Oklahoma Red Cedar

[Cedarman]

The purpose of this post is to point out what may be some good opportunities in Oklahoma.
Except for the eastern part of the state there is not a whole lot of logging and sawmilling going on. But I think there could be in the rest of the state.
There is a report out called "A strategy for  Control and Utilization of Invasive Juniper Species in Oklahoma"  "Final report of the "Redcedar Task Force"" chaired by Bob Drake, Oklahoma Farm Bureau, Davis, Ok. and Paul Todd, Ok. Redcedar Association, Oklahoma City, Ok. for Dennis V. Howard Secretary of Agriculture and Brian C. Griffin Secretary of Environment.

One of the paragraphs that jumped out at me when I read it was " The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) estimates that eight million acres in Ok are currently infested with at least 50 juniper trees per acre.  The encroachment is increasing at an estimated rate of 762 acres a day or nearly 300,000 acres per year. NRCS estimates that $157 million is needed to address current conservation treatments involving juniper control.

This is a 54 page booklet packed with information on the control and possible economic uses of redcedar. I believe the booklet is available at Oklahoma Dept. of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, PO Box 528804, Oklahoma City, Ok 73152-8804

I have personally flown over the Canadian River and Cimmaron River basins northwest of Oklahoma City almost to Woodward. What Paul Todd and I saw from that small plane was amazing. There are square miles of cedar.

Research has been done on two counties Payne and Dewey using satellite data and ground checking to get a handle on actual cedar coverage. If my memory is correct in Payne Co there is over 9000 acres covered at 70 to 100 per cent, 34,000 acres covered at 30 to 70 per cent and another 40,000 acrea covered at 10 to 30 per cent. My son and I have actually driven around using the Payne Co map and this is a conservative estimate.

I have heard it said the cedar is the number one ecological problem in Ok. It is a tremendous fire hazard and health hazard with the tremendous amounts of pollen given off by female trees.
There are two basic growth forms for the cedar in Ok. The upland or range grown cedar is fast growing and is as wide as it is tall. There is very little sawlog value. The hillside cedar or canyon cedar as it is called is as good as any in the US. The trees are tall, straight and have sound hearts. There are several sawmills in Ok using some cedar, producing a good product. I visited one near Geary Ok and saw some of the finest fencing ever made. Estimates are from 1 to 4 billion (yes billion) board feet of sawlog cedar. Does this not look like opportunity.

I believe  there is tremendous opportunity to use this cedar rather than cut it down, push it up and burn it at an expense of 60 to 150 dollars per acre. To this extent, my son and I have invested in equipment to grind these down and dried trees into mulch. So I have put my money where my mouth is so to speak.  We have been well received in Ok and have received lots of assistance in making a good go of our project.

There is an Oklahoma Redcedar Association chaired by Paul Todd. The goal of this organization is to promote the use of Ok redcedar and connect landowners, loggers, sawyers, woodworking companies and anyone else that would want to be involved in any way.  The Association is more than willing to help anyone interested in Ok redcedar.

Those that know me can verify that I can talk cedar 24/7. I hope this post has stirred some entreprenuerial interest in those of you who lay awake at night thinking of a new business.

[Kirk_Allen]

So who in OK is willing to ship me a flatbed load of logs?  Im interested in all I can get if the price is fair.  

Problem seems to be getting it out of the state may cost more than its worth.  

Hey Arkansawyer, OK not to far from your part of the country.  Their cedar much different than yours?  

I need some but its just not available from any loggers in my parts.

[Cedarman]

Kirk, the problem as I see it is that there are no good steady markets for large volumes of cedar in Ok. If there was an efficient mill that just made cants, mulched the slabs, they could make a go of it.  It is going to take someone in Ok to take the chance to set up the mill and organize several logging crews. Then you could call up and ask for a load of cants  to resaw for your customers. Another problem is that there are few people that have worked in the sawmill or logging industry to draw on. So everyone would have to be trained from the start.  

