The Boys Went Back to Work

The REAL loggers who have been logging my farm these last few weeks managed to get their real feller-buncher working after a stick drove up through the radiator and fan; a $3500 repair bill. I felt kind of bad as the feller buncher operator was trying to really sweep clean the small saplings so I would have less to clean up when they are gone (I am making fields). However part of me says that stick could have been done even if they were chomping away at bigger wood in a selective cutting operation.

I am a little apprehensive because they have targeted the bigger wood and left the smaller wood for now, and honestly the smaller wood is what troubles me the most. Too small to put a choker around and haul to the paper mills, and yet too big to just push into a pile and burn, because it makes a gnarled mess on its ways there.

I have also worked out an arrangement I think regarding using his excavator for stumping at least a portion of this clear cut so I can get some forest into field this year. It is more of something to do then anything else. He has a smaller 315 Cat Excavator (#38,000 lb), but it will stump, it just takes more time. My local rental shop has the exact same excavator for $2000 a week, so we agreed I can use his excavator to stump for a week (40 hours). It helps me out a bit because I don't have to worry about transportation fees, and he does not have to pay back the $2000 I fronted him to repair his feller-buncher radiator. I would love to do all 80 acres of clear cut, but a #38,000 pound machine can only average 2-3 acres of stumping per day, so I will just have to plan on getting these clear cuts back into fields over a few years time. (A 30 acre clear cut, a 40 acre clear cut, and a 10 acre clear cut).

The only real bad thing is with the roads now posted, at 2 AM we hear the logging trucks rumble down the hill, and the chipper barking when it gets a big mouthful of wood.

 

That really is a big project. Best of luck to you. I hope come autumn, that you are able to harvest what you can.

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Yeah, in a lot of ways I bit more than I could chew. It is one thing to clear 70 Acres of wood (vertical vegetation as foresters call it), but ridding the field of stumps, getting the rocks out, graded, and sown down with grass seed, is the hard part.

I was unsure if they should do the last 10 acres or not. I really did not log it too hard, and what will take them 1 week to log off, would take me 2 years to clear of wood at the rate I log wood off. But I have a tough time getting rid of the smaller wood, and they can just chip it. The decision ultimately came down to them having a better hemlock Log market then I do, so I get the same money not touching the hemlock logs as I do in actually logging them off. Add in the clean up of the small wood, even though I only get $2 a cord, and it just made sense.

I definitely have my work cut out for me now though. A lot of clean up!

 

They push for 3 loads per day (about 45 cord), but last night they could only pull two out.

It is not an easy road they are navigating. Total length is about a half mile long, it is narrow at 12 feet wide, a good 2 feet of ditch. Headed in they are empty, but once loaded, the trucks have to drop down a 500 foot long, 9% grade. At the bottom is a 90 degree intersection where the truck can just swing and not drop over a culvert, where he would roll his truck, then a few hundred more feet to another curve where there is an 8 foot embankment they could roll over if the trailer goes too far over.

Last night at 4 AM he came down with his second load for the night and the snow had turned to glare ice. He was using just is trolley brakes and slid his trailer off into the ditch. If he had slid 50 feet above, or 50 feet below where he did, he would have tipped the entire truck over. So holding the truck upright with a skidder, he unloaded his wood, got back in the roadway, then loaded his wood again. But by the time he got to the mill after all that, the temp warmed up and he was unable to go after a third load.

I did not get a lot of sleep, but it was interesting to watch nonetheless.

 

WOW...I can't even imagine the scope of that project. I was walking in my little woods the other day (I only own 2.3 acres here at my house) and I was thinking about clearing some for growing more sweet corn and I just thought to myself about how much work even that little piece would be! Like you said, it's the stumps and rocks that would be the real bitch. But I'm curious as to what you're gonna sow in the field up that way. Cash crop or pasture grass for cattle?

 

Maine is entering a new era where its 125 year dependence on paper mills is pretty much over. Their insatiable demand for low grade, small diameter wood made growing forest more valuable than farm crops, but now the reverse is happening. Since their decline, along with a growing need to feed this nation, land clearing is on the rise in my area.

