Benefits of  Restorative Forestry and Animal-Power:

  • Minimal soil disturbance and erosion
  • Restores the health and ecological diversity of your forest
  • Increases the development of top dollar timber
  • Preserves the beauty and recreational use of the forest
  • Helps protect air and water quality
  • Protects wildlife habitats
  • Can provide income to the landowner every 10-30 years
  • Requires very little or no road building
  • Supports the local economy

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Owner-build 
Use timber from your woods to build your dream home.

Community Supported Forestry
Get truly connected with your local forest products

Restorative Forestry
Explore in depth the methods we are using to restore our forests

Testimonials
Hear from those who have seen the benefits of our work first hand

Contact Us
Find a Restorative Forestry practitioner near you.

Today's horse logging blends the best traditions of the past with modern science.

Low impact harvest methods
Horse logging using worst-first single tree selection is sometimes called "restorative forestry".  This method looks closely at each individual tree to determine which ones to harvest.  Trees damaged by previous skidding, disease, fire, over-crowding, or weather are removed first.  Crowding resulting from stump regeneration is also reduced.  Every tree that is cut is carefully felled to avoid damaging other remaining trees with high value potential.

Long-term benefits
This method increased the devlopment of top dollar timber that can bring income to the landowner every 10-30 years.  It preserves the beauty and recreational use of the forest.  It is an ongoing management system rather than total clearcut harvest rotations every 75 years.

Grow high quality timber
Such forest stewardship has been found to increase the amount of high quality commercial timber taken from a given site over time.  This crop tree management focuses on releasing individual, selected trees to maximize their growth by removing nearby diseased and damaged trees.  Research conducted on hardwoods in West Virginia (Perkey, Wikins, and Smith, USDA Forest Service, January 1994) indicates that crop tree "free to grow" may increase in diamter 2-3 times more rapidly than un-managed stands.

Preserve water quality and forest ecology
Maintaining our forest by horselogging can help protect our air and water quality, since the forest filters both the air and the water for the planet.  Little damage is done to the forest by the use of animal-powered skidding and a device called a mechanical arch.  This arch suspends the front end of each log being skidded to prevent rutting of the topsoil.  Few roads are created using this method, and those required are built in harmony with the land contour to prevent erosion.  Since single tree slection functions best on a 10-20 year rotation, roads and loading landings can be used for generations.

How much income can a typical forest landowner expect?
No one can tell exactly how much income to expect, as it is always dependent on the site.  

For example, most Appalachian forests are of an average age of 75 years composed of mixed hardwoods and softwoods, on moderately steep terrain, we have a setting ideal for horse logging using single tree slection.  Much of the property has been high graded in the past, with the best large hardwoods taken.  This presents the perfect opportunity for restoratiive forestry.  We can speed that process by improvement harvesting of the diseased and damaged trees using animal-powered skidding to protect seedlings and the developing high grade trees.

Because of the slow, careful work by animal-powered skidding and removing the worst trees first, the logger will get a fair share of the yield from the timber.  An average of 1500 board feet may be skidded per day. Appalachian forests sometimes produce as much as 2000+ board feet per acre using our "worst-first" selection method.

On the average, an improvement harvest could yield an Appalachian landowner several thousand dollars income from 40 acres by employing a horselogger to improve a forest, and still have a woodland to enjoy that will yield greater income in the near future.