By Leslie Robertson
NASF Photo Fellow
After visiting the Penn Nursery, we headed to Susan Benedict’s Forest Stewardship Property. The property has been the Benedicts’ for generations; the family currently owns over 2000 acres of land, and many years ago they had over 5000! Susan and her family showed us around the property with the help of their Contract Forester Robert Hobbes. They had so much knowledge and an understanding of their land that I can’t quite describe.
You could easily see that living there and furthering the knowledge and conservation of forest ecosystems was their passion. We were able to see their hunting cabin as well as their future house which was currently under renovation, as well as some awe-inspiring glacial rocks that were easily 25 feet tall. An interesting aspect of the rocks was that the tops of them were unreachable by deer and therefore had different kinds of plants on top of them. Susan told us that they had found musket balls and atlatl points dated to be more than 5,000 years old nearby, showing that the area has been a popular hunting spot for quite some time.
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