2025 Wisconsin Tree Farm Landowner Field Day

 

On August 2 we had our annual landowner field day at the Hardwoods property of Ross Prior’s family tree farm, Priority Timberlands LLC.  Ross is our 2024 Tree Farmer of the Year. The theme of Ross Prior’s management on his properties is “forest management in the face of adversity”.  Ross owns 3 properties: The Pines, The Oaks, and The Hardwoods. While Ross has extensively managed all three properties, none of the properties faces more adversity than The Hardwoods. Deer, emerald ash borers, invasive plants, climate change, forest diseases, have all impacted the property.  

 

About 70 landowners, Tree Farm staff and speakers attended on a beautiful sunny Saturday. Four tour stops around Ross’s property were seen by all then we shared a delicious chicken lunch.  Most of the landowners left for home after lunch and the results of our silent auction fund raiser in which we raised $628 for our program operations.  A group of about 20 stayed for an additional tour of other management Ross has accomplished at The Hardwoods.  All 4 tour stops were videoed, and those videos can be seen via the links below.

 

Ross and his family purchased the hardwood property in 1996.  In 2018 they added 76 acres and now have 184 acres in this property. It is a mixture of high-quality northern hardwoods on rich soils and lowland swamp hardwoods/conifers. It also had a two-acre spruce plantation.

 

Ross has been very busy on this property.  A northern hardwood thinning in 1998 yielded 567 cords of sawlogs, bolts and pulp.  After a 2011 blowdown, salvaging that wood and his dying hickory yielded 6560 board feet.  In 2014 a second hardwood thinning yielded 14,180 BF and 630 cords.  Along the way Ross thinned a small white spruce plantation a couple of times then had to clearcut it following a needle cast infection.  All totaled the plantation yielded 7 truckloads of pulp. His ash lowlands remained untouched through all this until emerald ash borers arrived in the area in 2018.  A pre-salvage harvest was marked and after 3 separate logging efforts 1440 cords and 65,000 BF were harvested.

 

Two of the tour stop videos explain how Ross replanted the ash stands and his spruce clearcut.  The other 2  explain how he converted numerous small areas to white pine and the issues Ross faces trying to establish northern hardwood regeneration.

 

We hope you enjoy all the videos and learn some things you can do on your tree farms.   

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