I have about 100 or so mature white pine near Boscobel Wisconsin. Everyone I have contacted say it's not enough to mess with. Does anyone have any suggestions or interest?
Around here average mature pine usually have between 3 and 5 hundred board feet in them so that would make 30000 to 50000 feet I'd think that would be worth someone's time especially someone with a cable skidder probly not a mechanical crew though what type of outfits did you talk too
Talked to mills and foresters. Everyone says very little market for pine in southern Wisconsin.
Do you need these cut for money? I have no idea about the white pine market in WI. It was kinda low for money here.
Mature meaning what?
Maybe planted in the 30's to hold the sandy soil in place?
Talked to DNR foresters about the trees?
Do you have any pics? I assume these are on pretty flat ground as likely they were planted.
Any pruning of lower branches over the years of growth? Or only natural pruning?
Any thinning of the stand over the duration?
I guess the million dollar question would be, "What size is the "said" timber?" Are you talking 100 tooth picks or 100 pumpkins? I can remember going to cruise ERC tracts for my former boss, he would say, "Hey can ya go check this timber for me, say they have 100 trees". I would go out there and yeh they had 100 trees...bushes more like! Small tracts probably get shrugged to the side because of things like this.
Like thecfarm asked, is there a reason you need them cut? Maybe you could wait and check on a market and then ask your Forester if he knows or would recommend any small crews. Surely there is a market but I know nothing of white pine nor is marketability.
I just cut just over 100,000 feet of white pine and did very well so the market is there and it adds up real fast on stuff 18 feet and longer with 14 inch top I got $600/1000 and for me in my area thats pretty good and they took stuff up to 32 feet long and I got paid extra because of the taper
I cut a lot of white pine. if a land owner wanted to hire me for the most average size to large sized pine trees. say $25 + per thousand ft I would pay for it. so 30,000 feet would be $750-$1000 paid up and I could keep busy for a month or more depending on the job terrain etc. 100 trees can be iffy. like yall said small or large, rotted or nice. etc, etc a short list of important variables.
Quote from: Lnewman on December 05, 2013, 06:13:46 PM
Talked to mills and foresters. Everyone says very little market for pine in southern Wisconsin.
That's pretty much true. White pine bolts and logs are worth less than soft wood pulp and the pulp markets are kind of full right now. And when you have trouble selling the low grade stuff, it's hard to make it pay to cut the stand.
But it really does depend on what size trees you have and the quality.
That is more than enough to bother with. That is a lot of wood. Mature white pine will be over 30" in diameter and 80' tall.
you just have that pine in the wrong place.
Oil field transport companies love that stuff for all manner of blocking. 3"x10"x10' being the most common. Granted they do bitch hard about price but they have to have so they do pay a decent price for it around here. Whole sale is around 475 to 500 MBF around here last stuff I sold late summer. been told the price is up about 30 bucks since then.
Gota love those pipeline projects.
So far, we don't know what the OP is calling mature pine. It can mean different things to different people.
Hope we get a description and some pics so we can give some answers and help.
My problem is buying white pine. Almost all of my white pine needs are for timbers, which requires high quality logs. I have no use, other than a small amount of blocking, for the low grade stuff.
Thanks for all the comments. I gather the trees are just not big enough yet. About 15-18" DBH. Sounds like I should wait about 10 years while they do natural self pruning. They were planted but probably too close @ about 10 feet apart.
To my mind when I read "mature" I was thinking 30"-48" dbhx 80-120' average height. Yeah, definitely let them grow more. If they are spaced 10x10 ft you might even consider a thinning here and there. Depends on available moisture and soil quality where you are though. Might be just as well to leave them be. A county forester could give you some good input on what to do.
I would let them grow to at least 24 dbh . .or else just looking a pulp . How tall are they?
White pine needs to be large and clear of knots for it to be worth anything. The research forest out here has some 80 year old plantations that have grown to the point where they need another commercial thinning but there are too many defects on the trees for the logs to pay for it. I think they're clearcutting most of them for pulp. There's also issues with getting the logs down without damaging the residual trees.
I love working with white pine. I built a wall cabinet out of #2 2x6's in high school. Turned out pretty nice after I cut around all the knots.
Quote from: Lnewman on December 06, 2013, 07:11:50 PM
Thanks for all the comments. I gather the trees are just not big enough yet. About 15-18" DBH. Sounds like I should wait about 10 years while they do natural self pruning. They were planted but probably too close @ about 10 feet apart.
That would
not be my recommendations. And 15-18" DBH are nice sized trees. Much larger than that and your markets become limited again because of oversize. Many commercial mills and pulp mills have a maximum diameter of 18-20 inches.
But again, it's difficult to make recommendations without seeing the stand. Things like height, disease, mortality, form, etc. all make a difference. Maybe you can get the local DNR to look at the stand and make some recommendations.
In New Brunswick, plantation white pine are usually a disaster. Weavil and blister rust will pretty much ruin the plantation. You have to inter plant sparingly in a more diverse woods and have them shaded a little for a few years and prune early to keep the rust down. They are too much work for what they are worth. Around here, all of those big old lone pine around are the junk no one wanted. Next time you drive by this way, look at them pine a little closer and see all the stuff wrong with them.
swampdonkey,that don't sound good at all. I have no idea if there is a diffeant in planting white pine or regen. My regen are doing great. Some are 6 years old and looking good. And some are 15 years old and looking good too. Or I think they are.
