A little of the income going to upgrade. Brother and his buddy set up the installation of a AC + heat pump for the A Frame. July nights are going to be heaven.
Your tree inventory to cut... seems a lot of trees to harvest... how large a tract is it? Also, can you say more about culling double trees? The why. That's a new thought to me.
Yawner , We are doing about 200 acres. not sure if I termed it right, but there are trees that are two good sized trunks from the same stump. The forester selects the most vulnerable of the two, before it falls on its own, and its only value would be firewood. Same reasoning on going ahead and taking out trees that are leaning a lot. Harvest them rather than they drop and go to waste. leave the “gun barrels” there, and select a few to make the inventory worthwhile for the logger. partof it is clear cutting a 60 year old stand of planted pine. We are going to let natural process f reforestation happen there, but add some watering holes- It is at the top of the ridge, so having water sources will help with the deer hunting
Sounds like you’ve done your homework! My friend recently told me about someone he knew who had a 50 or so acre wood lot they wanted logged. They had 2 loggers come evaluate their property and give estimates. One was for about 5k and the other for 12k, which only confused the land owner. Landowner came to my friend and asked what he thought. He recommended they hire a forester, like it sounds you did, to come do a comprehensive assessment and take the assessment to auction. An Amish outfit ended up with the highest bid at over 90k! They basically moved on site and took everything. They even cut up the tops for firewood. Employed some sort of stationary machine that they skidded all the logs out with by using blocks attached to trees through the wood lot. Pretty cool story! Good luck to you
Well I will resurrect this thread to include my home farm. Forester came out marked 150 trees so far and sent his walking results. He hasn’t covered a third of the timber yet. This is the area i want cut down pretty hard, so i can view the lower pasture. going to be in good shape on wood. Might knock out my three year inventory now.
Forester arrived this morning to select more trees, away from the clear cut area. Won't be nearly as aggressive in those areas. We had several conversations about forestry. He is a Purdue grad, as my father and grandfather. He mentioned one of his professors back in the day. Half that professors textbooks he referred to was in German.
Met with the forester this afternoon. About all the trees are marked. I added a few more. Looks like we will pull out about 60,000 board feet. Majority being black oak.
Who markets the logs (logger, or forester)? I see 8 species we don’t have, plus a 9th if you count us having no sawlog quality Beech. Looks like nice diversity in your woods. Surprised to see no softwood.
Contract signed and check deposited. I expect sometime next week the cutting will begin, which means I will be in the woods every evening to gather breaks and cutoffs before hitting tree tops this winter. Flamestead the forester does the marketing. Loggers dont have the same access to buyers, so one may offer more- doesn’t mean a logger was low balling. This company has their own mill. They are just across the road finishing the neighbor .
That’s handy, having them right there. We paid about $900 in equipment trucking expenses (excavator, harvester, and forwarder).
These operations now seem to be like tow truck companies. Cant uust have a basic truck with a hook. Got to have a flatbed and bells and whistles. Logging outfits are getting great equipment, that makes it unprofitable to harvestsmaller tracts, that need attention.
The cutting is going well. Heavy rain yesterday, but they stopped before it got mucky. Getting the view of the lower pasture and ridge. Moretrees in this picture will come down.
