Wow. I did not know that. I also have a 30-acre woodlot that I bought about four years ago. Not that I would clear it for crops, but it is interesting to know that such a law exists. What do you mean by 'Maine's new logging market?"
A lot of the paper mills have closed: Millinocket East Millinocket. Brewer, Old Town, Winslow, Augusta, Bucksport, Madison, Lincoln...Jay is running, but just barely by shutting down several paper machines, and is predicted to close completely, along with its other mill at Rumford. There just is no market for wood in the state of Maine, in particular softwood. 3 years ago I could sell softwood pulp for $70 a cord and now it is worth $15....if they even take it. I cannot get rid of hemlock pulp at all, and hemlock comprises 28% of my woodlot! Spruce logs are paying $150 less then there were 25 years ago, and Hemlock logs are worth $100 less. Property taxes here are $28 an acre, and because it takes 35 years for a tree to grow, forest only nets me $25 an acre per year. As you know with sheep, you can get $100 a head, put 10 sheep per acre per growing season, so the math is a little better. Then there is the farm value itself. Here tillable land is going for more money than house lots, so if forest land is going for even $800 an acre, converting it to tillable land where it would value out at $2500 makes more sense. Granted it takes money to stump, grade, remove rocks, and sow down the land, but that comes out to $201 an acre. For many years we have had it good here, with very little investment we could let our woodlots grow, harvest the wood occasionally and make some money. Now with the loss of paper mills that consumed that wood, and thus drove up the price of the wood (an in turn our farm values), we have to invest in our land in the form of conversion. I am not alone in this, within 5 miles of me a lot of people are actively clearing forest back into farmland. I never thought I would see this day, but that is stupid me. I watched the shoe shops, the tanneries, the woolen mills, all die so it was only bound to happen to the logging industry, but I never thought it would. So now I am clearing land to make more room for sheep. I'll also use the woodlot to build bigger barns so slowly we can grow so that more money comes from farming, and less from logging. So the woodlot is a HUGE part of the overall farm plan.
LodgedTree, Wow. Thank you for the info. I guess I know very little of what is going on in Maine. I just got here in June, as an early retiree from the big city. Been so busy working to get my place into shape, fencing, etc., I have not had time to meet people, get out, etc. I hardly watch any tv or even much of the news. At the end of the workday, I drop. /// I bought this property exactly because it was 90% fields. I reckoned that sheep would be good for an entry level wannabe farmer. As for my woodlot, I know it is not all that valuable. I plan on using the wood to improve the property that I am living on. The woodlot has a lot of cedar, which is easy for one guy solo to muscle around, so I will build a nice barn with it. Round timber construction. I have heard that it costs upwards of $2000/acre to clear woodland- but I am not sure how accurate a figure that is. I will be prudent in my harvesting of the wood. But, obviously, the woodlot is probably more valuable for me than it is for some buyer. Hey, please, if and when you find yourself up around Houlton, give me a buzz. Come and visit.
My father and I built a barn out of round wood, though we used spruce...use what you have right. It was on skids and after several years, still had enough strength to be hooked onto a tractor and dragged 1/4 mile up a hot topped road and used as a sheep barn for my place for awhile. It has since been replaced, but I know the value of round wood construction for sure. I am not sure how I got into land clearing. I guess people just saw what I did on my own place (I have cleared 20 acres already into field) and am currently working on a 30 acre area, a 10 acre area, and then maybe a 3 acre area and 8 acre area after that. So reluctantly when a few people have asked to clear land, away I go. I did one last year that absolutely terrified me. It was only 18 acres but on the side of a mountain. It was so steep on over half of it that I had to hook the excavator bucket onto a stump, pray that it held, then drag the excavator up over the ledge. I did not like that, but ended up finding two hummocks of nothing but dirt, pushed half the mountainside over the other half and covered up the ledge. It was an amazing transformation. A guy said it would take 5 years to make that clear cut look good, but in the end it took 5 weeks. Granted I had logged over 200 hours on the excavator alone, and another 200 on the bulldozer. But I dug some ponds too, put in some roads and some other work. It was a good job in the end. I am opposite of you in that the vast majority of my own land is in woodlot and not fields. Very smart on your part to do that for sure. I have a lot of friends and family up in the county actually, though they are a touch north of you in Fort Fairfield, and potato farmers of course. Someday I might come up, but I also know what it is like to farm, be busy and just crash at the end of the day. My wife helps as much as she can, but she's not that big, and is scared to death of the skidder. She will drive the tractor, hates the bulldozer, and absolutely refuses to drive the skidder.
