Timber help

[TennesseeHillbi]

Hello 
I am new to this board so please forgive me if I have post in the wrong place. 
I have around 6 acers of land that has very large White Oak, Red Oak, Popular, White and Yellow Pine, Maple,and a few Cherry and Walnut on mountain land. 
I have to to the Forestery Division at UT and he sent me a list of local Foresters. 
My question is about what direction I should take. 
I could have the Forester come and walk my land and sell the timber or I was thinking about getting a sawmill and just selling slabs,beams,live edge cuts. I have equipment to move the logs. I am sure someone here has done both and any input would be appreciated. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Hello and welcome.  That's quite a first post.   Youl get some good in put here.  

[BaldBob]

Hello
I am new to this board so please forgive me if I have post in the wrong place.
I have around 6 acers of land that has very large White Oak, Red Oak, Popular, White and Yellow Pine, Maple,and a few Cherry and Walnut on mountain land.
I have to to the Forestery Division at UT and he sent me a list of local Foresters.
My question is about what direction I should take.
I could have the Forester come and walk my land and sell the timber or I was thinking about getting a sawmill and just selling slabs,beams,live edge cuts. I have equipment to move the logs. I am sure someone here has done both and any input would be appreciated.

Our responses would be much more meaningful if we knew what your goals for the land are. At only 6 acres however, your options are somewhat limited. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Hello
I am new to this board so please forgive me if I have post in the wrong place.
I have around 6 acers of land that has very large White Oak, Red Oak, Popular, White and Yellow Pine, Maple,and a few Cherry and Walnut on mountain land.
I have to to the Forestery Division at UT and he sent me a list of local Foresters.
My question is about what direction I should take.
I could have the Forester come and walk my land and sell the timber or I was thinking about getting a sawmill and just selling slabs,beams,live edge cuts. I have equipment to move the logs. I am sure someone here has done both and any input would be appreciated.

Our responses would be much more meaningful if we knew what your goals for the land are. At only 6 acres however, your options are somewhat limited.

Bobs right.    Besides, before you can even consider "what" to do you have to already know what you really "want" to do.   Do you want to become a sawyer?  Do you have the time?  Is it worth it to you to buy a saw mill for 6 acres of timber?    Can you successfully sell the lumber?    And will a forester even get involved in a six acre piece of timber. Around here the answer to all the above would be no.

[TennesseeHillbi]

I am basically wanting to clear out the forest in front of my house to open up the views of the mountains. Going to make it field land keeping a few big trees here and there. Thought I could make money in the process since there are a lot of very big trees to be removed. There is a sawyer that lives up the road from me with a large circle sawmill I could possibly hire to cut slabs or beams. I would be willing to sell them at a lower costs.
I would not mind selling a low price than what I could probably get waiting on premium selling price 

[TennesseeHillbi]

I was just thinking it would be easier to sell slabs, live edges and beams than it would trying to sell boards. I am totally uneducated in this field and just looking for direction. Advice is much appreciated. 
They are many old growth trees on this piece of property 100 plus years old. Very big trees. 

[mudfarmer]

A forester would be able to tell you the volume and species of what you have, and may even speculate on log grade. That would be a good place to start, do you have County extension foresters or State foresters that deal with private land down there?

If you have equipment to get the trees down and hauled to a mill you can sell the logs, unless you really want to get into the retail lumber business. If you sell the logs you will get paid in a week or two, if you saw it all up you will have people coming to your house for weeks, months, years putting some money in your pocket each time until it is gone. You will get less lump sum for the logs than after value adding by sawing into slabs/lumber/whatever. Whether you want the money lump now or piecemeal later only you can decide.

If you read the sawmill part of the forum there are a lot of threads about "what should I saw this log into" and the general consensus is whatever you cut it into the customer will want something else!

My understanding is there are enough small loggers left in the south that you can still sell "gate wood" to mills and log buyers - meaning you deliver the logs to the mill, they scale and grade and pay you. You can lose out on money if you cut the trees down wrong, cut the logs out of the tree wrong, cut the wrong lengths, sell to the wrong mill. The mill probably has a spec sheet and sometimes price sheet that will tell you what species, size, grade logs they will buy. For instance people on here talk about tie logs at 8'8 or something like that but I have no tie log buyer and the hardwood gets cut 8'6" which I guess a tie buyer would not want.

There is a lot to it, pull up a stump and dig through some of the info on here, there sure is a lot of it and you have come to the right place.