Services
TSI employs cultural practices treating individual trees. TSI improves forested land by increasing quality of high value trees and expediting their growth process. Accomplishing this task by decreasing canopy competition allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor and reduces competition for nutrient and water uptake. TSI is also a highly valuable practice promoting natural regeneration of high quality trees, a reduction of invasive and unwanted low quality woody vegetation, and lessening of poor genetics within the forest stand.
Tree planting services include hand planting and commercial grade mechanical planting. Planting projects include reforestation after timber harvests or natural damaging events, riparian buffer strips, shelterbelts, windbreaks, and introduction of new planting areas. Additional capabilities for successful stand survival include tree shelter installation and competing herbaceous vegetation management through herbicide application.
Savannah restoration seeks to restore sensitive landscapes to their natural ecosystems before the invasion of eastern red cedar and other non-native woody vegetation. Savannah restoration morphs the inclusion of forest and prairie ecosystems within one landscape. This restoration process lends ecological benefits along with improvements to wildlife habitat and wildlife holding potential.
Hickory Ridge Forestry’s ability to write and administer forest management plans allows landowners custom tailoring of their needs and goals under an accredited forester. Planning services include weed tree thinning, crop tree release, tree planting applications, harvest management inclusions, and knowledge of cost-share programs available for various qualifying practices. Hickory Ridge Forestry’s services include assistance to promote and conduct field days, classroom education, and site visits.
Harvest management capabilities allow landowners to employ an un-biased mediator evaluating timber stands for potential harvest activities. Harvest management services include stand prescriptions, volume estimations, timber marking, contracting, and harvest administration. This resource truly benefits landowners by keeping the best interest of the landowner in mind while managing for the future health and ecological potential of the forested land.
Services include cedar and honey locust eradication, woody vegetation removal from terraces, trail clearing, and brushy vegetation management. These services are performed using hand labor with chainsaws, brushsaws, or equipment operation when conditions allow. Herbicide application greatly reduces opportunities for sprouting and re-growth of unwanted vegetation.
Hickory Ridge Forestry owns a Timberline HT tree shear capable of shearing trees up to 14” in DBH. This shear received modifications by HRF accommodating a spraying system delivering herbicide application to cut stumps directly after shearing operations. HRF operates a rubber tracked compact track loader providing maximum versatility with a soft footprint. Piling of debris by hydraulic grapple is available where applicable to consolidate remaining biomass.
Services include removal of valuable woody material normally left behind for potential production of useful secondary products. Small diameter logs not considered commercially viable are candidates for portable sawmill operators. Certain root masses are useful for custom woodworkers and log sculptors. Possibilities exist for landowners to reclaim a products derived from “waste” off their project property.