Author: forest-farming

Forest landowners often want to make some profit from their land, if only to pay the property taxes. Other than cutting timber, which can only be done so often, how can you generate income from your woods? In North America, our forests are often populated with a wide variety of valuable native plants and fungi that can be sustainably wild-harvested and sold. Many others can be introduced and cultivated to provide a steady stream of products to harvest for many …

Wasabi is generally thought of as a pungent green paste that accompanies sushi. That green paste is more often than not, made up of grated horseradish or mustard. In this video, we take a look at the plant whose grated root makes up the real wasabi. It was traditionally eaten with sushi to combat food poisoning that can result from eating raw fish. Today, it’s considered as the natural condiment for sushi. Joe Hollis, founder of Mountain Gardens, explains what …

University of Maine’s Agriculture and Non-Timber Forest Products Professional, David Fuller, explains what an ostrich fiddlehead looks like and how it compares with its toxic cousin, the bracken fern. When harvesting fiddleheads, it’s extremely important to choose those from the ostrich fern which are characterized by a hairless, smooth, deep green stem that has a deep groove on the inside. The fiddleheads have a brown, papery substance on the outside of the unfurled frond called ramenta. Ostrich fern fiddleheads should …

Steve Caccamo, President of Next Generation Maple Products, explains how making maple syrup has become a growing hobby over the years. It’s easy to start out by tapping a few trees in your yard and boiling the sap with a turkey fryer and propane, but it is more cost efficient to use wood. We take a look at a small evaporator that Steve made for his sugar house once he decided to expand his maple syrup production.

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Cornell University’s Director of the Uihlein Forest, Michael Farrell, explains the collection of walnut sap through vacuum tubing. Freezing temperatures in early spring cause the tree to go into negative pressure and brings water up from the ground into the tree’s cambium layer. Warming temperatures during the day cause the tree to thaw again which releases the water, now in the form of sap, back down through the cambium. It’s the freezing and thawing events that cause sap to flow …

Reverse osmosis is a process that forces a solution with solvent, in this case sugar, through a membrane using a great amount of pressure. The membrane is constructed from a sheet polymer which allows water molecules to pass through while keeping the sugar molecules behind. This effectively removes much of the water from the sap and reduces the amount of boiling time and energy needed to make syrup. Steve Childs, Cornell University’s Maple Specialist explains the process of reverse osmosis …

Late March marks the beginning of the sugar maple season in the Northeast United States. Freezing nightly temperatures followed by a daily thaw causes the rise and fall of sap within the cambium of maple trees. During the daily thaw, sap that was pulled up within the tree falls with gravity. By tapping the tree, a syrup producer is able to collect the sap that is released through the tap via pressure. Cornell University’s Director of the Uihlein Forest, Mike …