Much of the are had been field at one time though not all of it. The 30 acre section my Grandfather had as pasture and hay, and a 8 acre section of the 40 acre section was field at one time, along with the 10 acre section. But some has always been forest and is old growth. This is evident by the reddish soil which is iron, now kicked up but equipment, it is rusting, something that would have been done years ago if it had been a pasture or tilled field. So it will be interesting to see what I get for production on those acres.

But on my farm at least, I don't make fields into pasture; for the simple reason it does not increase the value of your land a whole lot. Today tillable farm land is worth more than house lots even, so while expensive to make the conversion from forest into farmland to the tillable level, my farm would drastically go up in value, but because it would be in agriculture and not forestry, would actually be taxed at a lower rate per acre.

That is purely from a monetary value. From a Best Practices point of view, crop rotating from grass to tillable soil means crop diseases are broken up, along with soil compaction, I would get better nutrient incorporation, etc, so it is best to crop rotate every 7-10 years or so. That does not mean it would not be grazed, it just means it could be grazed, hayed if it was grass, or put into corn, oats or sunflowers if it was tillable land.

Kind of a long answer, but I hope it answers your question.

I wish I had a before and after photo of this field. I took this photo here because this was the exact spot the logging contractors got their feller-buncher stuck in 2011. As you can see in this photo, it makes for a nice looking field today.

 

"Land value" - I've always wondered about those words. Taxes based on land use aside, as well as no cash crop, I've always associated "land value" as what you could sell it for.

With the understanding that you are not in the process of selling your acreage, how does one determine that land has more value whether it's field, meadow, wooded, wetlands, or just a peaceful place to go and enjoy nature?

How do different people define "value"?

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That depends on whether you are talking an assessment or an appraisal. Assessment being what you are taxed on and appraisal being the fair market price for selling.. There is value for the community in keeping land in a wild state as well as keeping land in forest or farm productivity. So many states have developed tax laws allowing lower assessments to encourage one of the above uses... in MA, for example, Chapter 61 allows someone to classify land as forest land under production. In 2015, the assessed value of land was $71/acre west of the CT river and $48/acre to the east. This is supposedly based on annual productivity of the land to produce wood... as wood prices go up (and if taxes don’t follow quickly in suit) so do the appraised values of the land.. I would assume something similar is going on for arable farmland in ME. Some places in NH have a “view tax” that applies to the assessment regardless of whether or not you can enjoy the view.. It’s not a specific line item, but added value based on perceived desirability of the property. A view for someone who can not enjoy it, may have no added value when purchasing the property, but for the town’s assessment, the view is still taxed..

`View tax' triggers revolt in rural New Hampshire

“John Chandler, a retired engineer and former state legislator who also lives in Hill, objects to paying for a distant view of the White Mountains because he doesn’t own it and can’t control it.

A revaluation last year doubled the base value of his property, although Chandler said the view is obscured by air pollution much of the time.

Besides, he’s legally blind.“

So the short answer to your last question is a definitive, “it depends.”

Lesson learned, before you cut trees on your property, consider what the assessor might think when the removal of trees opens up a spectacular distant view...

 

That is a very open ended question because it is in reference to something that is called Land Economics. That is a huge thing onto itself. You are indeed correct though, as a 9th generation farmer who has had this farm since 1746, my intent is to buy additional land and not sell it; some things are just not for sale.

So land value comes down to what is on it. It could be a billion dollar high rise on Manhattan Island, or it could be forest on a few acres in Maine. In my case, with the demise of the paper industry, forest that had x amount of value 3 years ago, now has lost 1/3 of its value. Generally this is expressed in averages.

Since 1900, things have drastically changed as land ownership has shifted from the land having to pay for itself as in forestry and agriculture, to people having jobs and using that income base to pay for the land costs. The greatest land cost today being in the form of property taxes, though other incidentally land costs occur as well such as maintaining access roads, ponds, etc.

