Some 30 years ago, a previous owner of our farm had the idea of making money by planting a monoculture pine plantation where a natural forest once stood. Monocultures are never the right way to go, and pine is not indigenous to our area.

We made the decision to remove the pine and use the proceeds to rehab the land back to the diversified forest it originally and potentially would have been. A forest of mixed species is what is right for the regional wildlife and for the forest. Monocultures are easily infested or plagued and pine is simply not supposed to be here. These pines had a borer and it was their time to go before they deteriorated.