Films related to the forests and wildlife of New England, primarily Western Massachusetts. Old growth forests are a special interest. More information (including contact info) is available at the companion New England Forests blog at www.neforests.com
My dad and my brother and I went to go see the Cathedral Pines just after the tornado took most of them down. It was quite a shock considering we had no idea that this had happened. I do recall that even the trees left standing were some of the biggest pines and hemlocks I had ever seen. It was nice to see that some of them still remained, and now in this video that the survivors are still alive and growing. And that as expected the forest is recovering.
Here in Westport Massachusetts, there are 3 very old black cherry trees growing near a coastal bank. . How can I determine the ages ? I have a furniture maker interested some of the planks of one tree that crashed in a winter storm I look on line at the planks selling for hundreds of dollars Why so much ?
It's easier to estimate the age of some tree species than others by visible characteristics (bark, etc), but black cherry trees are not easy to age by outward appearances. The best way to determine their age is to take a core sample from the trunk, using a tool called an increment borer, which is a hollow tube that is cranked into the tree, to its center. It will leave a pencil-diameter hole in the trunk, after the small dowel-like sample is extracted; the tree will heal the hole shut. The core sample is glued to a wooden mounting strip, then sanded to make the tree's annual rings visible and countable, which reveals the tree's age. But, if one of the trees has fallen, as you said, then a clean cut can be made across the stump (or its log) and the rings could be counted there.
I sure do miss those eastern hardwood forests - having been out here in southern California for the last five years now. I spent the previous 42 years of my life in the woods of New England before that. Maybe some day I’ll get back there - only God knows.
Fantastic video about those New England oaks I grew up with. I forgot about some of them and I think the only one I don’t recall ever seeing is the chinkapin oak. Even though I’ve been up in the far NW corner of Connecticut many times.
I know you excluded Eastern Connecticut from your analysis but your first description of stone walls, agriculture, and "sheep fever" perfectly describes certain places in CT during the early 19th century
Absolutely wonderful. BTW, the benefits of leaving forests to natural processes as the key to health reminds me of what happened when feeding waste to bears in state and national parks ended, and very quickly bear health improved. Great work folks!!!!
They were not a virgin forest but a stand of pine uniquely sheltered on the northwest side of a hill until the storm came in a direction not seen in hundreds of years. I remember the canopy the most with the light being what you see in the giant redwood forests out west . It was magical.
New Engladers call the storms Nòrtheasters , not noreasters..The lobsterman who I worked for in the 1960s would always remind me that there was no compass point called "NOR".
When did New Englsnd stop raising sheep? I live on the Mass. N.H..border and you can't walk 500 feet without running into a rock wall. Many with small yet sturdy rooms built into them that will hold 10 feet of wet snow with no apparent damage to them. I never knew what they were or who built them. But saying small colonial families built them is hard toswallow.
As Tom Wessels explained in the film, the Merino “sheep fever” craze in New England collapsed in the mid-1800’s. Regarding the stone walls… if you can’t believe that individual farms built them, then who would you propose did? And for what reason?
@NewEnglandForests l really don't know. I can't see the natives of the Woodlands era building them or to what purpose. I have read that there are many stone structures throughout New England that are thought to have been built by woodland indians and cultures before them for ceremonial reasons. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960,and playing in the woods and fields I would follow these walls for miles and miles. Later in my journeys through the area I would find them everywhere.It seemed like you couldn't walk 100 feet without running into them. Teachers would tell us that early farmers built them but the total length must be in the thousands of miles and the size of many of the rocks just didn't seem like farmers would do all of this work and still have time to farm the land. I was not aware of the large sheep industries in the 19 century and if the walls were built to pen the sheep that would make sense. Those early pioneers must have spent many hours lugging those heavy boulders around .
