

If you have never been to a New Hampshire sugarhouse during March or early April, you should make plans to visit one. It is quite an experience to eat a donut slathered in maple cream or sip a cup of coffee flavored with Grade B syrup (the darkest and most flavorful grade, produced towards the close of each sugaring season) inside the sweet and steamy sugarhouse. It's a true NH treat!

Become a First Detector for Invasive Forest Pests!

Emerald Ash Borer - adult beetle

Invasive insect pests are a serious threat to our forests in New Hampshire. By now you've probably heard the names "Hemlock Woolly Adelgid," "Emerald Ash Borer," and "Asian Longhorned Beetle" bantered about in conservation circles, but would you recognize all of these bugs if you encountered them on the property you monitor for the Forest Society? Would you know where to look? Or what to do and who to contact if you did find an invasive pest? Did you know that Hemlock Woolly Adelgid is already being discovered in the southwestern part of our state? That Emerald Ash Borer has been found in upstate NY, only 80 miles from the border with NH? Or that native wasp colonies are being employed to help monitor for the presence of Emerald Ash Borer? If you're interested in learning more, we've got great news for you!

Invasive Pest First Detector Training, sponsored by the UNH Cooperative Extension, NH Audubon, and the Forest Society, is being offered to Land Stewards on Thursday April 7th at the McClane Audubon Center in Concord. Stewards will learn how to monitor for and identify invasive insects that currently threaten New Hampshire's forests, and will then be part of a nationwide network of "First Detectors" working to provide early detection of these invaders as they expand into new territories. Insect collection and submittal for identification confirmation will also be covered. Some damaging invasive plants will also be included in the training protocol. This is a fantastic opportunity to expand your stewardship skill set and assist the Forest Society and NH's conservation community in protecting our forestlands. To sign up for the workshop, please email Suzanne Hebert at UNH Cooperative Extension (suzanne.hebert@unh.edu) or call her at 862-3200. There is no charge for the workshop. Check out the flyer (with training agenda) here.

Archaeological Remains - Where and What

Those of us who are out in the woods a lot are the most likely candidates to find archaeological remains. Knowing where to look and what to look for can help you to spot these things.

People have been living in New Hampshire for 12,000 years, and during the 11,500 years of prehistory they were living over and over again in the same preferred places: on river and lake shores, especially on river and lakeside terraces, at falls and at river deltas, inlets and outlets. Post-glacial nomadic hunters camped in these locations, hunter-gatherers preferred these spots for seasonal settlements, and village horticulturalists found this to be the best land for planting, so these locations often have layer upon layer of buried artifacts.

One other potential archaeological location is at or near outcrops of fine-grained stone, where people repeatedly came to quarry the stone, knock it into rough "blanks", and carry it away to finish tool-making nearby.

Of course these spots are likely to be covered with soil and trees, but wind and water may expose the artifacts. Where there is disturbance, look for pieces of fine-grained (smooth, slippery) stone. Look for signs of straight-line fracture or of chipping of the edges - these were tools or the debris from making and sharpening tools. You could be looking at something 12,000 years old. Look for pieces of pottery, often "stamped" with a raised pattern on the outside surface; this could be 3,000 years old. Also look for metal, often oxidized to green or another color - this could date from the time of contact and the fur trade.

In rare instances you may find wood, bones, birchbark and other organic material - usually in a wetland, and especially a peatland, environment. Again, draining or other disturbance is likely to reveal these things.

If you find something, there is probably more underneath, and the undisturbed stratigraphy is very important. So, mark the spot (but not too obviously), and don't dig! If you are on SPNHF land, notify Carrie or Dave Anderson. As the landowner, SPNHF will follow up with the Division of Historical Resources, and the site may be visited by archaeologists. There will not be much fanfare, because archaeological sites are fragile and sensitive to destruction by casual collectors. In fact, archaeological site information is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act for just this reason.

If you are on other land, notify the landowner, recommend contacting the Division of Historical Resources, and emphasize that an archaeological site does not affect a landowner's rights in any way. If archaeologists are permitted to visit, they must follow the landowner's instructions, and if they excavate the site, they will restore it. In fact, they will do their best to make it look like nothing ever happened there.

There is also Historic Archaeology, so cellar holes, old dams, old dump sites, etc. are worth noting, marking, and notifying SPNHF. The same procedures apply.

