WATERFORD – The town raised $62,000 by harvesting timber from its forests last year, said Deputy Town Clerk Jennifer Morin.

Trees were harvested in the spring and fall, she said. Although the income is substantial this time around, trees aren’t always harvested regularly.

Tim Sawyer, chairman of the Waterford Forestry Committee, said there have been five or six timber harvests in town since 1990, which is about the time the forestry committee was formed.

“We hire a professional forester to mark the timber,” he noted.

Morin said licensed forester Bill Newcomb usually handles the harvesting work.

The timber figures were presented to the Waterford Board of Selectmen at a Jan. 5 meeting.

Selectman Charles Fillebrown Jr. said the money is placed into a town fund, from which the town may borrow for capital expenditures and other items.

For example, he said, “It buys our town trucks. (Then) we pay it back to the forestry fund over 10 years. “

This year’s cuts covered “most of the town’s forestland and some of the bigger trees,” Fillebrown said. “The pine trees and the hemlocks were starting to go by. We would have lost them.”

Selectman Whizzer Wheeler called the timber harvesting program a “godsend.” It even has helped with projects like the makeover of the old sandlot baseball field, he said.

The town loaned the Waterford sandlot project $18,000 from the fund, Wheeler said. The group had to raise additional money, he said. But “in terms of the town, we got (the ball fields) for free.”