"Planning Comes First" offers you some practical steps and ideas about how to plan for taking care of your forest.  "Woodland Stewardship" by University of Minnesota Extension suggests six key steps for developing a forest management plan based on landowner values and goals:

1. Decide What You Want

2. Find Out What You Have

3. Identify Potential Management Practices

4. Assess Labor and Financial Resources

5. Develop An Activity Schedule

6. Keep Good Records

Decide What You Want
What you want comes from your values and goals for owning land and forest. Have you written these down, mapped them out? Many forests are family owned. Have you sat down as a family and discussed these matters? What is your families view of their forest? This discussion about family interests and values is very important! These values and goals give direction to plans, decisions and actions out in your family forest.

Without a plan what can you really hope to accomplish in taking care of your forest? It would be like sailing a wooden ship, but without a map and compass, no hands on the tiller, and none trimming the sails. How could you reach any port of call this way? This is why we emphasize getting clear about your values and plans for taking care of your forest, before engaging in activities that change the nature of your forest.

Find Out About Your Bounds
How often do you walk your boundary lines? Are the property lines between you and neighbors clear and well marked? Good fences make for good neighbors, get to know both of them. Well blazed, painted lines walked in winter and summer will assure that your forestland is secure from unintentional timber trespass. Besides, the exercise is good for your health.

Find Out About Your Forest
Learn all you can about your land and forest. What’s on it, what's under it, what's within it, what's around it?  Spend some with the "Yankee Woodlot Video Series".

You can get soils and topographic maps from your county Natural Resource Conservation Service office. Visit your town office to see what maps they have that cover your property. Call the Maine Forest Service for information on forest management planning. Also, ask the MFS District Forester if they have any recent or older forest plans from any prior owners of your forest.

Keep field notes of your observations over the four seasons in a diary and on a hand-sketched map. Lay these details over topographic and soils maps to see how things fit together on your forest landscape.

A forest may offer many possibilities: fish and wildlife habitat, timber for forest products, biodiversity within the broader forest ecosystem, aesthetics, soil and water conservation, personal renewal. What do your observations, experiences, and feelings tell you about these aspects of you and your forest?

Management Practices, Resources, and Activities
Thinking about working with all of this may seem overwhelming at first. You might consider the benefits of a forest plan developed by a licensed professional forester, a plan based on your goals and values. This will provide you with clear descriptions of forest conditions and recommended forest activities over the next 10 years.

Your ability to make decisions about your forest will be informed by the recommendations in this kind of forest management plan. Having clear goals keeps the focus on what you want to accomplish, how to do that, and what you need to learn in order to be a good steward or keeper of your forest.

Who Owns Your Forest?
You do, of course! The land and trees, most things large and small in your forest are yours. But, why do we come back to this?

Some forest owners have given away their inventory of trees, habitat, soil and water resources at the drop of a timber sales pitch and a big check. But, in doing so and without having sound knowledge of their forest, values and goals, some forest owners have been misled and burned by this kind of seemingly, reasonable sounding offer...

Sounds great, but, if you don’t know what your forest goals are, and you don't have information on current forest conditions, and, you really don't have a plan in mind, why consider jumping for this get-rich-pitch? If your trees needed to be cut, they might be worth $5000. If you don't know the value of things in your forest, you could get stuck.

On the other hand, if your forest plan includes a professional evaluation of conditions with recommendations that "20 acres of second-growth hardwood in the NW corner of your ownership needs a light selective cut at age 55,"  the basis of this forest owner decision is very different from the get-rich-pitch.

The forestry and logging community is full of reputable professionals who are willing to work with you and your forest, to help you achieve your goals, theirs too, while taking care of your forest. Seek and find those who are willing to support your forest plans.

Keeping a forest good is for the long haul. You own all of it: the land, the trees, the present and future of your forest and all the decisions and responsibilities that go with taking care of your forest.  Your values and goals inform your forest management decisions, and will influence everything you do with a piece of woodland, now and in the future.  Be sharp about what steps you make and take. Remember, good forest planning comes first.

Roger Merchant, Extension Educator, UM Cooperative Extension, Piscataquis County Office