The Forest

The forest here has supplied timber to the sawmills for more than 250 years. It is managed mostly for white pine and hemlock.

Most woods in New England are crossed by stone walls, built when fields were cleared for pasture or crops. Here there is little sign that the land was ever cleared entirely.

For about twenty years the forest has been cared for by the foresters Jeffery Coombs and Jake Bronnenberg, who lives nearby and is also the farm’s logger.

Colin and Paula Cabot hoped the forest could be worked with oxen and horses alone, and the firewood that heats the farm’s stoves and furnaces is still harvested that way. The sawmill stays busy cutting timbers for the farm’s own building projects.

In 2020 a timber cruise showed that logging was not keeping pace with the trees reaching the end of their lives, so the farm held a commercial harvest. It brought in significant income, and afterward Jake Bronnenberg planted 100 young white oaks. Not all of them survived one of the driest summers on record, but the ones that did are the start of something the farm needs.

White oak is the best wood that grows locally for water-powered machinery, and it forms the wooden core of the farm’s dams because it resists rot as it goes from wet to dry and back again. The farm would also like to grow hickory, for the hoops of ox yokes, perhaps after a future harvest.

Three marked trails lead from the farm into the woods and along Sanborn Pond, for walking in the warmer months and cross-country skiing in winter. The trail page has the map, the lengths, and the guided hikes on the calendar.

The logs from the forest go to the sawmill, and the oxen that haul them are part of the farm.