Yesterday, our dirt work guy had to stop due to rain. He started a large burn pile and knocked over a dozen or so large pines for me to cut up. So today, we're out here early to get as much of this cut as possible before more rain settles in.
These pines were purposefully planted 35-ish years ago as an investment. I'm leaning more toward it being someone's personal investment, not a commercial operation. I say that because this pine stand wasn't managed as well as others I have seen. It looks to have had at least one thinning years ago, but the amount of natural regrowth between the pines leads me to believe nobody has managed this stand in the last decade or more. I'm not a forestry expert, so I could be completely wrong.
However, it does leave me with a lot of material for personal use. At this point, the goal is to get at least three 10' logs out of each pine tree. I won't chase every little bit of material further up the tree.
Unfortunately, we can't sell any of the pine logs. There isn't a market for it right now. Some people are having a hard time giving it away. Mississippi had a bad drought last year that killed a lot of pines. People were forced to sell off what they had before they fell and rotted away. That tanked the market. Currently, our local mill (30 minutes away) is only paying $35 per ton for pine logs. For the majority of people, that's not worth the time invested.
Email: BPo3Homestead@gmail.com