I imagine that’s one reason they had a lot of children… they needed laborers! When you think about it, there really wasn’t anyone else who would have any reason or motivation to stack rocks into thousands of miles of walls. The rocks wouldn’t even have been so accessible and evident until the land was cleared of forest for pastures and crop fields. The only people who did that were the farmers of the 18th and 19th centuries.
One thing that’s not clear to me is that if, after the first clearance, the open land was abandoned and filled in with white pine, after that was cut, why did the land now fill in with hardwoods? What was the difference between the first logging and regrown and the second?
In New England (and elsewhere), the tree species that arise on open land is variable. Not all of that originally cleared land was colonized by white pine, but a lot of it was. It’s a question of what seed source is nearby, as well as a number of other factors. In some years, pines will produce great quantities of seed, and may quickly colonize suitable open sites. In other years, hardwood species may. Or, a mix of species may take hold. So when a piece of open land was abandoned, what trees then grew there was a matter of chance.
This is an incredible video. Exactly what I have wanted to see for a long time. Does anyone else in the comments know of a similar series unique to the southern Appalachians? Thanks
Not sure which tree you’re referring to, but assume it’s the hemlock at 03:44. Very unlikely it’s a trail marker as many people like to think. I’ts not old enough, for one thing. Bent tree trail markers are not commonly found here, especially since central New England was largely cleared for agricultural use. -Ray
Omg. These two parents must be first time because that is the WORST scrape for a nest! Those chicks might fall very easily if they try to play. 😣😭 Prayers for both of them!! 🙏❤️❤️
Well. If American woods cannot compete and play nice with European worms... they are meant to perish. Don't look at me like that: that's what Chas Darwin maintains, so... tough titties, USsers.
They won't perish, but they may be forever changed, and will be in a biologically diminished condition for a long, long time. You may be delighted by that thought, but the degradation of natural systems that's going on is global. The joke is on all of us.
Missing from this of course is any mention of the First Nation People management of the Woodlands and the contribution that giant mammals made to preseving access to the dense forsets. Shame they missed it. Wonder why?
@@NewEnglandForests This feels like sarcasm, but also a legit response. Either way, it's funny. I didn't think a video like this would illicit passive agressive comments en masse, but here we are
This really is a great film, you did so good with it! It reminds me of all the trees and forests I grew up with. You really captured the beauty of these incredible places, and I learned so much watching it
Newly moved to a farm first settled in 1900 by an English family in a land of nothing by forests, rivers and lakes. Love history and researching that family story inspired by old relics found burried in a tumbled down log barn I've used great care in This channel is a mercy by wise lessions in how to read the tree language thats shouts out its tale in silence . . .
The favorite tree for European shipbuilders to make into masts was the Eastern White Pine. The mainmasts for many ships had to be from 36” to 48” in diameter at the base and from one hundred fifty to two hundred feet tall. The kind of tree required to be a mast could only come from an old growth, virgin forest - an environment where a tree could only sprout and grow to replace a mature tree that had been struck by lightning, or one that had died from some other reason; wind, insects, fire, or drought. Only then could a seedling receive any light to grow, and that was only from directly above. In the struggle to surpass any competing trees that had germinated at the same time, a sapling would shed its lower limbs, in order to grow upwards faster than its competition. That meant when it was mature, the tree didn’t have any knots in its trunk on the lower one hundred feet or so. When every tree in the forest was forced to go through the same competitive process over thousands of years, it wasn’t a forest of trees the English colonists found in New England, it was a forest full of ship masts. That’s what the early explorers of the new colonies found -forests full of ship’s masts stretching as far as the eye could see from any hilltop vantage point. A 'second growth' forest will never turn into an 'old growth' forest. The competition for survival is what creates and 'old growth' forest. It will take at least three or four hundred years for any forest to warrant that name, and that will be after all the trees in this video have died and been replaced by new trees that have undergone the above-described process of survival.
