Yield per acre - Northeast hardwoods

[Engineer]

I was on a site last week that you don't see very often in the Northeast US.  25 acres, give or take, all upland hardwoods, high percentage of red oak, very little softwood, good proportion of 16-24" dbh veneer logs and sawlogs.  All completely clearcut down to the last stick and weed.  The owner left eight mature, heavy crowned red oaks as specimen trees, he wants to build a big fancy house on the top of the ridge and have a 300-degree view. 

So I can't even picture this, what kind of yield he was getting.  Any clue how much cordwood might be in an acre of clearcut?  I'm talking everything down to about 4" diameter, the tops were going to be either burned or chipped, and the stumps were all going to be ground and the ground made 'mowable' as the contractor said.  I imagine it's enough to build the house and then some - job pays for itself.  Other thing I noted is that the job was being done by a one-man show, with an old Franklin skidder and chainsaws - no high-tech machinery, even for a job that size.

[tyb525]

Sounds about like our woods!

The yield, even minus tops, would be huge!

[chucker]

?? localy here runs at 20 cords to the acre. with over sized extra large hardwood could be as high as 25per. so 400 to 500 cord would be a honey hole of a wood lot and make a woodsman think they were in wood heaven!!! what a shame to let it all go for a piece of junk house ,with a view it had . the owner probably couldnt see the view because of the forest ? hey  ???

[SwampDonkey]

Hard to really say without knowing the diameter distribution, height and site history. It could range from 18 cords/acre to 46 cords/acre. I've seen 40 cords/acre in sugar maple, 75 foot dominants with many loads of logs and veneer on a 100 acre tract. Maple can grow thicker than oaks. The site was thinned down to 18 cord/acre. A few years later a tornado went through and flattened it, even did damage to the owners house which was out in the open, 1/4 mile from the woods.

[Engineer]

OK, so it's not nearly as much as I thought - it just seemed like an awful lot of wood laying around, the lot was pretty thick, majority of trees were 8-12" diameter, but quite a few up to 24" +.  God mix too, like I said, mostly oak, but yellow birch, sugar maple, lot of beech too. 

I was figuring, he could maybe get $20 a cord for tree-length firewood (maybe 50%) $1000 per thousand average for veneer (maybe 10%) $150 per thousand for sawlogs (30%) and 10% pulp, I dunno, I'm just throwing numbers in my head out.  How many MBF on a log truck?  6?  He's got 4 log trucks worth per acre, 8 cords each, which works out to 16 cords of firewood @ 20, maybe $1000 worth of sawlogs and $2000 worth of veneer per acre, and a couple hundred bucks worth of pulp.  $3500 per acre?  x 25 acres = around 90 grand.  Yeah.  That might be enough to build his tennis court.  I know this dude's gonna put a million bucks into the house, so I guess it won't be as profitable to clearcut the property as I expected.

[stonebroke]

I thought they had laws banning clearcutting in Vermont?

Stonebroke

[John Mc]

I thought they had laws banning clearcutting in Vermont?

Stonebroke

There may be an acre limit - below a certain amount is not covered under the law. Also, the law might just apply to whether or not you want to stay in the state's Current Use program ?? (property assessed for taxes at it's "forestry" value - around $150 or $200 per acre, rather than its development value) There are also water quality rules for logging jobs here which would apply, but I don't think they prohibit clear-cutting, just require that you take appropriate precautions and follow AMPs. We still see clearcutting for development all the time (though it has slowed down in the past year...)

I'm just going from memory and 2nd hand impressions here. Perhaps someone with more direct experience in Vermont will chime in.

John Mc

[jrdwyer]

Unmanaged upland oak stands of decent quality can have 4K-8K b.f. per acre (Doyle) in my area. The potential with management is higher, of course. Maple and tulip poplar stands can carry more volume, probably up to 10K-12K bf/acre and these are usually growing on higher quality soils.

Your markets for firewood logs are good up north. Because our regional market for firewood is very seasonal and also depends on the severity of the winter, most all demand is met by the tree care companies and their firewood associates. In other words, little or no rural timber is cut for the commercial firewood market because it mostly comes from urban trees. The exception to this might be the convenience store suppliers who sell in larger quantities.

Our pulp stumpage prices are low in comparison to the north or even the south. Our markets only pay about $5/ton on the stump, compared to $7.50/ton in the south or your firewood log price of $7.40/ton (20/2.7).

