Spring 2000 Volume 9, Number 1
WAKELAND'S 5 ACRE PLAINFIELD SAND BLACK OAK FOREST MANAGEMENT DEMONSTRATION AREA
My wife and I purchased what we refer to as our home property in 1973. This property is located in east central starke County and except for a few acres of depressional ground the property is on nearly flat Plainfield sand soil type which is a droughty, low fertility soil deposited by flowing glacial melt waters. In 1973 only thirteen acres of this property was wooded. About 4 acres along the west side of this woods was mature and over mature timber. About 4 acres along the east and north sides of the woods were farm land that had been abandoned in the 1950's and had regenerated to some good young sapling sized oak and cherry timber. There was a 5 acre area in the south central part of the woods on the Plainfield sand that had been clear cut during the late 1930's. After that clear-cut harvest this 5 acres regenerated to nearly a pure stand of even-aged black oak. This oak regeneration was the result of both stump sprouts and pre-existing seedlings.
By 1973 the better trees in the 5 acre south central stand had good form and were mostly 6 to 10 inches in diameter at breast height (DBH). These black oak were growing very slowly because of the overstocking (too many trees per acre). I did timber stand improvement work (TSI) in this 5 acres in 197,4. This TSI was in the form of crop tree release (thinning) and was intended to eliminate the poor quality trees and increase the growth rate of the better crop trees. Many of the trees that were killed during this 1974 TIMBER STAND IMPROVEMENT were cut and sold for firewood. In addition to the TSI we also entered this 13 acre woodland into the Classified Forest Program in 1974.
During the next 6 years I purchased a small sawmill, logged mature black oak from the west side of the 13 acre woods, sawed and air dried the lumber. On weekends, evenings, and during summer vacations my wife and I then built a garden shed, our first off our barns, and our house and garage using mostly the black oak lumber we produced. I learned a lot about Starke County, yellow Plainfield sand grown black oak by using it over that six years. Much of Starke County black oak has been subject to ground fires, livestock grazing, droughts, and lack of management. The end result of this type of history on yellow sand is low quality timber with rot, discoloration, large grub worm holes, ingrown bark, and slow growth. This low quality timber has low value and is currently mostly used for the production of pallets. Much of what I sawed and used met this description of low quality. However, I noticed that some of the trees I harvested and sawed produced high quality lumber that was good enough to be used for the higher value uses such as for furniture production. Because I harvested and sawed these trees myself I was able to keep track of where the high quality trees came from and under what conditions they grew. It soon become apparent that the one thing that these better timber quality trees shared in common was faster growth rates. The faster growing trees were the better quality trees. The faster growth rate was the result of large healthy crowns resulting from less dense spacing.
We completed the construction of our home and moved in during the fall of 1980. It was at about that time that I decided to man-age this 5 acre stand of young black oak at a lower density than would normally be prescribed in order to see if I could produce an entire stand of these faster growing, much higher value, better quality trees. In most Indiana woods foresters like to thin or harvest when the tree density reaches a basal area (BA) of 100 to 110. I decided to thin this stand down and maintain it at a BA of 80 or less which would be some 20% thinner than most woods would be managed. This 5 acres had grown back to a tree density above 80 BA by 1980 even with the thinning that had resulted from the 1974 TIMBER STAND IMPROVEMENT work. The trees in this 5 acres were too small to thin by harvesting for timber so I began thinning this stand by cutting trees for firewood which we use to heat our home. I have heated our home with firewood from this 5 acres ever since 1980 and I have been able to keep the stand density down to a BA of 80 by this continual thinning of the smaller trees thereby maintaining good growth and quality among my larger trees.
During 1999 our Arrowhead Country RC&D forestry committee decided to establish four demonstration woodlands in Starke County. One of these woodlands would be used to demonstrate the possible timber productivity of common native tree species(black oak) on the Plainfield sand soil type which is so common in Starke County. We selected this 5 acre stand of black oak on my home property because it was one of the few that we knew of that had been actively managed for 25 years. After carefully measuring and marking out the boundaries of the 5 acres I measured diameters and merchantable heights of every tree that was 12 inches in diameter at breast height (DBH) or larger. This is called a 100% timber inventory. This fall of 1999 inventory showed that the 5 acres had 283 trees that were 12' DBH or larger having a total timber volume of 35302 board feet. Of the 283 trees 244 were black oak, 26 were white oak, 10 were black cherry and 3 were scarlet oak. The average sized tree was 15.6" DBH and the current BA is 78.
This inventory showed us what is here now. We wanted to know what the average annual productivity of this stand of trees has been over the lost 25 years. This would be easy to determine if I had also done a 100% inventory of this stand 25 years ago, but I did not. In an effort to determine the board foot volume of this stand in 1974 1 took increment borings of selected scattered trees in the five acres to determine and average growth rate for the crop trees over the past 25 years. Knowing the average growth rate I could calculate tree sizes in 1974 and estimate the volume at that time. Using this method I have calculated that this stand has been and is currently growing at a rate of $75/acre/year. When I took my increments borings to determine growth rates it was very encouraging that most trees were growing twice as fast since I began managing this stand as they were before management in 1974. If my theory is correct these faster growing trees will also produce higher quality higher value timber than the slower growing tree would have. Observation indicated that this is indeed the case. I guess we will know for sure when I start harvesting some of these trees during this next 10 years.