Logging the Farm

People who attack logging as being unfriendly to the environment have no idea what they are talking about.  The unenlightened believe to “clear cut” a tract of timber is morally equivalent to committing a crime.  The land will be defoliated, they say, the soil will erode into the watershed.  The trees which wick up the CO2 we exhale will be replaced by a barren and scarred landscape.  Even Wendell Berry, the poet who writes philosophically about farming, attacks clear cutting in one short sentence in “The Unsettling of America”.  He does so without explaining what clear cutting means, simply tossing out those two menacing words “clear” and “cut” as if that were enough to convey his message of evil run amok.  For the shallower thinker those two words would be enough because they are so firmly etched into our psyche that they need no elaboration. But when I asked the Virginia Department of Forestry to survey my farm, clear cutting is exactly what they recommended.  That will probably surprise the laymen but it makes for the best possible forest.

 

Bill Twarkin is as humble and honest a fellow as you are likely to ever meet.  He hails from Upstate New York and has felled timber in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, and most recently in Madison County, Virginia and on my farm.  My consulting forester, Kevin Lyle, had surveyed the timber and put out a request for bids but no one had even placed a bid finding my forest of rather low quality.  The bigger local loggers were busy felling trees at The Marriott Ranch and the 8,500 acre Lane farm in Woodville.  So Kevin talked to local lumber mill operators and they recommended Bill.

 

Bill owns his own logging equipment: a John Deere bulldozer and a single axle logging truck complete with a hydraulic lift and boom.  Like the average working class fellow none of this was paid for in full so Bill owed the bank money on both.  His equipment now sits for sale at a local trucking company Bill having completed the job and deciding that logging is no longer profitable for him.  He says his 1995 model bulldozer is worth perhaps $35,000.  I am not sure what the value of his logging truck is.  The problem with it is its one axle design.  Bill got pulled over by the cops last spring and given a ticket for $5,000 when his rig was found to be many tons overweight.  To haul such a heavy cargo as logs one needs multiple axles to distribute the load and satisfied the policeman’s truck scale when it measures the weight on each tire.

 

Bill started working on my farm in the fall on 2007 and fell the last tree in the summer of 2008.  He had worked for almost 9 months logging the property but it was not a continuous ordeal.  He designed his schedule to get two loads per week hauled to the lumber Augusta Lumber mill near Amissville by Wednesday because that is when they made their tally for the week and cut their checks .  Bill’s wife had a government job in Washington, D.C. and this was the reason he and his rig had relocated from New York State.  She took lots of vacation time and Bill went with her.  Some times it was too wet to log.  Other days Bill had mechanical trouble.  He needed to replace the water pump on his dozer once and more than one time his truck needed new brakes or to repair a hydraulic line.  And when he got the ticket for being overweight he just sat home and fumed at Kevin the consulting logger because Kevin had talked Bill into taking one load to another mill which required him to travel along the busy highway 29.  That is where he got pulled over.

 

I am sure Bill lost money logging my farm.  When you consider what he paid for diesel fuel and repairs on his rig and the long commute he had from Fairfax, Virginia I doubt whether his income exceeded his expenses.  Rather than log the property on a contract price we logged it on shares.  I took half and Bill took half with a 10% commission paid to the consulting logger Kevin Kyle.  Each week Bill hauled about two loads of logs to the mill.  His truck held about 4,000 board feet of timber which was from anywhere from 45 to 65 logs depending of course on their diameter.  The mill paid an average of maybe $330 dollars per thousand board feet.  This meant each truck load was worth about $1,000 of which Bill collected $500 and I collected $500 of which $50 went to Kevin.  In total I made about $20,000.  This was far below what Kevin had estimated but I was pleased anyway since I used the money to pay off some debts and to buy a new tractor.  So in my mind this agriculture sale went to fund future agricultural endeavors on my farm.  For Bill I am certain had a net income loss.  He certainly complained a lot about losing money but that was part of his personality.  He said his logging business was a hedge against the taxable income of his wife.  If this agricultural endeavor had been like most he would have had some positive cash flow but no net income.  But when you add in the depreciation on his equipment and his costs for fuel I am sure it was a loss. 

 

For me there was a certain satisfaction is having my property logged.  Obviously I had wanted the money but that was not the only reason for logging my stand.  Twice over the past 15 years I had had the state forester come out and make a recommendation on my property.  They divided it into four sections.  The western-facing top of the ridge was 6 acres of chestnut oak averaging 85 years of age.  They recommended leaving this section in tact since it had little commercial value and would be difficult to log the steep terrain.  The bottom of the farm included 6 acres of forest between two pastures.  This area had formerly been pasture so was a fairly young stand of fairly young trees also of undesirable quality.  I paid Bill to bulldoze that flat so make additional pasture for my goats.  The remaining 45 acres of forestlands included 20 acres of large poplar trees that had not been logged in at least 80 years the rest of the property having been logged about 20 years ago.  When the former owners of the property logged the property they cherry-picked the forest taking the largest trees and leaving the less desirable ones.  This is called “high grading” and was the reason why my timber stand was of less that optimal quality.  But they had passed over about 15 acres of large poplar trees mainly because cattle had foraged there.

