[Pine Island Guy]

all the fields that show up in old photographs were at one time forests that were cleared for farm land or timber... the boundary stone walls were made from rocks pulled from the land clearing... the old growth trees of NH were highly valued and first sent back to England for ship's masts (until of course the Revolution!)... here's a brief description I found of the early forestry in NH...

New Hampshire's forests have played a major part in the state's history. The first job of the early settlers of New Hampshire (1620s) was to clear some of the forest to plant and raise the food crops that would keep them alive. The real beginning of New Hampshire's logging industry was in 1634. That was the year the first shipment of tall pines arrived in England to be made into masts for the ships of the Kinq's Navy. The tall pine trade with England ended with the American Revolution, but the forests of New Hampshire continued to be cleared for farmland right up through the 1840s and 1850s. By then, about 70% of the land south of the White Mountains had been cleared. Many New Hampshire farms were abandoned as the settlers moved in the 1850s to the richer farmlands of the Midwest.

In the late 1880s, logging became a major industry in New Hampshire, especially in the hardwood forests of the North Country. This was the North Country's greatest, most intense logging era. The careless harvesting methods of the late 1880s set the stage for terrible fires that raged annually through North Country forests.

Several things changed this picture of wasted forests and uncontrolled fires. Laws were passed to protect the great forests and establish the U.S. National Forest Service. Silas Weeks, a senator from New Hampshire, was one of the leaders in this effort. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought most business and industry to a standstill. This gave New Hampshire's forests a chance to recover. Third, the people in the logging industry in New Hampshire today know how vital it is to manage the woodlands carefully. These people have the knowledge, skills and equipment to do the job well. There are many steps in the proper harvesting of New Hampshire's woodlands, ranging from the choice of trees to be cut to the separation of the tree into its various products.

This is a nice graphic from The Economic Importance of New Hampshire’s Forest-Based Economy 2011 courtesy of the New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands...

-PIG