Cut a few shooting lanes and plant an animal feed stock like say clover near where you can build a hide or platform and let it grow and cultivate a while till it’s forgotten. You’ll have a great productive hunt area you can basically control the flow of traffic in.
NecroCowboy
How wet is it?
awfulcrowded117
So, you don’t actually specify what your goal is for the area. If you just want to improve the health of the trees, thinning them out will probably be necessary. If you just want them to look less dead on the bottom, pruning is the way to go, though thinning might allow some undergrowth to distract from the bare trunks too. If you want to use the land productively in some way, we’d need to know what the goal is behind the use/improvement to suggest anything useful
honkerdown
I just saw some on sale on Facebook Marketplace, had been harvested fence posts.
Gerry_Rigged_It
Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is a highly rot resistant wood naturally and as such can have high value.
Often used as fence post, sawn for fencing panels and siding, or split for cedar shake.
Also resist bugs so can be used in closets and chests to deter insect damage to clothing.
*edited to correct the common name
Still_Tailor_9993
I would start by thinning the whole thing out. Maybe you can rent a firewood processor and sell some firewood on the side hand. Or rent a shredder for some mulch. Next step I would take is to diversify the stock with some native species. However, some of the trees have to go to give the others some room to grow. Cut them down and keep the nicest ones with the nicest growth.
Now the question would be what do you want? You could keep it lush and open with an occasional tree and use it as pasture – Or you could do a diversified native Forrest and harvest some occasional wood if you want.
What’s your goal in the end with that land? That would really help to give some advice.
SomeWaterIsGood
You could start by calling it Juniper.
oldbastardbob
My grand daddy (Missouri farmer and grandson of German immigrants, born in 1899) always told me it was bad luck to cut down a cedar tree.
I have no clue why. I believe it had to do with wind breaks along fence rows and wildlife habitat.
So I leave cedar trees alone on my farm. Don’t want to upset the ancestors.
But I will freely admit I don’t have near as many as OP is showing.
ked_man
Clear cut. Cedar groves like this are a biological desert. Aside from a few birds that nest in them, they provide very little value to wildlife.
I would look around to see if there are any loggers that take cedar. Those don’t look too big, so that makes them less marketable. There’s a place in my state that made cedar bedding for animals and would take smaller ones.
If not, cut them and pile them up and burn the piles next year. Then worry about what to do with it once it’s cleared.
9 Comments
Cut a few shooting lanes and plant an animal feed stock like say clover near where you can build a hide or platform and let it grow and cultivate a while till it’s forgotten. You’ll have a great productive hunt area you can basically control the flow of traffic in.
How wet is it?
So, you don’t actually specify what your goal is for the area. If you just want to improve the health of the trees, thinning them out will probably be necessary. If you just want them to look less dead on the bottom, pruning is the way to go, though thinning might allow some undergrowth to distract from the bare trunks too. If you want to use the land productively in some way, we’d need to know what the goal is behind the use/improvement to suggest anything useful
I just saw some on sale on Facebook Marketplace, had been harvested fence posts.
Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is a highly rot resistant wood naturally and as such can have high value.
Often used as fence post, sawn for fencing panels and siding, or split for cedar shake.
Also resist bugs so can be used in closets and chests to deter insect damage to clothing.
*edited to correct the common name
I would start by thinning the whole thing out. Maybe you can rent a firewood processor and sell some firewood on the side hand. Or rent a shredder for some mulch. Next step I would take is to diversify the stock with some native species. However, some of the trees have to go to give the others some room to grow. Cut them down and keep the nicest ones with the nicest growth.
Now the question would be what do you want? You could keep it lush and open with an occasional tree and use it as pasture – Or you could do a diversified native Forrest and harvest some occasional wood if you want.
What’s your goal in the end with that land? That would really help to give some advice.
You could start by calling it Juniper.
My grand daddy (Missouri farmer and grandson of German immigrants, born in 1899) always told me it was bad luck to cut down a cedar tree.
I have no clue why. I believe it had to do with wind breaks along fence rows and wildlife habitat.
So I leave cedar trees alone on my farm. Don’t want to upset the ancestors.
But I will freely admit I don’t have near as many as OP is showing.
Clear cut. Cedar groves like this are a biological desert. Aside from a few birds that nest in them, they provide very little value to wildlife.
I would look around to see if there are any loggers that take cedar. Those don’t look too big, so that makes them less marketable. There’s a place in my state that made cedar bedding for animals and would take smaller ones.
If not, cut them and pile them up and burn the piles next year. Then worry about what to do with it once it’s cleared.