Nine-tenths of archaeological sites are found by non-archaeologists and SPNHF stewards and staff are likely to find some.

Exploring the Olsen Forest

Last weekend was a great weekend for hosting hikes on Forest Society reservations! Land Stewards Roger and Ann Sweet hosted a snowshoe hike on the Olsen Family Forest in Sullivan on Sunday February 13th. Their walk also meandered onto other properties, including some private, as yet unprotected lands. It was sponsored by the Mondadnock Conservancy and the Harris Center, where Roger and Ann are also volunteers. Below is the write-up that Ann and Roger wrote following their winter excursion!

Twenty-three people met at the Sullivan Town Hall and car-pooled to Mark Smith’s generously offered parking area near his house overlooking Chapman Pond. Donning snowshoes, they filed over a snow bank on to the Boynton Road extension and up to the gate to the Olsen Forest, where Roger Sweet (Harris Center, SPNHF) and Ryan Owens (Monadnock Conservancy) talked about the importance of protected lands such as Piper and Olsen (owned by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests), and the Otter Brook Preserve (owned by the Nature Conservancy), noting that unbroken forest land preserves water quality and quantity and also provides wildlife habitat. The group could see the hills of Stoddard and Nelson from the old SPNHF log landing, passed the snowed-in Cummings cellar hole, just above which two pileated woodpeckers were chasing each other, and turned south toward Mark Smith’s land and then on to land belonging to Dick Smith of Arlington, MA. Trees creaked, but the snowshoeing was easy. No deer tracks, however, because of the snow depth. Fox tracks were plentiful, and the hikers crossed a porcupine path and a fisher trail. Twisting down to Chapman Brook, the group followed the brook to Chapman Pond, solemnly beautiful under gray skies. Skirting about 1/3 the shore of the pond, where loons are known to feed in the summer, the hike climbed back up to the starting point in Mark Smith’s yard. Several asked whether they might come back in another season to enjoy the quiet beauty of the area. The leaders expressed the hope that the land around the pond might be eventually protected from development.

If you are interested in hosting a hike, field trip, or other program on the reservation you monitor, please feel empowered to do so! If you need some assistance, just contact Carrie or Dave Anderson and we'd be happy to get you started. We can offer assistance like advertising your walk on the Forest Society's website, providing copies of Forest Notes magazine to distribute, giving you talking points about the Forsest Society, and/or providing tips for planning and leading a successful outing. Be sure to let us know if you do plan an event, so we can make sure there are no management conflicts involved in what you want to do, and so we are aware of the date(s) and times!

Winter Hike at the Reney Forest

Land stewards Ruth Ann and Andy Eastman recently led a snowshoe hike on the Forest Society reservation they monitor, the Reney Memorial Forest in Grantham. This 413 acre forest supports a diverse mixture of tree species including beech, yellow birch, sugar maple, hemlock and balsam fir, and provides excellent habitat for many native mammals and birds. On the recent hike, the group identified tracks and/or sign from moose, fox, coyote, snowshoe hare, squirrel and mouse. To learn more about the Reney Memorial Forest, download a hiking map, or get driving directions, check out the online Guide To Our Lands here.

Photo credit: Andy Eastman

As at many of the Forest Society's reservations, the parking area at the Reney Memorial Forest is not plowed during the winter, which can make winter access difficult in years of deep snow (like this one!). However, since the Reney Forest property borders the local public library parcel, the Eastmans realized that winter access could be improved by constructing a short spur trail from the Dunbar Free Library to the existing trail network on the forest. After receiving all of the necessary approvals, the Eastmans built the new trail this past fall and it is now officially in service. The snowshoe hike last weekend began and ended at this new trailhead! Nice work Andy and Ruth Ann!

Snowshoe group at the (snowed in) parking lot trailhead
Photo credit: Andy Eastman

Land Steward Annual Meeting

We had a terrific turnout for the "2010" Land Steward Annual Meeting and Potluck Dinner this week- more than 30 stewards attended bringing their favorite steaming dishes to share. As always, the food was abundant and delicious, and the conversation engaging. It's always great to see long-time stewards mingling and chatting with newly minted stewards, sharing their stories and experiences. We even had a handful of prospective stewards come to learn what the program is all about. Highlights from the past year of land steward projects, workshops, field walks, and workdays were shared, and we also looked ahead at what the upcoming year may bring. Now if only some of this snow would melt...