. A pine forest will produce from one to
two cords of wood an acre. The growth is greater in the warmer
southern climate than it is in the North where the growing season
is much shorter. Expert foresters say that posts and crossties
can be grown in from ten to thirty years and that most of the
rapid growing trees will make saw timber in between twenty and
forty years.

After the farm woodland is logged, a new stand of young trees
will develop from seeds or sprouts from the stumps. Farmers find
that it is profitable to harrow the ground in the cut-over
woodlands to aid natural reproduction, or to turn hogs into the
timber tract to rustle a living as these animals aid in
scattering the seed under favorable circumstances. It is also
noteworthy that the most vigorous sprouts come from the clean,
well-cut stumps from which the trees were cut during the late
fall, winter or early spring before the sap begins to flow. The
top of each stump should be cut slanting so that it will readily
shed water. The trees that reproduce by sprouts include the oak,
hickory, basswood, chestnut, gum, cottonwood, willows and young
short-leaf and pitch pines.

In order that the farm woodland may be kept in the best of
productive condition, the farmer should remove for firewood the
trees adapted only for that purpose. Usually, removing these
trees improves the growth of the remaining trees by giving them
better chances to develop. Trees should be cut whose growth has
been stunted because trees of more rapid growth crowded them out.
Diseased trees or those that have been seriously injured by
insects should be felled. In sections exposed to chestnut blight
or gypsy moth infection, it is advisable to remove the chestnut
and birch trees before they are damaged seriously. It is wise
management to cut the fire-scarred trees as well as those that
are crooked, large-crowned and short-boled, as they will not make
good lumber. The removal of these undesirable trees improves the
forest by providing more growing space for the sturdy, healthy
trees. Sound dead trees as well as the slow-growing trees that
crowd the fast growing varieties should be cut. In addition,
where such less valuable trees as the beech, birch, black oak,
jack oak or black gum are crowding valuable trees like the sugar
maples, white or short-leaf pines, yellow poplar or white oak,
the former species should be chopped down. These cutting
operations should be done with the least possibl