We've planted a few small areas on various woodlots, 1-10 acres in size, they are pretty much cabbage shaped, the ones that lived. Old fields growing up do the same. We call'm cabbage pine. The forest companies don't plant them per se, except they have a lone pine in a tray of spruce every so many thousand. We've been told pretty much to mow them down when thinning unless there is nothing else.
The white pine that is growing in the grown up pasture went for fodder for the OWB. ;D They would grow about 5-6 feet than grow 3-4-5 leaders,all crooked. I pushed quite a few of them into the burn pile. The white pine up in the woods,for the most part looked good. If I had 200 up there only about 20 was kinda bad in form. Now the fir I cut just about everyone of those down. They do not do good at my soil. I only had one part where the fir looked good,and that was only about 2 acres.
In southern NB the fir don't look very good either, it's the lowlands. Fir needs rich ground to look healthy and size up good. Where my cedar is dominant, the fir isn't worth much because of soil aeration. One on a mound will do ok, but on flat level ground with the cedar, fir is garbage. It germinates very well in that wet ground, but doesn't do much.
cfarm, do you have pine wevil or blister rust where you are? I have both here. It makes it tough to get any good pine saw logs. The white pine regens well and grows pretty quick but by the time it is 16 foot tall most of it has been weviled twice and a lot of those have blister rust as well. The good ones are far and few between. Scattered around here and there are some lucky ones that make it unscathed but I can't predict any of it except partial shading does limit the wevil.
If you don't have those pests you are lucky.
g_man.yes,I am lucky,very lucky. We had some mighty fine looking white pine here. We had some big ones,40 inches was no big deal.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10436/log26.jpg)
My Father and me logged the land for 3-4 years,only about 2-3 loads a month.Than he passed away and the trees just stood there waiting for me. I had a logger come in and do some cutting in 2007. Still more to cut.
One thing you may not realize Cfarm, is your cutting those big trees that were around before those pests appeared. Weevils don't bother the tops of 130 foot pine and the rust does not often infect them either because they get into the needles first where the humidity and dampness is high in the shade of other trees, and by now the canopy of them huge pines is 50+ feet up. It's not going to be as easy the next crop. Maine is just an extension of NB to the bugs, that man made boundary line is insignificant. And them bugs didn't originate in the Maritimes. ;)
The next crop is growing now. It's only about 10-12 feet tall now. I still have some that need to be cut. Saving them for the next time the tax man comes a knocking.
There is always something to fight.
You've indicated at one time about selling lower grade pine. I couldn't sell a pine here unless it was about perfect, unless I want to work for nothing. :D
That was some of the 20. Man those trees was UGLY. Just like the ones that I cut for fodder for the OWB,just add about 40 years of growth. The reason I remember them so well my Father came for the same school as what you said,the pines had to just about perfect to make money. There was one pine that grew right where we wanted the wood yard. It grew up about 7 feet and crotched out into some good logs. The 8 foot crotched was pushed over to the side.The guy that trucked for us saw the crotch and said that they would buy that for Pallet Pine grade. They cut out the bad areas and knots and dovetail the lumber. My Father had a fit and started to tell him that he don't know nothing about wood,he was my age,so how could a young kid,30 years old know anything about logs. ::) My Father would of been about 70.I got a word in and asked they will take that and he said yes. I jumped on the tractor while they was dukeing it out and got it next to the truck. That was the only 8 footer on that load. Off it went. I heard about THAT log for a week. They will take it,but we won't get paid for it. He'll have to dump that log somewheres.I'm not taking it back.
He got the scale slip and there was a 8 foot pallet grade on it. I can still hear him say,They took it. And they PAID us for it. We started to chase down the other 19 ugly trees, As he said,you can sell good logs anytime,but you can not sell bad logs all the time. They brought quite a few more crotches and even a couple that had 3 leaders out of them.That got my Father going,but they took them. We was getting more than double the price of pine pulp and we did not have to saw them down to 26 inches wide either. As I said some was more than 40 inches and some even was 50 inches. That was a good market than. Now that pallet grade does not pay much more than pulp. They must of been hard up for some of the stuff we sold them. Knots a foot across on some of them.
That pine blister rot and Weevils scare me. When I had that logger come in and I got a letter that the pine could not be cut in Franklin County. I'm on the County line. Most of the pine was in Androscoggin County and being brought over the line into Franklin. A phone call to the state and we was all set.
Unfortunately thecfarm you most certainly already have weevil and probably blister rust as well. You indicated in one post that your pines in the field developed many leaders. Typical indication of weevil. The white pine that are doing well in the woods are probably growing underneath an existing overstory. That seems to keep the weevil at bay. Any of the industrial land in NB that is being managed for white pine usually employs a silvicultural technique that leaves a mature overstory as a "nurse crop"
Ken,could be.The pasture is about a ½ mile from the woods that had the big ones growing. I can remember that pasture just starting to grow up. This land has been in the family from about 1930. They swapped houses and land with another family and than about 20 years after brought the place back from them. I really can't tell you about the under story,but it does sound good. The land was never cut off until I called in the logger. We only cut firewood off it and my Father would need a truck and he would cut some off. When my father and me was doing it we was slow,but steady.