Green Horizons

Having completed timber stand improvement (TSI) treatments on all our stands, we were ready for the final step in this first round of major actions: our first timber sale. You may recall from our last article that we left all the marketable trees, marked for removal, in each stand. To meet our goal of reducing overstocking to ensure both overall forest health and good growth rates for individual trees we wanted to keep, we still had a bunch of trees to remove from throughout the forest. The good news was that these future logs were, thanks to all our efforts of improving access to various parts of the farm, relatively accessible for harvest. The great news was that there were folks very interested in buying them!

The same private consulting foresters who prescribed our timber stand improvement treatments marked trees for sale as they took inventory. We wanted to keep our very best trees as seed stock, to produce even better quality timber in the future and to optimize benefits for wildlife. So, either by sale or TSI, we selectively removed trees unlikely to enhance either future timber or wildlife habitat values. It amazed me that 1,689 trees of 23 species were marketable, among those to be removed.

This may sound like a lot of trees to some folks. But, consider this: 240 acres of timber at maturity with normal stocking would support maybe 35 trees per acre, or 8,400 total. One should note that few of our stands were at maturity. And all stands were heavily overstocked. We likely had more than 20,000 trees before TSI and before the sale. It became very clear to me that this heavy overstocking was stifling growth, health and vigor of individual trees. Overstocking was also curbing acorn, nut and fruit production and thereby diminishing the wildlife carrying capacity of our forest.

Our foresters estimated a conservative financial value for each log. The summation of all species and logs gave us a pretty good idea of what a fair price for our whole timber sale might be. We then sent the inventory list, without estimates of value, to all nearby or even remote logging firms that we thought might be interested in bidding on our logs. We set up a day for them to come and visit our woods and to ask us questions.

At the time I remember feeling like a kid with my first lemonade stand with a sign “Trees For Sale!” in the front yard. All the loggers were great folks, conscientious about our property, wanting to be able to fully evaluate what our logs might be worth to them, and wanting to fully understand our expectations. All in all a very positive experience for us and, I trust, for the loggers and for our foresters as well.

We set a deadline for receiving bids. Two loggers chose to deliver their bids personally and await the opening of all bids. We made this into a public event, serving coffee and cookies. Man, was I ever disappointed when none of the bids were even close to the value we were expecting! It turned out that since the time we were doing TSI, timber prices took one of their characteristic dives.

At this moment is when private consulting foresters, in my opinion, proved most valuable. They advised us not to accept any of the bids! I immediately thought, “How are we ever going to demonstrate that good forestry practice pays?” “Will anyone ever again take seriously my zealous advocacy for TSI?” “How will I explain to my wife that all the money we have invested, all the hard work, and all the tough decisions we struggled through were really worthwhile when no one wants to pay us what we think the logs are worth?” It was a very tough moment.

The foresters maintained contact with the firms that bid on our logs. They showed the loggers what they were certain our timber was worth and encouraged them to find a way to pay full price. The solution came in the form of compromise. Isn’t this a familiar concept to us Missourians?

With prices being low, all loggers were stretched pretty thin for financial resources, with all available funds wisely invested in standing timber. Also, most logging yards were full of readily available, decent quality, inexpensively priced logs.

The solution? In our case, because the logger was close by and readily accessible, we were able to work out a schedule of payments instead of the usual “down payment up front and balance when we begin logging.” With delays of weather it wound up taking considerably more than the four months the logger estimated to conduct his harvest anyway. We got paid full price for our logs.

For us, private consulting foresters were the key to our success. Once upon a time, very early in the entire process, our foresters had promised us that the difference in revenues we would receive in future sales would more than pay us back for what we invested in their services. This proved to be absolutely true.

The Missouri Department of Conservation has excellent foresters in the field, as well. But, my family needed the immediately available services of a private firm. And their negotiations on our behalf, no doubt, went well beyond what any agency professional could be expected to provide.

Next time I’ll report on tax implications, further steps in management and results so far. The final segment of this report will really encourage participation in the Missouri Tree Farm Program.