What kind of woods are you looking at? If it has recently been logged and there isn't much high quality trees left I would design the site to improve access, water retention, and create a zone one space for your calorie dense annual food crops.
If you manage to acquire a site that has not recently been torn up by logging I would do what my aunt and uncle did. They bought wooded lot to build a passive
solar home on in the 1980s. It had 7 acres of woods and they hired an arborist to come through and teach they about the trees they had. The trees were marked in different colored paint to signify if they we diseased, damaged and
should come down or if it was a rare tree and should be cared for long term. They high graded the wood lot and designed the house to only need a cord or 2 to heat it over the winter. The floor joists and much of the lumber for the house came from the house site.
30 years later the trees are more impressive than ever.
We only have a couple of acres and we live on the border of suburban and rural living. Right now we are working clearing the back half of our property of the low value trees and doing some
earthworks so we can plant a food forest. It is a rather steep hill so some terraces, swales and walking paths need to be built. I will be planting it in cover crops, annual flowers, and extra vegetable seeds I have this year. Some of this will be and the rest cut down for mulch. Next spring we will be planting all the long term trees and shrubs. Since it will still be sunny to dappled sun for a few years. I will be using the space the trees don't need yet for flowers, herbs, veggies, and seed saving crops.
Some of the yard between the house and the soon to be food forest will be made into raised beds for zone 2 type annual plants like winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes, parsnips, and celeriac. We currently have most of our annual veggies and fruit production in the front yard.
The food forest will mostly be nut trees with mostly
native fruits as understory trees. The shrub layer will have lots of fruits and hazelnuts. I expect these shrubs to eventually die out as the canopy fills in but I want the production in the mean time. While the hill is sunny I will by growing annual and
perennial plants in the space in between the rows of trees.
Our friends who have 200 acres of woods an hour away from me in a rural area have a very different approach their farm. They primarily raise animals on food waste from restaurants, supermarkets, breweries, and diary processing companies. They use pigs to clear out brambles and other low value shrubs and plants in their heavily forested farm. They use electric fencing to keep the animals where they want them. Once the pigs have cleared out the under brush they go in an remove the less valuable trees to create savannah style pastures for cows, turkeys,
chickens, and the recently added sheep to their pastures. All these animals are rotationally grassed spring through fall. All the nuts and fruits that fall from the trees they have kept feed the animals in the fall.
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