To me, being proactive, and not reactive, would be to use the Bayer or other known EAB prevention methods for yard trees. Obviously, in a forest, that wouldn't work. I have a handful of huge yard ash trees and I treat them every year. There are tons of ash trees here that are wild and not on people's manicured yards, and they are not affected by EAB. Then there's the ash trees at work 32 miles away that should've been treated, and are holey and have barely any leaves on them. Those will get pulled and replaced.
I only cut em down when there are no leaves.. Period. Then again, I'm not in the lumber business. I have hundreds of ash trees that are 4" diameter or less and +\- 15 feet that are completely unaffected. Hopefully the borers are gone and the small ones will continue to grow, but if they don't, they don't. At least that's how I look at it. It's all part of the plan.
What I was getting at is when sawing lumber, they usually don't make good 2 x 4 because of splitting on the ends. For sure splitting for firewood is great!
We've been cutting ash trees since 2002 here. Yes, we are happy there are just a very few that have not been attacked. However, one tree that showed no sign of the beetle last year got hit this summer so the bug is not all gone yet. The live ash we have are all quite small with the largest one being maybe 10" diameter. Sad, but we do have lots of firewood and yes, we did cut some lumber way back in 2002.
I knew what you meant, I was referring to Barber Chairing as well. I don't care if it splits (barber-chairs) if it is for firewood or a pulpwood, but they will not take barber-chaired wood for logs or even mat logs. That is when I get mad at myself because there is no excuse for it other then poor loggership. Just so everyone knows, this is what "Barber-Chairing" is and what Backwoods Savage and I are referring to.