LodgedTree, well I hope you are a young guy because clearing land, in my opinion, is some of the hardest work I know of. Even with mechanical equipment, the work is hard. I tip my hat to you. Me, as I said, I have to get things done and failure is not an option. I have to work with cedar because it is the only tree I have that I can handle solo. Also, I am not building a barn like in the story books. I am doing what is really just a fancy sheep shed. I use thick cedar posts, about 7-9", and I post-hole-dig them in about 16-17". Linneus is on a rocky ledge and it is very hard to dig deeper. But the heavy posts set nicely. I use plenty, overbuilding, and see no problem structurally. My woodlot has plenty of spruce and all of the other trees, hardwood, etc., but there is no way I can get them to my farmstead one mile away. I have no mechanical equipment aside from a good riding mower and my truck, lol. But 8' cedar logs are really easy. And since I have plenty, I can do a house for the sheep that is relatively insulated. I just wish those sheep would go outside to poop. They sleep, eat, and poop right there in the shed and I have to clean it all out every day when I come to work on it. (Maybe I should have built their barn before taking delivery of the sheep?) Anyway, I was giving some thought to what you said about the declined value of our wood. It seems to me that if we use the wood for our own infrastructure, we can get good value out of that, and cutting/splitting hardwood and selling bundles of firewood also brings decent value.
I am 43 so no spring chicken that is for sure, and you are right about land clearing beating you up. Even in an excavator I take a pounding. Some guys, they can't stand it, but to me it is just a mind over matter thing. I am a goal oriented guy so i draw a line across a clear cut and see if I can paw my way there in x amount of time. A good radio helps, but typically with a 34,000 pound machine I can get 2 acres a day. I almost said that cedar was a weak wood, but then figured for a sheep shed cedar would serve you well enough. I have always said, use what you got. Myself, my woodlot is 28% hemlock and it is almost worthless, so I use that for lumber for myself then sell my spruce and hardwood to pay for the non-wood components of the building like steel roofing, concrete, etc. If you ever get down this way you should check out my sheep barn. I built it a few years ago using only 3400 board feet of hemlock for a 30 x 48 foot barn. It is designed ONLY for sheep, but it really works well. We got a new ram today, and then sold some sheep, and the way it is arranged, it was a cinch, open a gate here, close a gate there, and the ram went in, and the sheep went into the trailer. I put up with a lot the first 6 years I had sheep, so when I built this barn it was designed to make things EASY. It is a through-barn so clean out is easy, I just scrape it out with my tractor or bulldozer, and get the manure composting. Usually when I build something I wish I had did certain things differently, but with this one, after 3 years there is not one thing I would change. So if you ever get to the point where you want a different barn, you might like this design, again it would only work for sheep, but it really dropped our mortality rate on our lambs. It has taken me 9 years, but I got it down from 40% down to 4%, and hopefully with my new dog, get it even lower. We shall see. The new ram was enjoying his new girlfriends this afternoon so 145 days from today...Lambing Season Starts!
LodgedTree, I would really appreciate seeing the design/layout of your sheep barn. I intend on building an additional place for sheep on another field. Having a plan that has already had the kinks worked out on someone else's back is rather convenient! /// My Katahdin lambs are less than fives months old. So my ram will be coming only sometime next summer. I really need to get like 2.2 births from each to build up a flock. So, yeah, I have to have the ladies nice and comfy in whatever I build for them.
I found out the hard way that high lambing rates come from flushing. I always heard it was the ram, and still do, I just got a ram the other day and the livestock dealer was like "oh it throws twins every year". There is probably some genetics in there for sure, but the biggest part is with the ewe and what she is eating at time of conception. Katadins breed out of season (as does any triple cross sheep) so flushing at that time is huge. It just makes sense, if she is getting a face full of grain and quality grass every day her body is thinking she has enough feed to support two lambs instead of one and drops two eggs for the ram to fertilize. I alluded to this the other day when I said I was putting up sheep fence so I could get them on fall pasture. That is a field with clover/timothy and oats. They will fatten up on that going into winter, but it also acts as a natural flushing endeavor and will net me more twins. Last year at the Soil and Water Conservation District annual banquet, Commissioner of Agriculture Walter Whitcomb challenged the farmers present, to share more as he felt the biggest challenge facing Maine farmer's was an unwillingness of people to share what they knew. Katie and I took him up on that challenge and have really been doing a lot to share what we know. One of the beautiful things about being a Christian farmer is knowing that God is in control, and that I don't have to "keep secret" anything as our farming success is up to him. We did our "Rock the Flock" event, but also teach an adult education course on raising sheep called "Raising Sheep for Fun and Profit", as well as writing a book on farming. It is about taking a farm from beginner...or hobby farm status, to the next level. The latter started out when we tried to find such a book, but could not find anything. There is tons of beginner farmer books out there, but that is not a surprise; most farms go under in the first three years. We realized that since we are a 9th generation sheep farm, with 9 of it years under my rule, we had the information to write a book on such a subject. We have gotten farm grants, farm loans, cleared forest into farmland, built access roads, built our own barn, moved buildings, and fabricated homemade farm equipment. That is what it takes to farm; cutting checks to have all that done, or buying equipment; is NOT going to work. So we want to share so that other farms can make it past the three year mark. Right now we just need more sheep, but must have the barn space, more fields and equipment to do that. I am moving two barns now so that we got barn space, obviously actively clearing land every day, but somehow have to figure out how to get equipment to feed them. With farming it is never ending...