Generally speaking, as land value and acreage increases, the need to have the land pay for itself does as well. What that acreage definition is depends entirely upon where the land is. In the wide open plains of Wyoming, 640 acres is a small holding, where as in Rhode Island, it would be a massive farm. Either way, if a landowner has plenty of income, the value of land depends. For many, conservation is enough to justify the taxes and other land costs, but for people like me who farm full-time, there is no other income source to draw from to pay them, so our pencil has to be sharp...we must get maximum production to pay for those land costs. What I have found is, even the most wealthiest person comes to this realization sooner or later. What happens is, the lure of owning lots of land wanes, the cost of paying taxes gets depressing, and so the owners either sell off their land, or try to defer their core principals such as conservation stewardship into non-profit agencies that hold those same ideals. In my town, over 43 years of life here, I have noted this runs in 8 year cycles. In Maine a great example of this on an enormous scale is the woman that once co-founded Burt's Bee's and owned over a million acres in Maine. She bought it to stop logging, and recently gave it to the US Government as a National Monument.

However as a landowner, no matter the acreage...I can put precise figures to what I own.

For instance a person in Maine (in my area) can bank on their land having about 30 cords of wood per acre. Sustainable removal can be calculated at 1 cord, per acre, per years.

Now we can assign that wood with a value based on averages as well, or in my case, have a forester do a Forest Management Plan and get precise numbers on how many cords/board feet of wood is on my farm. Based on species of trees, and the price for those types of trees, a monetary value can be applied. I keep careful track of what is logged off, what regrows (based on averaging), and what is lost to wind-throw, rot and disease (again based on averages). From that I maintain a very accurate number of what my land has for wood at any given time.

But wood is a "crop", just like any crop whether it be hay, corn or lambs. The difference is the price, and the length of time that it takes to grow. Lambs grown to full size in 5 months (1 growing season), while trees take at least 35 years. Trees can be left to their own, and grow really well just fine, which is unlike lambs, but their low pay, and years of land costs add up making them a particularly bad land investment in Maine right now. I can do far better whether my land is used to grow hay, corm, lambs or oats.

But that is today, what does the future hold?

No one can tell the future, but we can use the past as a prediction. History does repeat itself, and people like to procreate. That means more mouths to feed, and unlike some food stuffs that use cellulose fiber in them, we do not generally eat our forests. That means land in fields will have more value. With the Amish population growing in my town, a lot of food being shipped to Boston, and a buy-local food movement, I do not see forest products coming back faster in demand then food.

But as a Christian, I look to the bible too. And there is a reference in the end times where food will be considerably valuable. I strongly feel that has merit, and know God will take care of me even if I make a mistake. It really is HIS land, and I am merely a caretaker, just as my signature line says. God knows I cannot see into the future, and as such he does not have a zapper looking out to smote those who mess up. I walk by faith, and I think he will honor that by someday saying, "you good and faithful servant."

 

LodgedTree, I have growing population of Amish in my area. They are always looking for more land. They have bought a lot of undesirable overgrown and abandoned land. I was wondering what tillable land goes for in your area of Maine. Around here tillable acreage can be found in the $2,000 - $3,500 range. In other areas much higher. We also seem to be getting a lot of Canadian buyers as land north of the border is much higher priced

 

MikeInMa, I look at land values in a personal way. Growing up in Massachusetts and watching the farms that I worked on as a kid all get sold for house lots to the city people from Boston and want to change agriculture areas into suburbs. All I ever wanted my land for was to have my own hunting paradise where I never had to ask permission to hunt on. Now that I've owned my farm with 204 acres, 75 are tillable the rest wooded I see the value in different parts of the land and how my taxes are assessed. I don't know if my answer really is what your looking for as assessment goes but my land is worth so much more than any assessment from the government. Being a good Stewart of my property by cutting tree's and opening areas up, maintaining roads and building new ones. Everything I do is for the wildlife in mind.

 

Yes sir, indeed!!!

 

Lodged Tree, wondering if you are going to fence this field? If so, goats are browsers (eat/prefer woody plants) sheep are grazers (prefer grasses). A combination of the two species will do a lot in keeping your fields of stumps from becoming first stage forest growth. Plus, goats promoted correctly are gaining in popularity (profitability) in our country. Find a niche market for kosher or allow their ritual killing to take place on your farm and you dispose of remaining materials all at their cost of course. Just a thought.