I have to disagree somewhat with, or at least clarify, a bit of what you said. Our current second growth forests are biologically (and structurally) degraded compared to the pre-settlement old forests, but if left alone they certainly will become "old growth"; they may never recover the same mix of organisms as the original old growth contained, but they will mature and develop just as the original forest did, while increasing in biological and physical complexity. They are currently in that state of competiton that you mentioned. There were natural disturbances (storms, etc) that leveled stands in the original forests, and those stands had to recover over time just as today's "second growth" must. A big difference is that some of the plant, animal, and fungal life of the original forest has been either greatly reduced or eliminated, and non-native species have been introduced. Most of central New England's forests were replaced by agricultural fields (as well as towns, cities), so that land lost nearly all of the forest organisms that had been there. Nevertheless, if they're left to Nature's hand, today's forests will in time become very much like the forests of old, although likely with a different mix of species. As you said, it will take several centuries, but there's no better time than now to let them continue on their journey; in most of New England they've already got well over a century on the books. Let's let them continue without interference from us.
Thank you for the incredible documentary series. I genuinely cant believe the amount of negativity and nitpickiness in the comments on such a great educational piece. Nothing will ever be good enough for some I suppose. If only they genuinely contributed to something as much as they nitpicked.
The youtube comment section is a cesspool of people who think their opinions are fact. Unfortunately what would appear to be the least likely videos aren't safe. Anonymity emboldens people.
This and all the NEF productions are remarkably good - rich in content, great presentation, really well done. Better than almost anything else out there.
I love these videos. High production 'Nature Documentaries" have gotten so terrible in the last decade. Sure there are way more than there used to be, with crazy high quality video. But once they became the domain of big budget media organizations, they got put under control of typical TV producers who don't actually like nature and can't understand people who do. So you end up with these painfully bad over-dramatizations and obnoxious ADHD informed quick cut editing. I'm looking at you Nat GEO. New England Forests make nature documentaries for nature lovers. Patient photography. A deep interest in the subject. A calm, pleasant watch that makes you feel like you're really out there with them. I can feel my blood pressure dropping in the first 30 seconds of the video.
Just moved to a 250 acre farm divided in half by two shallow gullies, 130 miles W of Ottawa. First settled in the year 1900 by a family from England. Stone walls are everywhere running N-S 200 & 300 paces apart. Some are 'classic' - ca 3-4 ft tall and 6 ft wide. The tops are perfectly flat filled with small stone and may possibly have been used as roadways hauling logs in winter from the gully area. Seems most trees were logged off leaving some huge (now dead) behind but they have come back. Have nothing but admiration for the first two generations who stacked the granite rock. Found a bottle of Dr Thomas 'Electric Oil' in a tumble-down barn, dated to ca 1900 before a co. name change. Guaranteed to kill all pain when used internally or rubbed on. Research showed it contained turpentine and drugs that are very illegal today. Expect it was sorely needed for bad backs, aching muscles and stone crush injuries to foot & hand. Thank you for your valuable lesson. Will help me better understand what I'm seeing as I continue to do exploring this summer
That ain't "old growth. " When it was cut, they left big seed trees. We used to do those things. Now, cut over and replant manually is the most common. We also need prescription burns. Did you (learn) anything?
Sorry, you're mistaken, that IS New England old growth forest (whether or not the trees shown are particularly old at this moment). And it's not common practice in New England to replant after cutting, it's just not necessary. Also, we don't "need" prescription burning here either... that's strictly a matter of choice to artificially maintain open or early successional habitat for our own desires.
No better way to start your morning than seeing the sweet justice of someone making an unnecessarily passive aggressive comment on an incredible video, and getting owned. You must be from out west. I'm born and raised in New Hampshire and have multiple friends in the logging industry. Replanting is an extraordinarily rare practice done under specific circumstances.
Thank you so much for this series. I’ve watched each episode more times than I can count. I’m in NE Ontario and just purchased 5 that abuts a beautiful beaver pond. It’s such a beautiful location and I’ve learned so much thanks to this series. You are very talented and informative. Thank you.
