How A Revered Biological Woodsman Cleared Trees From Honey Creek Woodlands

Clearing dead and dying trees around a natural green burial ground, such as Honey Creek Woodlands in Conyers, required, instead of heavy machinery, a specialist and a team of draft horses.

Talk about doing it the Old Fashioned way! When the Monastery of the Holy Spirit needed to clear old and dying trees from delicate areas around their conservation green burial ground Honey Creek Woodlands (HCW), they didn’t call in the big equipment. Instead, stewards of the natural burial ground brought in some draft horses and Jason Rutledge, a renowned, self-described “biological woodsman.”

Tree Clearing The Old Fashioned Way

For more than 40 years, Rutledge has been working his land in Virginia the ecologically friendly way with horses and what’s called a log arch, a simple, wheeled metal frame designed to haul trees and logs. “If you go slow, you don’ tear up things as bad,” said Rutledge about his approach. “It’s a small price to pay for sensitivity.” 

Earlier this year, a lightning strike left fire damage in the pine forest at Honey Creek Woodlands. At about the same time, Field Stewards started noticing saw dust at the bases of nearby trees, an indication of beetle infestation.

“We marked trees that were showing signs of beetle infestation or other damage or disease,” said Elaine Bishoff, Head Steward at HCW. “We discovered a total of around 90 trees which needed to be removed.”

Bishoff hired Rutledge and his Suffolk Punch draft horses because heavy equipment would’ve easily damaged the land around the green burial ground, 1,000 acres of which is protected under a strong conservation easement. Large machinery also would’ve had a more difficult time maneuvering around sensitive areas like gravestones and buried remains.

“They say horses can’t get out but 20 logs a day, and it’s insignificant,” said Rutledge about his critics. “But the last time I prayed, it included the concept that nothing is insignificant. And they’re not going to invent a machine that can go in here and do what these horses can do.”

Woodsman Full Of Wonder

Born in 1950 to a sixteen-year-old mother, Rutledge said he was “born into horses.” He was taught by his great grandfather, an illiterate sharecropper from Southside, Virginia, “on Tobacco Road,” as Rutledge puts it. “He didn’t know how to read or write but he knew how to work with horses and animals,” recalled Rutledge. “He was not a teacher, by any means. His teaching was: ‘Go catch them horses.'”

That rough-and-tumble tutelage did eventually pay off. Critics once laughed off Rutledge as old-fashioned and anachronistic. However, over the last 4 decades, he has slowly become the voice (and face) for more natural and restorative forestry practices. His primary power source is a pair of rare draft horses called the Suffolk Punch, an old breed that traces its lineage back to the early 16th Century in Suffolk, England. “Just think, 125 years ago, this was all anybody had,” said Rutledge referring to his two-horse team. “There was no such thing as fossil fuels and machines, so they were precious for human survival for thousands of years.” 

The bearded Rutledge gave off a farmer-philosopher vibe à la Robert Frost, often quoting poetry or dispensing gnostic gems, such as: All of man’s industries were upon the shoulders and backs of horses. He was even the subject of an independent 2023 documentary, Somehow Hopeful: The Story of a Woodsman. Shot over seven years, the flick made quite a splash at film festivals last year, garnering awards and official selections.

A Future With Horses

Back in February, Rutledge put his draft horses on a trailer and drove them 400 miles from his Suffolk Farm in Copper Hill, Virginia to HCW in Conyers. For two weeks, he worked around Honey Creek Woodlands, which is the country’s largest combination conservation and green burial ground, to carefully and precisely remove trees that were dead or dying. While Rutledge gently steered his two-horse team through the woods, he was assisted by apprentices and younger folks with a passion for this business who helped chainsaw, load and remove the trees.

Six months later, there’s a noticeable difference in the forest. “Of course, there is much more sunlight in some areas, so the understory is currently thriving,” said Bishoff. “The thinning should contribute to the overall health of the forest going forward.”

As sustainable forestry grows in popularity nationwide, it’s clear that Rutledge and his four decades of work have inspired a younger generation of biological foresters. As for how long Rutledge is willing to do the work, he says he has a retirement plan. “I’m going to die with my boots on,” he said. “I’m going to keep doing it, until I can’t.”