Peg Coleman ’79 and Ed Neuhauser ’73, ’78, stand in the doorway of a workshop on their property in Tompkins County, New York. The building is constructed from wood that grew in their sustainably managed forest.
An airy, expansive 36-by-56-foot structure — part work-shop, part dream come true — on a rural road in New York’s Finger Lakes region illustrates what Ed Neuhauser ’73, ’78, calls the benefits of a managed forest.
The red pine that forms the soaring ceiling and the ash that lines the walls all grew on the 132 acres that Neuhauser and his wife, Peg Coleman ’79, tend on land that was once a dairy farm, between Ithaca and Cortland. Less valuable wood harvested on the property heats the workshop and the nearby farmhouse. Photovoltaic panels on the workshop provide most of the electricity Neuhauser and Coleman need. Outside, between the house and the workshop, a garden that supplies the vegetables they eat all year is mulched by hay grown on their 50 tillable acres. Their freezer is stocked with venison harvested by friends who hunt on the property.
“I like the mixture of fields and forest,” Neuhauser said.
He is living out a childhood dream. At the age of 5, he told his father he did not want to live forever in his native Long Island. He wanted to be in the woods, to have his own land. And he wanted to make things from the wood that grew on his land.
His interest in nature, sparked by family trips to the Catskills, led him to ESF where he earned a bachelor’s degree in forest biology and a Ph.D. He met Coleman, a Syracuse native, when she was an undergraduate in the same department. There were some dates one summer, but they lost touch when they went their separate ways for some 30 years.
Neuhauser built a career in research and development at Niagara Mohawk, now National Grid. Coleman worked in the Washington D.C. area for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They reconnected when Coleman returned to the Syracuse area and joined the ESF Alumni Association Board of Directors. They married in 2011. Neuhauser retired the following year. Coleman works at a home office, warmed by a heat pump, as a consultant in medical microbiology and microbial risk assessment
“This is a joint effort,” Neuhauser said of their ever-evolving property management.
In addition to the tillable acres, the property includes 72 forested acres that host red maple, aspen, ash and red pine, among other species. They have wetlands, an intermittent stream and a 3.5-acre pond they constructed a few years ago. Constructing the pond meant interacting with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At every turn, they encountered ESF alumni working in these positions.
“The strange thing was that all of the people I ended up working with from both government agencies were Stumpies,” Neuhauser said. “It was an absolute pleasure and easy to deal with them. They walked me through everything that had to be done.”
One of the things he had to do was engage the services of a certified wetlands delineator to help determine the best location for the pond. It might not be surprising that he found himself working with a regional company staffed by ESF alumni.
Coleman delights in the increased biodiversity that she saw after the pond was built, including nesting wood ducks.
The property management involves much bartering: land use for hay cultivation, hay mulch for bulldozer services, sawmill services for new windows, firewood for plumbing. They give pieces of cherry to a friend who makes beautiful wooden bowls. Some of the bowls come back to Neuhauser and Coleman, who donate them to the ESF College Bookstore, where they are sold to raise scholarship funds.
A key piece of the barter, Neuhauser said, involves the friends who harvest their own firewood from the property. “They get all the firewood they want and I get what I call free timber stand improvement,” he said. “Lack of timber stand improvement is a huge problem in New York. The best forestry is to take the worst and leave the best, in contrast to high grading, which is taking the best and leaving the rest.
“Only 20 percent of trees are truly valuable,” he said. “We leave them. I mark the other ones that can be used for firewood and we leave the best ones. The biggest problem in the northern forest is not regeneration. It’s too many trees. But if you want to have timber to do things with – to build houses and make flooring and so forth – if you don’t manage your lands, you’re going to get very little value out of it. Most of the trees are not going to be suitable species or grow in suitable form without active management.”
The red pine illustrates the benefits of such management. It was planted in 1927 and thinned in the 1940s; it is currently being sawed.
Neuhauser works to spread the message about forest management as an active member of the New York Forest Owners Association and the New York Master Forest Owner program. He said resources are also available to landowners from regional land trusts, and he encourages landowners with management questions to seek guidance from any of these organizations. He also recommends keeping up-to-date with technological advances, such as small portable bandsaw mills.
“The development of portable bandsaw mills allows me to utilize species and logs that would not be commercially viable,” Neuhauser said. “Having the mill means that I can saw all of the lumber that I need for my projects.”
Neuhauser and Coleman manage their property with the long term in mind. Some of their most valuable trees will grow, in both size and value, until they are ready for harvest long after the property has passed into other hands.
“I never imagined myself living on 100 acres out in the country, I’d always been a city girl. But it’s been quite an adventure,” Coleman said. “We take the fruits of the Earth and make the most of them. It’s not just wood from the forest. It’s food for the table. It’s all a labor of love.”
Claire B. Dunn is a writer and director emeritus of the ESF Office of Communications and Marketing.