I've tried to buy this woods for 25 years and finally landed it .It came up at auction and is adjoining to my property .The sales crowd was a lot of spectators and few bidders . A couple of land speculators and a couple of timber cruisers and one old country bumpkin with deep pockets ;)
The cruisers got out of it early but the land grabbers tried to out bid me ,didn't happen .I bought it not for the land but to stop anybody building on it and stop all those oaks from being shipped off to China to make oak plywood .It took a couple hundred years to grow them .Most of them I think are peelers .
So maybe 15 or so years in the future my kids will have other ideas but right now I have the say so .Plus I have enough firewood to last me the rest of my life all within 500 feet . 8)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/12054/DSCN11185B15D.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1651924365)
Congratulations, not only for acquiring the land but also being able to .
Nice score, Al! I love to see some stands just left alone. They have more value for their history and beauty to me.
That's a beautiful stand. Congratulations on a great purchase.
good deal al
It's a deal like this .In order to get to the sun those newer growths head for the sky .Tall and skinny until they reach it .A big blow comes though and snaps them off like match sticks .Those 100 foot tall fat oaks have bucked the wind so long it would take a twister to snap them off .They were most likely 12" or more in diameter in Civil war days .
Fact in the last 3-4 months the wind snapped off a row of basswood around 18" 20" all in a row on the property line .Basswood is a hardwood but not nearly as tough as oak .On the list to do .It burns just like any wood .just takes more of it .
My wife and I occasionally get calves from an old farmer bout an hour from here. He's in the middle of a bunch of new subdivisions. 27 acres right by his yard was full of huge oaks, many just as old as what you just bought, although not peeler quality. I say was because they getting pushed over and butted off right now, the lot will have 30 some houses on it soon.
The 27 acres brought $3 million, which seems ridiculous for our area but Springfield and Branson MO area is pretty hot right now.
Great score, to get ahead of the next subdivision for awhile. :D ;)
Within the last two years Walmart destroyed 25 acres of prime oak locally .I mean nary a tree standing.I only suppose the peelers ended up in China .Farm land is fetching 9 grand an acre and more and commercial stuff a lot higher than that .I had to ante up up a tad more than farm land but as far as I'm concerned well worth it .I don't want to ever see northern Ohio look like the prairie lands of Kansas or eastern Colorado .
Al are you on clay or sand there , Your not that far from me really in a straight line and here I'm on sand and trees do not live a long time but grow quite big and fast , on clay the trees live a lot longer but grow a lot slower . Just keep your eye on the stumps and watch for bugs eating their way around the stump , if they start getting bad get those trees out of your wood lot
Glad you were able to get the forest land Al. Sounds like a great spot to just go sit and enjoy. You are a lucky guy and I hope your heirs are able to appreciate it like you seem to.
Well done. I have been in your shoes and never regretted your decision. Much better to see trees than a vinyl siding farm.
I've bought ever piece that adjoins me as they come up for sale. One piece left I really want. They are all small but still. Only cause I don't want neighbors. Well not wanting neighbors gets expensive lol but I can walk out my door any time in my shorts and never see anyone or be seen. Priceless! 😂
This is glaciated terrain from the second ice age .It's a form of clay ,some blue clay .There's a layer of gravel under the clay often where I'm at around 100 feet down and limestone another 80-100 fee below that .It's very rich farm farm land and brings a premium price. Flat as Kansas .I'm about 2-3 miles south of what used to be called the great black swamp .
This is limestone country which can vary in depth .I think it's around 160 down here and in some places the other side of the county maybe only 25 feet .If you sink a well and stay above the rock you stand a good chance of missing the sulfur but if you are in it you might get "egg" water .I have one well in the rock and one in a gravel vein above it .---more --
If you get 20 miles south of here you have deposits of sand and gravel that used to be in Canada a zillion years ago .It's where the ice age stuff started to melt and thus you get the rolling hills which eventually far south looks about like West Virginia .
Now going back in history it wasn't the oil boom but rather the white oaks that caused the population rise .There were something like 20 stave mills alone plus the RR ties .
I have no idea how they did it but somehow they floated those big oak logs across lake Erie into Canada .Talk about a job,my word .
As years go by the stands of big oaks are becoming less and less .I did however see one stand, 10 acres of 4-5 footers, mine are only 3-3.5 foot .In the past the biggest white oaks on the earth came from the black swamp although one area I think in Pa near Philley had the tallest ..Those became masts for wind jammers in the days of wooden ships and iron men .
Good for you.
I bought back 7 acres of The Farm many years ago to keep people away.
I am not a good neighbor. I make noise early in the morning and up to 9pm at night too.
Only been to OH once, to see the Amish, Sugar Creek. This was back in 2005. They were still putting in loose hay!! :o In fact I stopped to talk to one of them and noticed the horse drawn mower. I looked at the markings and thought, I have one on my stonewall just like that. :o
I have not traveled a lot, but been to a few different states. What I was amazed at, that area looked just about like Maine, even the trees. Even the lay of the land and the farms. There would be a farm than maybe 10 miles away another farm with maybe 10 -15 homes in between as Maine would be.
