Students help cull timber from Hawk Hill for Brandon Library

By STEVEN JUPITER

BRANDON—A forest is a living thing in itself, not just a habitat in which other living things reside.  And as with any other organism, its health can vary over time.  By selectively culling trees from a forest, we can help ensure that the forest as a whole continues to thrive.  

In a multiple-birds-with-one-stone move, students from Otter Valley Union High School (OVUHS) and Rutland’s Stafford Tech Center worked with the Bennington County Forester to identify and remove problematic trees from the vast woods behind OVUHS to help maintain the forest’s health and to provide lumber for the Brandon Free Public Library (BFPL), which is about to begin a major renovation.

“Most of what we took was maple,” said Cory Creagan, Forester for Bennington County.  “We went through the woods with the kids and identified six maples and one pine that were defective or were in some way preventing more desirable trees, such as oak and cherry, from thriving.  The oaks and cherries provide food for wildlife and taking out certain maples gives them room to grow.  Students have been involved at every step and have learn about a range of topics, including forest ecology and the importance of species diversity, natural-resources management and planning, and wildlife-habitat management.”

Len Schmidt, a Brandon resident who logged his own land for much of the wood he used to build his own house, initiated the project.  His stepdaughter is Molly Kennedy, Director of BFPL.  He brought the idea to the Hawk Hill Committee, which is a subcommittee of the OV School Board tasked with the management of the land.  The Committee gave Schmidt the go-ahead and he pulled in Mr. Creagan from Bennington County.  Normally, the Forester from Rutland County would have been involved but the position is currently vacant.

“As a lifelong conservationist,” Schmidt wrote in an emailed statement, “I wanted to take advantage of an opportunity to see Hawk Hill managed in a way that promotes many benefits: healthy trees, clean air, clean water, biological diversity, and a stronger community of people.”

Hawk Hill was the site of the earliest permanent European settlement in Brandon, back when the town was still called Neshobe, around the time of the Revolution.  A series of trails winds through the woods, taking hikers past stone walls and foundations—the remnants of the settlers’ homes.  The woods are used for recreation, some hunting, and for educational purposes.  The Moosalamoo program at OV makes extensive use of the forest and it was students from Moosalamoo who participated in this project, in addition to the students from Stafford.

Eric Sanborn of Brandon brought his portable sawmill to the parking lot at OVUHS to mill the logs that were culled.  One truck held the sawn lumber that will be used to make shelves and countertops, and another held scraps that will end up as kindling and firewood.  Surprisingly, some of the discarded wood came from the centers of the logs.

“The very center of a tree isn’t stable wood,” Creagan explained. “It was formed when the tree was young and growing quickly, so the grain isn’t tight and there are often a lot of knots where branches started to split off.”

The team milled about 1,000 usable board feet.  The project helped protect the health of the woods, gave the students hands-on experience with practical forestry, and donated needed lumber to the library renovation, all while creating a symbolic link between the earliest days of the town and the library building, which was itself built in the 1830s.  Not a bad deal at all.