Last fall I made the decision to sell some of my timber. I have 5 acres with quite a bit of decent quality sugar maple, and some other hardwoods. My woods was to the point where nothing in the understory would grow. Deer used to come thru, but not so much as the past. I was having trouble even growing grass due to No sunlight. In an effort to give the critters better habitat, open the canopy to the forest floor, and grow some grass, I hesitantly called in a forester. To make a long story short, he marked about 30,000 bd ft. That's about 180 trees iirc. Of those 180, about 50 are poles (junk trees in the way). Most are 20" dbh or larger. I left all my nut trees. Most of the maples had very old maple borer damage, but the buyer didn't seem to mind. Well.....the time has come. My woods isn't gonna be pretty for a long time now. They are moving in on Monday. I'm scared and excited at the same time. With the cash, I'll be putting up a small cabin or pole barn with living quarters in an area I had them clear cut. 180 tops seems like a crap load of work for one man. Especially considering the property is 80 miles away from home. This thread is going to be a diary of sorts....scrap book or whatever. I sit here wishing I had taken more pics of what it used to look like knowing it will never be the same again. Stay tuned for pics, and say a prayer these cutters don't just rape my small piece of heaven. I smell an Indiana GTG coming on
Hopefully it goes well, I've seen it go both ways. If at all possible I would try to be present some, so you don't have a slash and crash party going on. No matter what it will look different but it will come around.
I hope to be there as much as possible. They didn't make that easy for me. They called last night to inform me they are moving in on monday. Of course, I'm booked solid workwise all week, have moms bday also, so I've got some schedule manipulation to do so I can babysit and take pics for fhc of course
Good luck on this one bocefus78 and yes, perhaps a GTG will be in order! Count me in. One of the most important things to watch for is how the skidder does his job. I've seen woods wrecked by careless skidders who don't mind rubbing up against standing trees and skinning them as high as the tires go. Then what is left is good only for firewood usually, but not always. You don't want damaged trees left in the woods.
Step 1. Build a dray like Backwoods Savage. It's still in need of eye bolts and a support in the middle, but I have those materials on hand also. This cost me $20 in hardware. The 4x4s were free, and i milled the cross supports from ash. It is 4 foot by 8 foot. Step 2 will be building some sawbucks. The po folks sawbuck with blocks seems appealing since I have a block pile at camp too. Free is good
having cleared my back 12 because tornado made widow makers.. when they finish back dragging with skidded blade or hopefully dozer.. put access trails in... better to lose couple hundred then have a mess you can't fix without equipment
Staying tuned bocefus78 Hope they do right by you on what's left standing! Edit: Can you add the location of your acreage so I can input it to Maps?
Don't know if you have time but when I had my pasture cleared of the majority of trees, I went around and put the nylon "boundary/surveying tape?"around my keeper trees. I also wrote the number of trees that had been marked, and had the supervisor sign the sheet that they were not to cut down anything with the ribbons on them, and acknowledged the number. The kicker was that I wrote that if they got trigger happy and cut a marked keeper tree, that I would remove an extra $2,500 from the bill as a fine and also charge them $2,500 for the tree. If he didnt sign it, they couldn't come on my land. The markers were for the equipment operators, and the count was to keep them from tearing off a marker or two. I had read too many stories about property owners coming back to either complete clear cut or certain prime trees got cut down that the company wasn't supposed to touch. Funny how all the trees that were supposed to be left alone made it through the process untouched. If you do something like that, I'll bet you'll have better peace of mind while away from your property during the work week.
The forester marked all trees to be cut with numbers on trunk and stump. Any stump without a number means they cut a keeper and they get sued. Simple as that.
Congrats Chris! You should get a solid face cord of firewood from the tops of a 20" tree. Do you keep the "poles" too? You gonna cut em to 8' and haul em home, or process the firewood onsite? Keeping it all or selling? I've been thinking about doing the same at my place with all my ash. I was fortunate to have been able to purchase them all before the borer got here, but it's in my woods for sure now. I'm torn over whether to sell the logs or hoard the lumber though. I'm leaning towards keeping it and building the pole barn anyway. I was already planning to build one before I ever considered selling any logs. I think I will be selling some firewood though.
Shawn Curry I'll be keeping 90 plus percent of it. I have a couple buyers lined up. I'm hoping to trade them wood for splitter labor I'll process and store it all there. My 0.14 acre lot in the city won't gold much lol. As far as the poles, I think the buyer get em. I wasn't concerned as they were my problem children near my shed, hollow, serious leaners, etc.
Something else to consider is disposition of artifacts. The logger on my property several years ago boasted about finding several old arrowheads on the job site. Didn't think it was worth it at that point to fight over those mid cut. Just let em go but what is on your property should be yours and if you say it up front, it's easier to enforce.
Right on. I may have to build a new dray though and make it a lot stronger for pulling bigger loads with the tractor. Although I hauled some heavy and long (14') logs on it already this summer. For sure in the winter you can haul a lot more when the ground is frozen or even just a light cover of snow. Shoot, even frost on the ground makes it pull much easier. But that mess we had last spring was ridiculous...