As I told my wife, if I was sleeping for 18 hours straight and woke here I would say, I've never seen this part of Maine.
Quote from: Oddman on May 07, 2022, 01:37:57 PM
My wife and I occasionally get calves from an old farmer bout an hour from here. He's in the middle of a bunch of new subdivisions. 27 acres right by his yard was full of huge oaks, many just as old as what you just bought, although not peeler quality. I say was because they getting pushed over and butted off right now, the lot will have 30 some houses on it soon.
The 27 acres brought $3 million, which seems ridiculous for our area but Springfield and Branson MO area is pretty hot right now.
I guess that is building lot prices, maybe 30 lots? So $100k/lot for dirt. Steep. Too bad about the oaks.
Nice score Al
Not a lot of Oak on my home property, but one that I harvested in 1994 measured 36" and was 90 years old by ring count.
Ill bet Ohio doesnt grow nearly as good a crop of rocks s Maine.
A 36" in this part of Ohio would be right at 200 years .The largest I've ever dropped was a big red oak that was storm damaged from 90 to 100 MPH straight line winds side effect of a tornado .117 foot tree 70 feet from my house 4 feet at breast height .That one had between 270 to 290 rings .Hard to get them all .It was less than a year after that we got hit with the worst ice storm of a century in the entire USA .It could have came right down on us .I saved the logs which probably have down graded since a lot .Might get some good lumber or just firewood if nothing else .You never know what's in the nut before you crack it . :)
Nice buy! In April a group from church went to help with cleanup where the December tornado hit... The fella that we helped had a white oak that was uprooted that was over 5' at the stump and 36" at 26' long. I counted what looked like an average inch at the 36" point, counted 8 rings in that inch. That would be 288 years old... and it cut great, had that pinkish color to it. Some over 2000 ft in the tree. I hated it and the landowner was very sick over it, as he was a tree lover.
Congratulations on the purchase! Now the thing to do is to harvest the acorns when those veneer quality oks produce them. They have the genetics that Nativewolf is looking for in his poor tree thread. That is the real value in your purchase. You've got a seed bank that could be used to upgrade the timber quality on high-graded timber lots. I'm not certain about the seed transfer zones of white oak and how far it could be transplanted but those are certainly the quality of timber and genetics I'd be looking for if I were in an eastern hardwood forest area.
Again, great job on the purchase. Now you can put those trees to their highest and best use.
I never thought of that .I just figured they were white oaks grown in competition for sun light . BTW I have a 100 foot black walnut that has the largest nuts I've ever seen falling from 65 -70 feet that would knock you out if one hit you in the noggin .I used to collect them and mail a box or two to my wifes' aunt in PA who sent me the nicest walnut cake I've ever had in my life .Actually I have a fair amount of walnuts but none that large .I'm telling you Ohio at one time had some good hard woods .Alas all it is now is good corn as far as the eye can see .
When talking walnuts that are falling, then they are in the husk (green, soft, turns black after hitting the ground).
But I have walnut trees that have large husks with small nut meats within the hard shell. Then there are other walnut trees with medium size husks that have large nut meats within the hard shell.
So husk size not a good predictor of good yield of hut meats.
I'm not really a tree hugger but two hundred plus year old oaks are kind of a national treasure .This little 5 acres are what Ohio once used to look like . .Hard wood forests from Lake Erie to the Ohio river .From the flat lands of NW Ohio to what looks a lot like W Virginia in the south where they ran out of flat land and had to stack those acres on end . ;D
Quote from: Al_Smith on May 14, 2022, 06:27:49 PM
I never thought of that .I just figured they were white oaks grown in competition for sun light . BTW I have a 100 foot black walnut that has the largest nuts I've ever seen falling from 65 -70 feet that would knock you out if one hit you in the noggin .I used to collect them and mail a box or two to my wifes' aunt in PA who sent me the nicest walnut cake I've ever had in my life .Actually I have a fair amount of walnuts but none that large .I'm telling you Ohio at one time had some good hard woods .Alas all it is now is good corn as far as the eye can see .
Ohio and Indiana had the best. Amazing forest. I've seen just a few pockets. I agree ID4ster that the acorns would be worth collecting. The issue is that the best WO were high graded out, over time, again and again and again (about every 30 years). So the area you're in could have been cut 5-7 harvest. For there to still be WO with good form is a treat. We're working on some phenotypes that are of interest to us. Small butt swell (when hand cutting they would often selectively harvest that phenotype and leave the larger butt swells in the stand, limbs at 90 degrees, smaller limbs the better, no epicormic (sometimes you'll see a WO with just a thousand epicormic sprouts in the middle of a dense stand) sprouts, heavy acorn yields, more frequent fruiting.
Your WO look about as nice as any we see and I would hope you could get your state forest nursery people over to see if they'd do some collecting (or find out if they have better- that would be something). If you have some open space plant some yourself. If you have a few pounds extra we'd try to grow some out here as well in our nursery.
Yes I'll keep it in mind .I know very little about actual forestry science except I recognize most of the trees .Since you mentioned it these peelers have very little root spread .After this fall when the acorns fall I'll gladly try to round up a box full and donate them .I'll never be around another 200 years to see how they turn out but if the Lord tarries somebody will be .
