News from myminnesotawoods.org

Two months ago, we asked MyMinnesotaWoods.org readers to help us write this story. Thank you to all who responded! Based on our readers’ suggestions, here’s our list:

1. Know what you - and your family - love most about your land. What’s your vision for the future of your land? Do you want more wildlife, more big trees, a quiet refuge, ski trails, a source of income, or something else? All of the above?

Developing a vision for the future of your land is an important step. This vision needs to be based in reality, both in terms of local ecology and also your family’s long-term interest in owning and caring for the land.

What to do: It may seem overly formal, but writing down your vision and talking to your family is a crucial step in achieving it.

2. Know how your woodland is naturally changing. Forests are constantly changing. Trees grow, trees die, wind and ice take trees down, insects come and go, climate changes…. All of these changes can affect not only the future of your woodland, but the value of your land and timber.

Sustainable forest management works with the natural forces in your woods. The more you know about these forces of change, the more you can guide that change to meet your objectives.

What to do: Careful observation of your land can be a great place to start. Watch carefully for which trees are dying, which trees are taking their place, what insects are present, which stands are overcrowded, and so on. Not sure how to interpret the changes? Talk to a professional forester.

3. Get a free Forest Stewardship Plan for your property. Forest Stewardship Plans are prepared by local professional foresters. Your plan will include a detailed inventory of your wooded property, including species, ages, stand histories, and more. You’ll also get information about the ecology of your landscape.

Your plan will include specific recommendations for each wooded stand based on your unique objectives. Every plan is specific to the property and the landowner. Whether your focus is wildlife, recreation, big trees, timber, or something else, the plan will recommend ways to get more of it, faster.

Your plan is not binding, but will be helpful as you plan for the future of your land. A current Forest Stewardship Plan is also a requirement for many cost-share and incentive payment programs

What to do: To sign up, contact your local Minnesota DNR Forestry Area Office. The best part? It’s FREE.

4. Know where to find financial and professional help. Local professionals can tell you about cost-share opportunities (to help pay for wildlife habitat improvement, tree planting, woodland improvement, and more). They can help you interpret changes in your land, tell you how wood products markets are changing, and more.

A local professional forester can plug you in to programs like the Sustainable Forests Incentive Act, which provides incentive payments to promote sound forest stewardship and keeping land forested. They can also help you understand recent changes to Minnesota’s woodland tax provisions.

Finally, if you choose to sell timber, a professional forester can help ensure that you receive top dollar, and also that you’re happy with your woods after the harvest.

What to do: Read about some organizations that may be available to help you, or read about different sources of professional help.

5. Get to know other local landowners. Minnesota has at least 20 local private woodland committees, councils, forest landowner co-operatives, and local chapters of the Minnesota Forestry Association (MFA).

You should also know about the Woodland Advisor program. The program offers between 50 and 75 classroom and field workshops every year for family forest owners. The program is managed by Extension, the Minnesota DNR, MFA, and numerous other private and public partners.

Workshops are offered in partnership with local organizations. These events can be an excellent opportunities to meet local landowners and professionals and get answers to your questions.

What to do: For a list of local woodland organizations, visit MFA’s website and click “chapters” on the left.

Add your thoughts: What resources have you found most helpful? What have we missed? Leave a comment to help others learn from your experience.

We’re working on a new story: Five things every woodland owner should know. The new content will be featured in the June email update and be a new featured page on MyMinnesotaWoods.org.

We need your help building the list!

For this story, you’re the expert. Imagine yourself talking over a cup of coffee with a friend who just bought wooded acreage for the first time. What would you tell her or him and why?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts. We’ll use your responses to build our June story.

Philip created a new template for the web version of the monthly email updates.  The November 2007 update is built on the new template.  This is a vast improvement over previous web versions, created by copying, pasting, and then trying to fix the HTML from a preview message.

Constant Contact, which we use for our email updates, has some nice features.  But one feature that makes us mad month after month is how hard it is to build a web version of your email.  They want to charge extra for that.  The HTML is a complete mess, and this process is never as easy as it should be.

Now that we have the new template, we just have to manually copy and paste each story from CC into our page.  Still a waste of time doing something CC could very easily provide for free, but at least it allows us to avoid fighting with CC’s coding.  And this way it actually renders properly.

We’ve now sent out two monthly email updates. They go out on the second Tuesday of the month: The first May 10, the second June 12. The email updates are designed to notify site users of new content, draw attention to timely content, and remind people that the site exists.

We didn’t know what to expect (or hope for) for the open or click-through rates. But, we’re pleased so far. Some stats:

May 10: The first update. Sent to 834 recipients. 54 bounces. Opened by 46% of recipients. Of those, 46% followed at least one link.

June 12: Sent to 922, with 16 bounces. Opened by 39%, clicked through by about 47% (as of two weeks after sending).

According to Constant Contact, the “industry-wide” open rate is below 10%. The high open and click rates may reflect curiosity more than anything else. We don’t expect these rates to remain so high.

Onward and upward (?).
-eli

We send out an email update on the second Tuesday of the month. The messages currently are sent to just over 900 individuals, mostly Minnesota woodland owners. The email list also includes a number of professional foresters, loggers, and others.

The June update went out as scheduled on Tuesday, June 12. The web version has some formatting problems, so I’ve pasted an image of the message into this post. You can click to see the full-size version.

To receive future emails, visit the homepage and look for the link at lower right.
-eli