[DanG]

It sure sounds like some great opportunities are afoot out there, Cedarman.  I've been thinking for some time now, that we should be looking closer at rot resistant species to reduce the reliance on pressure treating. Oklahoma may be holding part of the answer to the problem, if they will only take advantage of it.

You may have answered part of your own question, in Devo's thread. What about rail transport to get some of those logs to where they are wanted/needed?

Are the cedars out there 2 different species, as they are here? We have the Juniperous Virginianna that grows tall and straight and is referred to as Juniper, but the shorter, bushy one is always called Cedar, though it is actually a Juniper. Both are getting hard to get commercially around here.

Checked out your website. Nice!  Where is your Alabama mill?  I looked for that little town in my atlas, but it wasn't shown. :-/

[Cedarman]

DanG,  Boligee is a little town about 50 miles SW of Tuscaloosa just south of the interstate.  It is the next town down the road from Eutaw.
We have looked at rail for transporting logs from Texas to Indiana or Alabama.  The railroads seem to be the problem. There is a big producer in Texas that said the rates were good and we had sidings near Boligee and Marengo IN.  We have looked at moving mulch from Ok, but it is tough. I saw where they were able to move pulpwood from New York to Pa, I think, by rail and it worked for them. It does bear investigation.

There are several species of cedar in Ok.  Aromatic red cedar is most prevalent, but Ashe Juniper covers a big area south of Ok City.  One of the conservation people from Davis Ok took me on a tour of the Arbuckle mountains.  We hiked up one of those hills and there laid out in all directions was 4000 acres of Ashe Juniper. It is a bushy sort of tree that you would be hard pressed to get a saw log out of.  But it was thick. Looked like 100 per cent ground cover except for some bulldozed lanes.  The wood is a tan color.  Trees were about 15 feet high.  She told me that older ranchers had told her that this was all rangeland with nothing but grass 40 to 50 years ago, but since Smoky the Bear showed up no fires were allowed to burn. Just a few years ago a big fire got out of control just south of the mountains and burned several homes.Even had wrecks on the Interstate.  This cedar is free for the taking if someone could figure out out to harvest and mulch it.

There is also some salt cedar, but I know nothing about it.

I'm always in the pink when I'm sawing cedar.

[Furby]

WOW!!!
Never really considered moving to OK, but...................
So who owns the property all this is on?
That booklet you mentioned, is that advailable to out of state parties

[Cedarman]

Furby,the booklet is available to anyone.  The goal of the association is to get as many as possible to help solve this infestation problem.  

The first properties that we are working on are what are called school lands overseen by the comissioners of the land (COL).
The Feds are soliciting bids for clearing about 20 acres at the Chickasaw Recreation Area.  I heard a rumor that they have budgeted about 1000 dollars per acre, but that could be high. These 20 acres are covered with a solid stand of cedar.  They must be cut off at ground level and removed from the site.
The vast amount of land is privately owned.  Believe me the people we have talked to are more than glad to have  someone remove the cedar.

[Larry]

I have sawed more cedar this year than the previous 10 years with my mill.  Course I didn't have any idea what to do with it or how to price so got a little guidance from couple FF members. Spent a little time googleing (is that a word?) to find uses also.  Got some I need to log in NW Arkansas so your post was quite interesting.  Haytrader has written about huge canyon trees....ripe for the picking out in Kansas.  

Did a little digging and found the book ya was talking about.  PDF file but it loads pretty fast even on dialup.

www.oda.state.ok.us/forms/forestry/rcstf.pdf

Thanks Cedarman

[WV_hillbilly]

  I have to agree with Kirk Allen . I would like to cut some on the mill but gettin it here is cost prohibitive . I quess for the time being I'll have to keep cuttin the weed trees we have here . Like cherry  ,yellow poplar ,red oak , white oak and ash. :D

[Furby]

So I'm understanding you to say that most of the stuff is yours for the taking, but no pay involved for removal in most cases?
Hmmmmmmmmmmm...........................
Gonna do some thinkin............ ;)

[Cedarman]

Furby, the trees have taken over the rangeland because of lack of fire.  The landowners consider the trees a problem because where they grow, no grass grows.  They pay 50 to 150 dollars per acre to have the trees cut , piled and burned.  Last December, I counted 6 big plumes of smoke in the Payne Co area.  Now most of these cedars are big bushy type things with lots of long limbs sticking out.  But there are others especially growing on the sandstone ground that are nice loggable trees.

