NHTOA, UNH Cooperative Extension, Women Owning Woodlands/Forest Stewards Guild, and the Society for the Protection of NH Forests partnered to provide a two-day workshop; “Women’s Chainsaw Safety and Maintenance.” Held on June 5 & 6, 2021, the workshop was well received by the 15 participants despite 93-degree heat. Great spirit, enthusiasm, humor, and the utmost attention to safety from instructors made this a fun, educational, and empowering workshop for all!
Cooler temperatures were welcomed by participants in “Ladies Logging with Farm Tractors” on June 19, 2021, in Bridgewater, NH. Last year’s Tree Farmer of the Year award winner, Jon Martin, was joined by instructors Wendy Weisiger, Managing Forester, Society for the Protection of NH Forests, and Steve Snow, Snow Conservation Group. Rebecca DiGirolomo, UNH Cooperative Extension, did a fantastic job pulling everything together, from creating pre- and post-class surveys, helping to arrange planning meetings, to logistics of the day. Thank you to Rebecca and to Wendy Scribner, UNH Cooperative Extension, for her input and advice for this workshop and for her observations and notes during the Women’s Chainsaw Safety Class.
July brings the long-awaited and highly anticipated multi-day professional development program for teachers. The “Forests of NH Teacher Tour” has a full roster of registrants eager to tour northern New Hampshire forestry venues, which include an Eastern White Pine sawmill (Madison Lumber, hosted by Ed Witt), the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bartlett Experimental Forest (hosted by wildlife biologist Mariko Yamasaki and silviculturalist Bill Leak), a pulp wood processing facility (RJ Chipping, hosted by Steve Pinkham), a forester from Nine Dragons Paper, a working community forest (Randolph Community Forest, hosted by John Scarinza, President), and an active timber harvest on a property professionally managed by Wagner Forest Management. This tour will be led by Gordon Gamble and Scott Rineer, foresters with Wagner Forest Management.
This program is funded by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Community Grant Program and by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Implementation Committee in New Hampshire (SIC). NH educators and Project Learning Tree (PLT) facilitators Susan Cox, USDA Forest Service, Anjali Longan, educator, and Mary Ann McGarry, Plymouth State University, will join us to present PLT curriculum, lessons, and activities. Leo Maslan, SIC chairman and forester with Finch Paper, will welcome the group and share information about SFI. Other speakers include SIC committee member Charles Levesque, president and forester with INRS, LLC, who will provide a special presentation on Forest Carbon. We also want to acknowledge the contributions from several other forestry professionals, including Wendy Weisiger, managing forester for the Society for the Protection of N.H.; forests and chairwoman of New Hampshire PLT, Michael Simmons, a forestry professor with the UNH Thompson School of Applied Sciences; and Craig Birch, a forester and co-owner, Proctor Hill Forestry and Logging.