I have been selling sawtimber for prices higher than $150/thousand. Even with the conversion from Doyle to International 1/4, I am still getting 10%-50% more than that. Of course, it varies by what you are selling, location of tract, etc. Granted, it has not been easy with many buyers offering low-ball bids in this weak market. Some landowners are deciding to hold off until prices improve.

Our veneer markets are predominantly white oak and walnut. There is lots of variation in what different buyers can or will pay for these two. With the dollar weak, things should be O.K. for the higher value log/veneer exports this winter.

I hope the guy building the house locates it away from the trees he left. Oaks dying 2-4 years after construction damage (to the roots) is so common everywhere you see people building in the woods.

[woodmills1]

Here in southern NH I get $80 per cord for log length firewood.

cut down and deliverd of course.

[Night Raider]

$1000 per thousand average for veneer (maybe 10%) $150 per thousand for sawlogs (30%)

Is that really what prices are down to???  Sure is a bad time to cut a bush, I can't believe anyone is selling at those prices.  Not long ago maple was going for $1600/thousand for sawlogs.

[Engineer]

My numbers are based purely on some of the prices I've heard thrown around by some of the loggers and foresters in this area, and I'm also saying that's the cash that the landowner might get out of it.  Prices are higher depending on what level of the market you're at.  As a retail consumer, you can't get log-length or tree-length firewood for much less than $75 a cord here, and close to $200 a cord cut split and delivered.  Sawlogs and veneer are very low right now, I have heard of quite a few loggers skipping the sawlog market and selling right to firewood processors or pulp/chip mills for biomass.  I am trying to contract a white pine sale on my own land right now, by the time the forester and logger take their cut, I'm going to get less than $500 per acre, and it's all 30-50 year old dense second-growth pine - nice straight poles.

[nas]

I thought they had laws banning clearcutting in Vermont?

Stonebroke

These bans are for poor people like us.  Money talks.  We had a local development company clearcut a parcel over a long weekend.  They got a $2,000,000 fine, but because the forest was not there anymore they sold it for a profit.  All in the cost of doing business. >:( >:(

Nick

[SwampDonkey]

Our pulp stumpage prices are low in comparison to the north or even the south. Our markets only pay about $5/ton on the stump, compared to $7.50/ton in the south or your firewood log price of $7.40/ton (20/2.7).

I have to get a little perspective, most all stumpage here is based on clear cutting, so our stumpage is higher. Your stumpage is probably "advertised" for a timber improvement or thinning of some sort. Have to go slower and go easy on the residual trees. I say advertised, as some times I'm sure a renegade uses this speak to cut a woodlot for cheap.

[jrdwyer]

SwampDonkey,

Yes, you are right about most timber sales in this area being some form of selective (sawtimber/veneer) harvesting with pulpwood an afterthought. That definitely makes production less and slower. We are just now getting a logging contractor in this area who is trying thinning for pulpwood production with chips going from the woods to the pulp/paper mill. We have another who chips in the woods and sends it straight to the paper mill, but they concentrate on clearcuts and/or ditch row cleanup for farmers.

Most loggers here use chainsaw and skidder and can't really make a profit from trees much smaller than 10" DBH. I have watched grapple skidder operators work, and it is hard for them to grab and hold onto a little 5" DBH tree in the same load with some 20"-30" trees. 

I occasionally recommend a clearcut, but only under certain circumstances like flooded bottomland stands, building/development, landowner desires to cash out, and insect/disease outbreak. Also, we have only one true hardwood pulpwood/chip end user left in the immediate area. That has changed recently with a mill buying hardwood pulpwood sized trees to make wood pellets.

There are several proposed wood-based power plants for the area. Initial public reaction to such plants has been somewhat cautious/negative. Almost all of our electricity comes from underground or strip mined coal, with a little wind power recently form NW Indiana. In fact, our local utility owns a coal mine and contracts out the mining and delivery. We are definitely behind the curve compared to the north in wood utilization for energy. I guess the paper mill prefers not having much competition, assuming that they can get enough chips to run with sawmill production being way down.

[Ron Wenrich]

We have a paper company that put in a co-gen plant and just bought more chips and burnt their lignin.  It helped them to diversify, and they wheeled the electricity from PA to higher NY markets.  They are in one of the tier counties, and could pull it off.