So if it is costing the landowner money to remove and someone wants to do it for free.  Well, what would you do?

It takes a big investment in equipment and a lot of phone work to line up sales.  If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.  The easy part is getting the rights to cut the cedar.

[Furby]

I see what you are saying.
I'm thinking there would also be a bit of costs involved to have a staging or storage area someplace. I'd guess you could work right from the area you are clearing for the most part, but sooner or later ya going to need to stage some stuff a little longer, right?

[Cedarman]

Furby,we will either run the mulch directly over the top of the trucks or run it into gooseneck trailers with dump beds.  We have a big portable conveyor capable of handling mulch quickly. Goal is to load a truck from the grinder in one hour or to load from a pile in less than a half an hour.

We can stockpile mulch near the conveyor when trucks are not available.  It is a 40 foot conveyor so it can reach out.

[Furby]

Ok, I read the booklet!
There is a bit of info in there that I disagree with, but I'll leave that a side for now.

If ya don't mind though Cedarman, I have some questions for ya. If ya don't want to let anything loose though, that's cool.
I reread this thread a couple of times and I see that you are chipping stuff that is already cut and dried, right?
Why?
What are ya doing with the stuff you are chipping?
The booklet was dated 2002, what if anything has the state started to move forward with this issue since then?
What kind of "help" is the state offering to get things going that you know of?

Ya really do have me thinking on this, and your statement "if it was easy, everybody would be doing it", has me thinking even more.

I remember driving through that part of the country a couple years a go and really enjoyed the landscape. Never once though that it may not be all it seemed. :

[WH_Conley]

Now ya got me to thinking. Hurts to this time of night.

Sounds like there may be opportunity there, enough of us get our heads togather could come up with a good plan of attack, sounds like plenty to go around. Still a lot angles to look at.

Cedarman, sure sounds like you done your homework.

[Cedarman]

We make a good bit of mulch at our mill in Indiana and my son's mill in Alabama, so we know what the mulch companies want.  If you grind fresh cut trees with green needles you get a mess.  If the trees are dried out, you get a nice dry mulch.  We worked with a grinder company to get the process right.
We have everything sold as it hits the trucks, so we do not have to worry about marketing what we are making so far. I made sure we had contracts before we got too deep.  We had two different mulch companies send reps to check the first load and they were very pleased with the product and ordered immediately.
I do not know is the state will help. I did talk to the Sec. of Ag to see if he could get the state to back the banks to make loans.  The banks would not loan us money.  We had to get creative.
There may be some grants available.  What is needed in a big way is a mill capable of buying anything that people wanted to cut.  I just talked with a guy near Pratt Ks that is cutting 2500 acres and he said he can sell a few loads to some local mills, but they fill up quick.  

If we could get some manufacturers to locat in Ok that would be great, but why would they do that if there are no mills. And there has to be markets for mills to locate in Ok.  Chicken and Egg thing.
We started in mulch because we know there is a huge resource, we figured out how to make it efficiently, and we contracted markets.

Furby, I am very curious as to the points you do not find favor with in the booklet. It is a fascinating booklet though, very thought provoking.

[Furby]

Well I do have to agree that it has a lot of info.
It's not that I disagree with the booklet, just that I look at things a little differently.

