Written by Dave Lefever on 7 April 2025 for Lancaster Farming
Troy Firth, front, leads a group on a forest walk. Photo credit: Foundation for Sustainable Forests
The better part of a lifetime spent working in the woods has given Troy Firth a lot of insight into forest management. If you’re a woodlot or forest owner, his first advice would be to educate yourself on it. Firth would also enjoy taking you out on a forest walk, his favorite teaching method. Even though he’d rather show what he knows than just tell it, the 77-year-old forester and 2024 Pennsylvania Leopold Conservation Award winner took some time to talk on the phone as his maple tapping activities wound down during the last week of March. Firth has been working in forestry for more than 50 years since growing up in the farming community of Spartansburg, Crawford County, where he still lives.
He owns and manages Firth Maple Products, one of the largest producers of maple syrup in the state as well as a purveyor of hardwood lumber, including black cherry and white hard maple. However, Firth’s involvement in forestry goes much further as he seeks to ensure the future viability of woodlands in the region through his nonprofit land trust, Foundation for Sustainable Forests, launched in 2004 with his now-deceased wife, Lynn.
Read the full article on the Lancaster Farming website here.