I might interject my daughter is very well connected with the state of Ohio forestry having served on the Ohio EPA for 12 years .As this progresses she might find the time to get interested in it .At the moment she's involved with Intel with that massive compound they are building in Ohio near Columbus .
Emily Smith | People on The Move - Columbus Business First (bizjournals.com) (https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/potmsearch/detail/submission/6513694/Emily_Smith)
Emily looks like she has done well for herself. Congratulations dad!
I won't go into details but she has done well considering she became a single mother at a young age .It happens but she made the best of it in spite of that .When she graduated from HS she already had 2 years of full load college leading to a 5 year degree in environmental communications .Then another year and a half later to a double masters degree plus a para legal .Along that long road working for two large banks plus being director of show activities for the Cleveland Cavaliers .She's got a lot of her mother in her but a lot more of me . ;D.Yep she's my baby .BTW in working her way through college she operated a 5 axle dump truck ,I taught her how to shoot grade with a bull dozer ,run a chainsaw and how to shear a sheep among other things .5 feet tall and 115 pounds, dynamite in a small package .
The thing to remember about white oak acorns is that they germinate in the fall which means that they'll have to be collected promptly and given to a nursery for stratification and germination right away. You, and none of the rest of us, will see those seedlings when they are 200 years old, but you will see the form and self-pruning aspects of them by the time that they're 5 - 10 feet tall. If the trees are genetically superior, as I suspect, they'll begin to show those qualities at a young age and size and that should be well within your lifetime.
If you desire to see seedlings grown from acorns from those trees you should begin making arrangements with a nursey(s) in the area now to begin growing the seedlings this fall or as soon as there is an adequate mast crop.
Congrats with your daughter's success Al.
Now grow some new white oaks. :)
I've been reading up on sprouting oaks it's interesting and they brought out the reason you don't see many saplings is because of the overstory .Thick canopy the sun can't reach the ground very well . I noticed that on the die off of the ash .When the large ones where gone a zillion little saplings came up .I think I have 4 types of oak ,pin ,red ,burr and white .I cannot imagine what this country looked like during the war of 1812 .On the other hand they claim there are more deer these days than in pioneer days .Perhaps those corn fields as far as the eye can see have something to do with it.
Great purchase !!! And glad you are able to leave it preserved as-is.
I'm all about timber being a renewable resource and not about people losing $$ as past-mature timber rots and falls. But it's great to see and/or stand among old growth and just take it all in.
About 25 - 30 minutes from me there is a stand of virgin, PA hemlock forest. It's just, maybe 20 acres. But the road goes right through it. It is an AWESOME place !!!! It's been one of my favorite places to see since I was a little kid. I'd hate to see it ever go.
One tract near our place is known as "The Lost Forty". It is a stand of virgin red and white pine that was left during the pioneer logging of the area. The official story is that the surveyors made a mistake and had it plotted as a lake. That doesn't really make sense to me, as most timber was sold by sections back in those days and I can't see the loggers skipping that tract of wood because the plat said it was water. At any rate, it was left, and it is a beautiful and majestic place. It actually covers more than 40 acres, I think nearly 120 if memory serves. Some of the pine is 5'+ diameter, I don't know how tall. It is definitely worth the visit if anyone is ever in the area. Even as a logger, if they decided to cut it down I'd go chain myself to one of those big pines😁
Itasca State Park south of Bemidji, which is the headwaters of the Mississippi River, also has many stands of virgin pine and is an excellent place to visit.
My aunt and uncle (RIP ) in Knox county Ohio have a patch of timber that has never been logged .I forgot just the timber lands alone but I think is around 800 acres .Around 180 acres, uncut of that goes back to revolutionary war land grants .How much farm land they own I have no idea--a lot . About every couple years she sells off some timber, oak, cherry, walnut .Whatever they are looking for at the time .It's all selectively cut and if you walked around you'd never think it had been logged after a few years . One thing a timber cruiser needs to know is she is not dummy and her son, my cousin is an attorney .Don't try to flim flam aunt Jake . :)
Al, that is funny. I have friends that are part of a family that are just plain, farmer/logger type of folk. They had an issue once where an insurance agent did not have the worker's comp policy in place that he told them he did. They had someone get seriously injured on the job, and all of the sudden their insurance wasn't going to cover it. Well, what the insurance company didn't know is that these plain folks had a nephew that is a high powered attorney from the city, it's amazing how quickly things changed when he started handling the phone calls for them😁
Insurance companies take notice when a barrister gets involved .I will tell another story about uncle Chuck .He sold 100 white oaks to some scoundrel for $500 a pop and they cut 120 .Early in the spring with two trucks loaded up that had to go out in morning when the ground was still frozen old Unc had a combine and big Farmall tractor blocking the road .Last load out .The guy threatened to call the sheriff .My unc said I'll save you some time. He's in my kitchen drinking coffee with my wife .Those 20 pirated trees cost him a grand each .Don't fool with uncle Chuck 8).BTW I cut on those oak tops for a couple of years for firewood .Good stuff .