There is an overwhelming push for use of fire as THE control method. I understand that, and agree that there is a time and place for it's use. I also understand why they are pushing, due to the misconceptions that are out there. I think they do indeed need to try and change those misconceptions. I think fire is a great way to HELP control things, but I feel the booklet had too much emphisis on the use of fire and the fact that it was THE solution. You yourself are a prime example that there are other ways that do work. This overrun of the cedars didn't come up overnight, and you can't just come into this and try to fix things overnight like some folks belive fire will.

Another thing was the push for removal of cedars near neighborhoods and houses. I understand the need to reduce the fire hazards with combustibles near houses, but by implementing a program as such, you start giving ground to the insurance industry as well as townships and neighboorhood associations, to ban all instances of the plants and others like them. That I belive is another freedom one should have in property ownership, the right to choose what if any plants are allowed to grow on their property and not have to pay fees and fines in order to do so. These cedars are native plants to the area. Banning them isn't right, but I can see that happening all to easily.

The other issue I have is with the direction that they feel they need to start removal of the cedars in areas of new and or young growth. While there may be advantages by doing so, it makes a lot more sense to start with older, heavier growth areas. Not only would the plants removed be more useable, but it will more quickly reduce the amount invasive mass, and reduce the amount of pollen and seeds spread. The younger less overcrowded areas most likely have not reached the age where they have seeds to spreed. By the time the older growth is reduced, the younger growth have obtained a much more useable size and are more worthwhile to remove.
It's really hard to put a fire out by just spraying water at it's edges. Sooner or later ya have to attack the heart.
I know that goes against what people who are slowly having their fields and pastures over taken belive, but it really is a much more efective approach to the situation.

I also would like some assurance that the plan would not eventually lead to complete and total eradication of the cedars from the state.



Now, the mulch you are selling is being used as mulch, correct?
I really do have several ideas to get things moving. I currently don't have enough capital to start something. I also see that the booklet says there IS state money available, but I assume it's not easy to get. That needs to change if they reallly want this to work.
The booklet lists mulch way up on the list. The problem I see is letting them dry. I'm guessing someone is going in and cutting, then they are allowed to lay as is until dry enough, then you move in. Would that be right?

Personally I really like the bio mass idea in this situation. But I do see the roadblocks that are there. :

[Cedarman]

Furby, thanks for the response.  Let me address some of your issues as I see them.  In the good old days, fire swept the praries confining the cedar to the canyons, washes and other areas that fire did not get into.  So cedar was always there, it just wasn't up on the flatlands.

Most of this land is used as pasture for cattle and horse operations and with the cedar moving in, it can no longer be productive land for that.

The magnitude of the invasion is the problem as I see.  Over 700 acres per day encroachment.  We will be using 10 acres at the most.

The cedars must dry for 2 months or so during the summer and much longer if cut during winter.  The mulch is usuable just as it is.

Also I believe it could be used as boiler fuel, if close enough to an end user.

I agree with you that people should be allowed to plant and grow what they want.  I believe the emphasis is on thinning the cedars near subdivisions rather than total removal.  

[Furby]

I totally agree that fire is needed, just not pushed so hard as the main solution.

My issue with allowing the trees to dry before you mulch them is the increased fire hazard they pose. In your small operation it's not that big of concern, but the booklet did have the mulch operations high on the list and if lots of small operations were to start doing that, that could become a big issue.
I understand you are doing it the way you need to and I'm not trying to go against that.

The thinning is were it starts..............once insurance companies start in the mix...........it could go anyplace. Oklahoma may not have as high of population as some other states, but I'm sure there are more then a few neighborhood groups that would be miseducated and ban them from the neighborhood as well.

The 700 acres a day thing is exactly why there is a need to start in the heaviest areas of older growth. If it takes 10 years for a red cedar to reach sexual maturity, it just don't pay to start cutting the younger trees when you can be reducing the 700 acres a day and then some buy cutting trees that are already spreading seed.

[Bibbyman]

I wonder why it would not be feasible to saw the saw logs into lumber right there and market it in the fast population growth states of Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico?  Even process it into some kinds of finish goods – like closet lining.