 

The highest quality trees are those that can be used to produce veneer.  Veneer is what is used to make the highest quality furniture.   I had no veneer quality timber on my farm.  Rather I had saw timber quality and pulp wood.  No one wanted the pulp wood so we told Bill just to take the saw timber.

 

The lumber mill too makes demands upon the logger.  They would grudgingly take hickory would but told Bill not to take send over any red maple.  The consulting forestor told me that Virginia is the southern most range of the red maple.  That tree needs cold weather so it produces better logs in Vermont and New Hampshire.  You can see that for yourself if you look at the red maple here.  Many of the trees are badly knotted, twisted, and grow rather crooked. 

 

Most of the trees Bill hauled from my farm were poplar followed by black, white, and chestnut oak. There were a couple of black walnut and cherry trees.  Walnut is the most valuable of hardwoods and so is cherry.  White oak is used to make wine barrels.  There is a stave mill in Culpeper, Ramoneda Brothers, who does exactly that.  But most oak is used to make flooring and of course furniture.  Poplar trees grow straight and true here but their lumber is mainly used to make pallets and not furniture.  Further it is not suitable for a load bearing beam as would be a heavy piece of oak.  Hickory is used of course to make ax handles.  All those giant hickory trees on my farm sadly did not have much commercial value.  The lumber mill did not want at all sycamore trees, known for their white bark.  They tend to grow along streams so have lots of water content.  I cut one down myself and when I tried to split a log with an axe the axe simplybounced off as if the log was rubber.  Are you beginning to see why my 45 acres of timber was not too valuable?

 

When you log a property you have to follow the forest service rules.  Several times inspectors came by to make sure that Bill was not fouling the streams and to make sure that he constructed swales so that water would not run down hill digging a furrow into the mountainside and causing soil erosion.  Bill put in temporary bridges which he hauled away when done.  He also refrained from logging along the edge of streams.

 

Mike Santucci was the area forester for my region when I made the second timber survey.  He is well-known to area environmentalists and farmers who frequent meetings on timber land, watersheds, organic farming, and so forth because Mike is usually there.  He wrote the plan for my farm that called for clear cutting the forest.  But the problem was I could find no logger willing to fell the smaller trees.  To clear cut does not mean you chop every log off down to the ground.  In such a mountainous terrain as my farm that would be impossible.  Rather you cut down everything 4 inches and larger.  Only 15 inch diameter logs can be hauled to the mill.  So the other trees would be left there to rot while new trees take their place.

 

Mike’s plan also called for something called “crop tree release”.  This means when the crown of two trees are touching you fell one thus leaving the more desirable species.  So if a red maple is crowding a white oak you cut down the red maple leaving room for the oak to crow, dominate the canopy, and shade out any trees that would complete for water and nutrients there.  Mike also called for planting loblolly and white pine in certain areas in order to improve the diversity of trees for wildlife and future timber sales.  The state of Virginia subsidizes the planting of pine forests by paying part of the cost.

 

All of these practices were meant to enhance the future forest.  If I had been able to find someone to do a proper clear cut then sunlight would have reached the forest floor and the small saplings and poles there would be able to grow into desirable forest.   As it stands now, from the distance you cannot even tell that my forest has been logged even though it was logged quite heavily in some areas.  You have to actually climb up into the forest and look around to find where trees were felled.  The canopy overhead it still covered with shade because all of the many young trees here are 15 to 20 feet tall and reaching for the sky.  And since the forest was once again high graded crooked maples, hickories, and lesser quality chestnut oak dominate the forest.  In 40 years the forest could be logged again but it would be yet another low grade timber sale.  It would have been better to follow the recommendations of the state forester to produce a high quality stand of poplar, white and black oak, and white and loblolly pine.

 

My forest is covered now with the tree tops  I tried to give this away as firewood and finally found a green house operator who is hauling this away and cutting it up as fuel to fire his boilers.  As for my forest I need to spray Garlon on the alanthus trees that have and will spring up in the areas of disturbed soil.  This is an exotic invasive species that grows along most of the roadsides here in Rappahannock County where power lines and fencing have disturbed the soil.

 

The citizens of Rappahannock County have protested in the past when landowners have announced plans to clear cut their property.  Fortunately no permit is required for logging so we don't have to explain what we are doing to people who would not listen anyway.  If anyone wants to see what a logged forest looks like I will be glad to show them mine.  They will be surprised to see that logged or not the forest pretty much tooks the same.  Only a trained observer can tell the difference.

Logging the Farm

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