It’s crazy to think that my second summer working as a Summer Intern with the MCFC has come to a close! I am so thankful to have been given another season in (as I would call it) the best job in the world.

As many of you know the MCFC has now gone into a year long extension of our three-year lease on crown land as a pilot project with the Department of Lands and Forestry (previously DNR). Now that the Lahey Report has come out, we will be able to go into talks with the Department of Lands and Forestry about a long-term lease.

Happy summer to all our members and the extended MCFC network. Another spring has come and gone here at the MCFC and unfortunately, we seem to have lost track of time and missed our spring newsletter. Oops! We hope you will forgive us.

This past winter the Medway Community Forest commissioned a report done by several Master’s students from the Dalhousie Management Without Borders class to determine an effective policy model for the sale and management of carbon credits from MCFC lands.

You may have noticed that on January 31st, the MCFC completed our pilot phase with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources. As we discussed in our fall newsletter, we are anticipating building a 10-year agreement with DNR to continue to test innovative forestry businesses for Nova Scotia's rural communities.

Working for the Medway Community Forest Co-op this summer was amazing, educational and fun. The time just flew by!

As the days get shorter and the leaves on the trees begin to change we look back on what was a productive and exciting summer for the MCFC. With the help of our Summer Intern Freya Clark, and volunteers from our Board of Directors and the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (MTRI) we put on two forest tours.

When you stand in a forest what do you see? The first thing you notice is the trees; either the stately old growth, scrubby new growth, or the regimented rows of a monoculture plantation. They stand individually and they don’t look like they are interconnected, but there is much more to the forest than easily meets the eye.

As might already know, the MCFC was originally established as a pilot project agreement with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources in 2015.  The terms of our agreement outlined a 3-year pilot phase, where the MCFC would meet specific evaluation criteria that would address the key areas in which the MCFC aimed to focus on through innovative, multi-value forest management

The Seven-Mile Lake forest fire nearly completely stalled our forest operations for the summer. It’s only now that we’ve had the time to fully assess the damage and address our next steps for salvage, reclamation, and restoration.

As the fall colours recede to bare branches, we’ve been reflective on what was overall a challenging summer and fall for the MCFC. Between difficult markets, new business challenges, and a forest fire, the commitment and determination of our members and board has been outstanding.

Canada is a country of forests – 348 million ha dominating the landscape across the country, excluding the prairies and tundra. Its no surprise that when Europeans wanted to colonize North America, the forests needed to be harvested, cleared, and processed, which presented a great challenge.

We are pleased to announce that harvesting operations have now commenced within their Crown land base. The areas included in this harvest span 120 hectares over two main regions of the land base in Western Annapolis County.

Read up on the best management practices to preserve ideal conditions for salmonids to thrive in the streams and rivers adjacent to managed forests,.

Tree marking is a forest management technique used in forests around the world. It is as simple as its name – individual trees are marked in a forest stand before the stand is “treated”, or has some of the trees cut.

Nova Scotia forests were heavily impacted during European settlement by frequent wildfires caused by a variety of human activities that far outweighed any direct impacts from early logging or shipbuilding activities.