I know how lucky I am, my wife is great! She will even haul brush or stumps with the JD 4052R until it gets dusty. She’s also requested a bigger tractor with a cab, so that’s not going to be cheap either. We have 153 acres, and are actively managing it after it’s sat untended for 80 years. I knew it needed to be cut when we bought it, as trees were all the same size(big) and now understory at all. It was well shaded ground unless a tree had broke from a storm or uprooted. We interviewed several foresters and found one we both liked, all of them had the same thoughts on it needing to be cut. I wanted to do it myself, but there was no way I could do it. We have nice Jeep trails that the previous owners maintained for tractor trails for firewood gathering. We spent a day walking the property with each logger and settled on one who was a smaller operation, father and son team with a couple hired guys. They both listened to what we wanted and planned skid trails that could be future Jeep trails to parts of the property that didn’t have existing trails. They skidded everything out to the landing and even marked sacrificial trees to rub against on corners. I had them leave all of the hardwood rub trees for firewood, and I still haven’t gotten to getting all of them. They did a good job at picking up the debris that remained, and left most of the trails in flat conditions. We had a few wet areas that were rutted up and I fixed them with the mini ex after they left. There is still some debris in the woods but not bad enough that we can’t drive over it. Since logging our property our logger has gotten a stump grinding machine as well as a forestry mulcher setup on a 15 ton excavator. In talking with them they keep the excavator busy 40 hours a week making trails for people and doing cleanup work. It seems like you are on the right path, communication is key with all parties, and don’t be afraid to ask the logger about doing something slightly different. I asked about leaving the rub trees, and probably ended up with 5 years of fire wood to cut as needed. I also asked about not chipping the big hardwood crotches, bends, and reject logs, they were happy to leave them, that’s now a 15 cord pile of logs that I’m working on cutting up, mostly red oak.
Wow, very cool story about your place. Did they pretty much clearcut or leave some trees? What is left? Will it naturally regenerate or are there lots of saplings left or you will plant it or what's going on into the future? Did they have a chipper? If so, what was chipped?
Thanks, it’s a very interesting property, and we have learned a lot about it in the last 5 years. Our property line is a stone wall, also the town line, and can be traced back to the land grant boundaries from the king. We are the 5th owners in 205 years, but back on topic. The tree canopy was opened 40-50% to allow sun in and start the cycle of seedlings, they focused on oversized tree removal, diseased tree removal, and disfigured tree removal. We still have a lot of big trees (30”+ DBH) left, ones that will make it another 10-20 years before being cut. There’s also a bunch of smaller trees (8”-24”DBH) where an opening in the canopy appeared years ago and let birch, oak, ash, and maple grow. There’s a good variety of trees left, slightly more than 50% of the trees were taken in the harvest according to our forester. The plan is to do very selective cutting in 10 years, I’m hoping to do it myself, and then maintain the woods from there forward. we have a 5-6 acre hemlock grove with trees ranging in size from 30”-48” DBH and pushing 100’ tall. The area looked like a picture of a national forest, clean ground with just big tree trunks, and all shade. My wife loved the area and didn’t want to touch it but a couple big storms changed her mind. They were breaking at 20’ up and making a mess, so we had half of them removed, the loggers also chipped the downed trees into a pile at the landing as they were not good enough for biomass. The loggers had a 36” chipper, and chipped all of the limbs, tops, and debris they could get to the landing. Anything that wasn’t log or firewood sized or quality went through the chipper. They split some of the big pine trunks with a saw to put them through the chipper. I still have a couple big pine logs that didn’t make it to get cut to go through the chipper. They are on my list to haul into a ravine and let nature reclaim them.
It’s been almost 3 years since we started logging the property, it was a 13 week adventure. There are pine and hemlock seedlings now 2’ tall or so in a lot of areas. Red oaks and hard maples are sprouting up all over, and the deer are keeping them trimmed. Ash is also popping up, and poplar is now 6’-8’ tall in the areas where we had them before. I started cutting and squirting poplar sprouts last summer when I was surprised at how fast they shot up. The deer also mow them down in the late spring if there’s not a lot of other options for them. As for future plantings, we have decided to give it 5 years and see what comes back, meet with our forester, walk the property and make some adjustments. I am sure there will be some clearing of alders at some point. We have discussed planting seedling trees, I want some white oak as we don’t have any, mostly red oak, ash, and hard maple. We would need to fence them in, and have learned how to keep them safe from deer until they are tall enough to withstand deer browsing. We also have native elms on the property, I would like to cultivate them, but it seems like a loosing battle with the diseases they get. My wife has mentioned making a 4-5 acre sugar grove to have as part of the farm. Neither of us do sap collection, but it would be neat to add an area for it.