Wow. Yours is an operation of the big boys. Way out of my league. Regrettably for me, transferring to a farmstead from an office in a big city, at age 61, there are simply not enough hours in the day, and likely not enough hours remaining in my lifetime, for me to gain the knowledge for such a serious place such as you have going on there. I think the best I can hope for is being 'just a poor sheep farmer,' lol. I have no machinery. It is me, myself, and I. Not much money either. I spent my retirement money to escape the insane city and get this property- previously a dairy farm. The fields have very little of the clover, timothy, oats, etc., grasses. In fact, my fields were left uncultivated for nearly twenty-four years. This past summer, working myself hard, I mowed two of fifty acres, fenced it with raw cedar posts and woven wire, and built a sheep shed with the leftover cedar posts. While doing that, I also restored and installed two wood stoves with flues and chimneys, and prepped maybe one cord of firewood. But that is pretty much it. At the end of the workday, I am 'done.' Usually too tired to cook, clean, do laundry, shop, etc., etc! Read a book? Fuhgetaboutit. My eyes would close by page 2. I know I should spend some time online, studying, joining associations, etc., but I am just... too tired, lol. Still, my seven Katahdin ewe lambs seem to be doing ok with whatever is growing in my fields. I give them some Haystretcher in the morning and evening because, not having gotten much rain in the last couple months, the grass is very short. All in all, I am happy. So I consider it all a 'win.' I do what I can and I do not do what I can't. I try to get rid of any cash expense I can. Hopefully, with some good common sense, and keeping in good health, I will make something out of all this.
We are not so far apart as you think. Katie and I have been doing this a bit longer, but we started out where you did. My Grandfather had sheep, but his two sons (my uncle and father) had little interest in farming. They kept the land, but leased it out to dairy farmers, and I managed it for them. I introduced sheep again in 2008, but it was only with (4) sheep. In 2013 I bought the farm off them, retired from Bath Iron Works on May 27th 2016 and now farm full-time. Over those years I just bought sheep as I got deals on them, my flock size always being in flux. I know the exhaustion feeling that is for sure...and no I do NOT watch TV...who has time for that? What we do here is focus on one big thing a year and try and get it done. I REALLY recommend this to everyone. It has only been 9 years, but in looking back that is 9 big projects done and it really is starting to show. We like that method because it allows for progress, but does not overwhelm us either. This year it was crop rotating a field from corn to clover/timothy/oats, building an access road, and building some swales. A few years ago it was building our barn, and another year clearing 12 acres into forest. We try and do small stuff too, like this year, we got that field, access road and swale building done, but today hope to move a 12 x 22 barn my Late-Grandfather has across the road (we own it now). The bottom 2 feet is pretty rotted, but it is has a sound roof and frame, so we just have to scab in some new posts, replace some boards, and it will last another 50 years. As is, it was built in 1900 and has already been moved once back in 1965 about a half mile away. After this move, we have another bigger barn we want to move. It takes work to move buildings, but it is a lot cheaper than building new ones! If you have not started, you should go in and talk to your USDA-NRCS Conservationist. There is a lot of free help out there for farmers from them. The State of Maine Dept of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry has resources too, but I have never got much help from them, and work with a bank called CEI which is a bank that deals only with Farmers, Loggers and Fishermen. They are an offshoot of the Small Business Administration. There is a lot of help out there for farmers, a lot more now then when I started out in 2008. Over the last 9 years I have secured (6) grants and (2) low interest loans. They can be unique to work with because they have strange speak. For instance ask about a barn and they will tell you right off quick they do not fund barns. And they don't, but they will pay for "covered heavy use areas with end walls." So that is basically a roof over a concrete pad with end walls...what you and I call a BARN! Some rules change county by county too,for instance Somerset County will not pay for fencing, but they will if you have fencing up from years ago that is no longer usable. But my county, Waldo County, pays for any fencing. So it gets goofy, but they can really help as you know the cost of farming is incredibly high, the prices for lamb are quite low in comparison, yet life (even a simple one) is expensive.
