GMTCC Forestry Students Log 75-year-old White Pines

CRAFTSBURY – This winter Green Mountain Career Center (GMTCC) Forestry Program students have been logging at the Craftsbury Academy (CA) Woodlot where they shipped their first load of white pine logs in January.

The CA Woodlot is a roughly 80-acre piece of land at the end of Wylie Hill Road in Craftsbury owned by the Craftsbury Academy Trustees. The land was granted to the school in 1963 by Ruth Savage Planten, to be used by students for learning. Student involvement on the property goes back to 1952 when CA Students planted white pine seedlings in an open field along Wylie Hill Road that Planten hoped to turn into a forest, said former CA forestry teacher Rob Libby.

CA Board of Trustees Chair Joe Huston, said he and the other trustees manage the woodlot and signed off on a management plan for it that was prepared by Orleans County Forester Jared Nunery.

CA no longer offers forestry classes, but GMTCC does, so students there continue the work that began over 75 years ago, said Nunery.

Houston said “The woodlot’s purpose is for students to learn about the forest, so what better way to do that than have the GMTCC students working there to carry out the management plan.” Some current students toured the work area and learned about what’s happening there with the logging job, he said.

By early February, the GMTCC students had cut enough of the trees, marked with blue paint, that they were ready to ship their second load of logs to Cyr Lumber in Milton. Thinning of the white pine trees, some of which are now well in excess of two feet in diameter according to Nunery, is part of a plan for the forest area to become a northern hardwood forest, said Libby.   

The GMTCC students are working under the supervision of their instructor, Corey Hathaway as well as Nunery. Libby said he’d recently visited the logging site and thought the students “did a good, clean job.” He pointed out that the logs being cut were relatively valuable and Hathaway had taught the students about scaling, which determines the price paid for each log. Students had scaled and marked each log to be measured against the scaling done by Cyr Lumber. The determination of the number of board feet in each log can be good for the landowner, fair, or leave them ripped off, said Libby. He expected the students’ scaling to be within a few hundred board feet of Cyr’s, out of thousands, teaching them a valuable lesson.

The Academy had its own forestry class 25 or 30 years ago. Those students would learn to cut trees and use the school’s tractor to bring them out, said Houston. When the school installed a pellet boiler some years ago, students cut logs that were shipped to a pellet plant in southern Vermont where they went to watch how pellets are made. “So, there’s a long history of the school woodlot being used as a teaching environment,” said Houston.

Libby began work at the school as a science teacher for the 1974-’75 school year, when Bill Farr taught forestry and kids went to the Future Farmers of America convention, he said. Farr had gotten a grant back in the early 1950s that covered the cost of the white pine seedlings the GMTCC students were harvesting this winter.

“Ruth Savage Planten loved education and donated the woodlot land and some for a small library on the common.” Years ago, for the school’s winter carnival, the property was used to get materials for various games and students regularly laid out an area ro play Capture the Flag there, said Libby.

The woodlot now co-exists with the Craftsbury Trail system, some of which has been closed this winter as the logging job has been underway. Ned and Susie Houston have played an important role in maintaining and expanding the trail system. Ned said Jared did a nice job laying out skid roads for the logging project, creating a good example of an actively managed woodlot without creating a huge mess. The work was being done in a prompt and efficient way, he said. “The students had a real sense of pride in taking care of the forest.”

Trails in the “front 40” of the woodlot, where the logging work is happening now, were developed in the early 2000s, along with a lean-to; all by volunteers, said Ned. Work is now happening to develop trails “on the back 40,” he said.

There’s lots to explore on the site according to Ned, including a boardwalk over a wetland and an aqueduct system, built by Samuel Crafts in the 1820s to divert water from the area to Little Hosmer pond to power a mill there.

You can learn more about the CA Woodlot and Craftsbury Trails at https://craftsbury.ossu.org/en-US/innovative-learning-and-support-bca3e402/nature-education-four-winds-nature-institute-craftsbury-woodlot-b81d1166