Wood, Water, Wildlife and Work: Profile of a Forest Steward

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Cooperative Extension.

Today I'm with John Hoover, a forest landowner in Central Pennsylvania, and we're gonna talk a little bit about what forest stewardship means to him.

- Forest stewardship has a very deep meaning to me, in that the amount of time and work that I put into the tree farm over about 14 years to acquire what I have gave me an appreciation for what was here.

At one point, it was just land and then I came out and I said this place is alive.

It's a living thing.

And I took on the attitude of it's my responsibility to work with it, and that's pretty much what has driven me to do a lot of the forestry work that I've done.

In my particular case, it's been wood, water, wildlife and work.

- Work.

- They're the four Ws.

So I'm finding now that, as I complete these projects, that I do have a chance to enjoy the property more rather than simply taking on different tasks, but I enjoy those tasks.

I also enjoy the fact that when these things are complete, they've made an improvement on the property that is available for all to see.

- John, I understand you also have controlled non-native plants here, invasive plants on your property, and that's been part of your work.

Can you tell us about that?

- Yes, that has been quite the challenge as well.

The matter of invasives is a very wide swath.

I think the first large program that I took on was the control of the hayscented fern in an area where I'd done the hemlock harvest, and that's turned out to be something that I had to do several times.

More commonly, it's or nemesis, the stiltgrass, and where it is a problem, I deal with it.

I have found though, in that effort, is even if you do it once, you'll probably have other patches of it that you're going to wanna go back in and look at again.

- John, what have been some of the challenges that you have had to deal with in owning the property?

- Well, initially, it was surveying, legal issues, trespassing, trash dumping, and a number of things like that which I've dealt with as they came up.

I've also had a problem with timber trespass.

I've had actually two situations where people came in to take trees on my property, knowing I wasn't a a landowner in the state, I lived out of state, and I had to legally stop those operations from taking place.

So those have been the biggest challenges that I've had.

- Yeah, well, these have been a few thoughts from John Hoover today, a forest landowner and a tree farmer here in Central Pennsylvania.

Thank you very much for listening.