 

I threw that out for general discussion. "value" is defined differently by the person. I fully understand the value of a"cash crop". Wood was mentioned, of course. As well as agriculture. But, the way I look at it, that's the value of the crops, not of the land. Of course it;s silly to think you can't have cash crops without the land. But, i think I can separate the two.

Where I life, there's a large retail area not far away. People have told me that it would affect the value of my property. I usually just look at them and shrug. Followed by me stating, "I'm not looking to sell. Why should I care what the value is?". Of course, things can change in an instant with health, injuries. If the value of my property does go down, and it's assessment drops(yeah, right!), then I can look forward to lower taxes.(again 0 yeah, right!).

Anyways.... I enjoy the land. I work the dirt in my yard for flower beds, which creates a peaceful place to exist. Especially sitting outsite with a cold beverage.

As someone once told me years ago - "If you have the chance to acquire land, do it. They don't make it any more."

 

That is not really true, islands are created all the time in Hawaii, and in other parts of the world, and while I have heard the expression myself, and know the meaning, I disagree with them because it is a rather silly concept.

Land only has value if a few criteria are met.

1). It has to be trade-able...meaning clear ownership rights is known and recognized and they can relinquished to another (no liens, clear deeds, etc). I can say with a sense of honesty that I own the Washington Monument as a taxpayer, BUT I certainly have no clear means to transfer that right to say someone from Moldova.

2). It also has to have a sense of scarcity. Land values here, especially farm land, had so little value in the 1990's that I planted acres of fields into trees. Large potato farmers had gone out of business and no one filled in the gap until 30 years later when the Amish started moving in. Now with only 10% of the land base in fields, and online access to which people can see where the best soil is that are fields; tillable fields are getting high prices to the acre.

3). It has usefulness. I alluded to this in the above with soil quality, but while tons of land exist all over the world, it must have use. Millions of acres of land in the Arctic is useless, unless diamond mines or oil is found, and the same goes for Antarctica. The latter was always deemed worthless, but long known for having oil reserves, it was always off limits until petroleum starved China is now eyeing for it and suggested to the world as such that they might start drilling there. Land in the west with no water rights is another example.

So as long as those three criteria are met, a land investment might just be an investment, but just because it is land onto itself does not mean it makes it automatically a great one.

I met a woman yesterday who came from MA last year and is living in a camper at a neighbors house. She told me in excitement she bought a 1 acre piece of land and is all set to build a house. The truth was she was swindled. In my town, a person has to have a 2 acre lot size, and have so many feet of road frontage. In other words no spaghetti lots where they are 100 feet wide and 100o's of feet long. Nope, here they have to be rather square or rectangular so as to keep the rural feel, and to disperse septic waste properly. Where she is from, a 1 acre lot could have 4 homes, and so I know why she made the purchase, but she did not really look into the purchase first. The truth was, someone else ran into the same issue and unloaded the land on an unsuspecting person from away. My heart goes out to her, and I did not break the news to her as she is a sweet lady and just wants a little spot of her own.

In that situation, #1 has clearly been met; it is trade able via ownership and deeds. However it is hardly scarce; here there are many acres of available land, but it has almost no usefulness. It is too small to build a house on, no logger would cut the wood on so small of an acreage, and it has no gravel or other mineral rights worth anything, so it was a rather poor land investment over all.

 

LodgedTree, I s

LodgedTree, I disagree with you on this one. If this woman from MA is happy with her purchase of land to build a camp or home on, why would you think the land is useless. Unless it can't be built on and is only good for a camper. Depending on the area in Ma.that she came from, that land she bought might be a steal. I know when I bought my place in upstate New York some of locals thought I paid way too much. The town I left in Ma. I couldn't buy a two acre building lot for what I paid for my place in N.Y. That said you being a local in Maine, you may look at land prices totally different than someone coming from a different state where land prices are outrageous. When I left Ma. In 2004 a two acre building lot next door to me with no well or sceptic the asking price was $220,000 and this was not ocean front property. LodgedTree sorry I missed the part about her getting swindled on the land purchase and needing two acres to build on

 

BOOM!!!!

Timber Culture Act - Wikipedia