by Scott Eppler
Program Maintenance & Grounds Manager
One of the great benefits of living in the Northwoods of Wisconsin is that we are surrounded by trees. While the trees create a beautiful environment at HoneyRock, we often have over-mature and blown down balsam fir trees all over our property. Over the past few weeks, HoneyRock had a timber harvest and 1525 trees were cut down! Just to give you an idea:
1525 trees = 5690 8-foot pieces of timber
5690 8-foot pieces of timber = 150 cords
150 cords = 11 log truck loads of wood that were delivered to a paper mill over two hours away to make high quality coated paper
HoneyRock’s main site includes approximately 192 acres of property which I would conservatively estimate hold 48,000 trees. So in this particular harvest we cut around 3% of the trees growing on our main site. Within the next 5 years, the trees that were just cut down will be replaced by natural regeneration started from seed that was able to establish itself in the forest floor because of the openings we created in the canopy. Benefits to the timber harvest include enhanced safety (as many of the trees were located along roadways, trails and adjacent to our challenge courses) as well as the reduction of fuel load for potential forest fires. The overall forest health was enhanced by removing dead and dying trees. We are also thankful for the revenue generated from the sale of the timber.