Krackle_959, why did they do the chipping? Did they haul this off and sell it? Or was this a service to you? If the latter, that would be surprising to me, as that costs them money to chip all of that. Just curious. I suppose that if the latter, their cost was baked into the net revenue you received. Down here, I have not seen them chip slash. Seems to me that, more often than not, instead of allowing slash to rot (and nourish the forest floor) where it was dropped, I now see them drag all slash to huge piles. Any given tract will have a huge pile serving quite a few acres. This would be a question I would ask a forester just out of curiosity... why the huge piles? I don't see them burn them, they just rot. There was a tract near mine does this way and I asked the landowner if I could get some firewood rounds out of it and was granted permission; there were some terrific oak trunks within but I had to pull them out with my truck, it was tangled.
They hauled the chips off and sold them, for paper products or biomass. I think we got $2/ton for softwood chips and $8/ton for hardwood chips. We specified we didn’t want the tops left in the woods, as it makes it hard to walk or drive through. It wasn’t much but it was worth doing. The big dead trees they dragged out and chipped as a favor to us, I have probably 80 cy pile of chips that I’ve been using on trails. They originally left them in the woods and at the end of the job dragged them out and chipped them. The loggers thought it would look better without the storm damaged trees randomly strewn around the property, we agreed.
If I had to guess the price of chips is not worth it to chip the tops and haul them off down there. I know in the summer cab when most places have chip quotas up here, you will pay to haul off chips. Our loggers had 4 biomass contracts and at least that many places to haul paper product chips to as well.
Based off of my personal experience, and the experiences of my some of my family that have businesses, friends and business usually don't mix well together. A State of Ohio forester is not allowed to conduct a timber sale. In the class I was in a few days ago, using a consulting forester for a timber sale was a point they stressed. The women giving the class said she got a 15k bid higher than any others when she had the stumpage on the property sent out for bids by the consulting forester. Yes, the consulting forester will take a 10% cut but it's worth paying them that from what they said. The consulting forester in your area should know who does a good job, and who does a poor job. Surprisingly when I bought my place it wasn't rutted up too bad. But that's also when we had real winter too. Getting the Most Return From Your Timber Sale - really good article about conducting a timber sale. Around here they just leave the tops in the wood where they are cut. I'm not a big fan of that practice but it does create habitat for wildlife etc. If I have my woods logged I will put in the contract that the tops will need hauled to specific areas so I can cut them up for firewood.
Krackle_959 ... your mention of using chips for your trails... this is exactly what I have thought about doing on my trails. But... seems super laborious as to how to get them there. I have a big pile of hardwood bark that might be even better but it would be gone pretty quick. My trails issue is some spots where there is a problem with roots atop the ground. These are wash/draw areas. But, I wonder if I do this, it might just wash away with the first torrential downpour. And we certainly get those... just a week ago, got 6.2 inches. I really don't know a trail solution for this and I have looked into it. Other than abandoning and rerouting the trail. But then it concerns me to leave that as is for erosion to continue to dig, dig, dig deeper. Like, nothing would stop it from happening in the next thousand years! I've thought about cutting some sweetgum trunks and lay them crossways upstream of the spot in the trail to slow down the water flow. How did you get the chips to your trails? I really do need a dump trailer. Somebody in this thread posted a link to a nice one.
I started moving chips with just the bucket and it was taking way too long. Borrowed a friends light material bucket which is slightly larger for awhile, every time I went into the woods with the tractor to cut trees, or bush hog I would bring a bucket. Straight wood chips put on the ground will move or wash some in heavy storm events. I have found placing them after a good soaking rain and working them into the soil helps keep them in place better. I’ve also gone the erosion control mix method and mixed sandy gravel with the wood chips and they stay pretty well. I got the state DOT to drop off a couple hundred yards of ditching material last year. It was sandy loam with some gravel mixed in. I kept an eye out for a used dump trailer or wagon. Ended up finding a farmers homemade dump wagon with a stake body as the bed that he used for silage. It was the best $400 purchase I made, I put 2’ side boards on it and haul it behind my tractor. It’s not the easiest to turn around in the woods, but I’ve got a couple spots I can back it into to turn around.