I've had a few sales of cedar that wasn't local and it went to Colorado and Arizona.  

[Furby]

I was thinking along those lines, just bit more involved. Just don't really want to let the cat out of the bag until I'm sure it won't work! ;D

[Cedarman]

Bibbyman, there are several very good small sawmills in Ok making some very nice lumber.  Also there are several people making some very nice finished cedar products.  They would love to expand to handle those markets.  I may be wrong but I think they have not hit on the correct way to market their products. Cedar closet lining  or T&G paneling is not that difficult to make and sure is a good way to do value added. You can use short lengths also. One of the goals of the Redcedar Assoc is to help in this area.

Also I think it is tough to step out in an area where there is not a lot of local support. If you have trouble , you just can't run down to the next mill and get some help figuring out the problem, because there is no other mill close by.

Another problem is capital. Try going into a bank and borrowing money for a logging operation or sawing operation. There is no one that has a clue what you are talking about. We found that out first hand.

 I would think that if you went into a bank in Mi. or Mo. with a proprosal, there would be someone that could analyse it and help you through any area you might have overlooked. They would know if you were on the right track or not.IMHO

Another business could be cedar shavings. It is not too expensive to set up a shaving mill and market. Still, it takes someone who knows how to make shavings and how to market them.  You would definetly have a leg up on transportation toward the west. Look how many bags go through Wal-Mart alone.

Furby, I think they have promoted fire because it is not too expensive, does the job and they just have not got other alternatives.  One way of burning is to burn the entire fields just like old times.  The other way is to cut the cedars, let them dry, push them in piles and burn when the time is right. In flying over and driving through the cedar areas, the magnitude of the cedar coverage is overwhelming. In Payne Co 20 years ago, it was estimated that only about 100 acres had 70 to 100 percent foliar coverage. Now the acreage is over 9000.

The problem with cedars, fire and houses is that some people are just not very smart in where they build and how they manage the surrounding vegetation.

There are large tracts of cedar cut each year. The cedars are left laying in the field until such time as they are pushed up and burned. We are going around to these fields and gathering them with a skid steer and moving them to the grinder. There is a fire danger, but it is not that high.  Most of these tracts of cedar are 40 to 640 acres and they are rather rural with very few buildings around.

Haytrader, what do you think from your perspective?

One of the things I'm trying to do is stir up thought on this subject.

[Furby]

I don't think I can argue with any of that! ;)

What ya said about the banks, any idea what a bank in MI would be able to swing, by way of talking to or promting a bank in OK? I'm thinking that even though the banks in OK have trouble wrapping their brains around sawmills and such, that the state "should" be able to help streighten them out and maybe do a little teaching. Know what I'm trying to say?

[Cedarman]

We went to three banks with a full blown business plan and two letters of guaranteed sales and were turned down.  We had two bank officials from one bank at the grinding site, watching a full load of mulch being made and talked with one of our customers.  Those two went to bat for us, but could not convince the man with the ink pen to sign.  We went to my son's bank in Al and they gave us a substantial loan based on our past history and our plan.  They understood. But that is one hurdle that has to be crossed to get started in Ok. I did mention to the Secretary of Agriculture that is one thing that is needed in Ok to help get things going. He just happened to be at a meeting in Stillwater where they unveiled the two new maps of cedar infestation in Payne and Dewey Co.

[ksu_chainsaw]

Around home we have a lot of ERC.  It is a very invasive species, and will take over a pasture in short notice.  Every summer, we spend a couple weeks clearing pasture of the bigger cedars, and especially any female ones-the ones with the blue berries on them.  When I get home, I know that there are several people that want their pastures cleaned out.  They are used to paying a dozer around 200 and hour to remove the large cedars.  There are some people out there that do nothing but remove the cedars from the pasture, and get about 80 an acre for it.  Just wish that they wernt so brushy, the lumber that I have cut from them is very nice, but getting a sawlog from them is harder work than getting one from a nice oak.

Charles