Not really a garden subject, but I didn’t want to put it in the Lounge. My wife’s cousin bought a few acres of land close to us, but it’s really overgrown, so they hired a logger to clear some of it out.
Of course they’re wanting to sell some of the more choice timber, specifically white oak. This particular species is very much sought after by bourbon whiskey makers in this state (Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, Woodford Reserve, etc). To be called bourbon, it has to be aged in charred white oak barrels, among other requirements. So this species gets a premium placed on it.
The logger was telling us that a good straight-ish, clean heartwood 18in wide, 30ft white oak could fetch about $3k, which seems insane. The logger’s already harvested a couple dozen logs of WO from the property and is waiting for local buyers to come bid on the logs. There is a local stave company that makes the slats for bourbon barrels and they’d probably be the ones buying the lot.
We have a lot more acreage than they do and was considering having some of our timber cut. My question for those experienced in such subjects, is what the logger saying true about the value of white oak? I’m not saying he’s lying or misinformed, but it seems like a fantastical value for some oak trees.
Sounds like you are in a very special location. We cut a bunch of trees close to the house and I was told they had no real value. Mostly straight grained WO with very few limbs.
Firewood seemed like a waste so I had a fellow with a portable sawmill cut them into slabs and lumber and stickered them up in a big shed for use later. Once the furniture industry declined here the demand for local timber did too. Used to see acres and acres of stacked lumber when furniture manufacturing was hot bot nobody wants it now.
using a bdft calculator the 18inch x 30ft would give ~370 bd ft. In Wisconsin 4/4 white oak lumber is 5-7.5$ a bdft so maybe 1800 - 2775$ for the log mentioned.
Not a direct response to your question, but you might want to consider clearing out Russian Autumn Olive, Multiflora Rose and Bush Honeysuckle in the understory. Those will quickly take over regrowth if they’re around (they certainly are on my property).
That sounds like the retail price of WO. To get from standing Timber to retail Lumber you also have the logging, milling and kiln drying (plus transportation, often between each step) costs which come out of it
I am going to say that the log in question is going to grade Veneer, so its possible that it is going to bring around that 3k mark. Here in NY, White Oak is going for around $1300 per thousand board feet, or it was a few weeks ago when i was talking to my logger friend. I wouldnt count on a lot of logs to grade out as Veneer logs, but that $1300 per thousand mark sounds about right.
$7.50 per board foot as mentioned earlier has to be kiln dried and ready to work. If that was roadside price still in the log, everyone would be clearing out White Oak, which isnt happening.
Thanks for all the replies. We were over there yesterday and I was looking over what the logger had already cut, and there were maybe 30 logs, just about all of them were minimum 25ft long, some were almost 40ft. Most of them had what looked like good heartwood, but a few were either slightly rotted/hollowed out at about 4-6in of the core.
They were over here this morning, and my cuz’s husband said they got another 8 logs out today. So they have almost 40 decent sized white oak logs to be bid on. They also cut out some poplar, which won’t fetch a quarter of WO, but can still be used for rough lumber or pallet wood. So, they’re going to make a good profit even after the logger gets his 50% cut.
He’s doing selective cuts, in that other than the WO and poplar, he’s leaving the rest and replanting afterwards.
We’re going to see how the bidding goes, I’d be interested in seeing what they get. We probably will have the logger visit our land and see what we have. They have about 5 acres, but we have 50, not all forested, or accessible, but still quite a bit.
As far as demand goes, like I said, I believe the bigger bidders are barrel makers, and they really want the WO.
We have lots of birch, black walnut, sycamore and beech, but other than the black walnut, those other species probably aren’t worth much.
it all depends on the market, which is totally location dependent. the nicest log isnt wirth a pittance if there is no infrastructure nearby to turn it into something marketable. softwood sawlogs mostly gets hauled to canada here, though there are smaller mills serving the local market. white oak gets mixed in with other oaks here. its uncommon and usually not a choice log. Veneer quality hard maple can fetch in the $2k-3k / log but prime quality saw logs are probably only 1/3-1/2 of that value. Veneer logs are usually pretty hard to come by unless its a really well tended old stand. Scars, bark inclusions, knots of any kind, even ones buried well beneath the surface cant be present. Also, the log has to be cut to exactly 9’ 6” or 16’ 6” plus wasteage or else it wont fly, at least here.
Here is a basic calculator. I punched your numbers in and came up with about $2K.
You said ‘hired’ a logger… so no idea on what kind of deal there is or percentage etc…
Also gotta factor in reclamation and all that and hope thats on paper.
Its usually wise to get bids… and then get things in writing. Also know your property lines… that can cause alot of problems.
We have logged our land 3 times and its still like a national forest. There is probably a hundred or few thousand dollars of timber on some parts of the land that would take some big equipment and alot of earth moving to get… Small outfits cant get it.
I have a couple of friends that log on the side and they buy farms for cheap…log the heck out of them…then sell the farm for what they paid for them sometimes more with cleared land… good money in that business.
Dont forget there is still a little meat left on the bone after they remove the logs… u can haul the big limbs and smaller trees to a good location if you have one and sell for firewood…
Alot can go right and alot can go wrong depending on your contract and the logger etc.
I thought I had mentioned the logger gets 50%, which is the usual cut for around here. There used to be lots of loggers around here, but a lot have moved away or went out of business. Back in the day there were lots of sawmills in these parts, but those have dwindled a lot. This area is considered the “hardwood capital of the world”, but I don’t know how it can claim that.
This logger lives about 10mi from us. Young guy, did most of the work himself. Brought over a big dozer and some big chainsaws, probably will be done with that job today. He’s been very careful about not cutting on other property. He said that most of the timber on the other side of the property line had already been harvested. The bidders will be here maybe tomorrow, but more likely Monday.
He’s saving the tops of the trees for them to use as firewood.
I love that drive from Lexington to Harrodsburg when i visit The Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. All of the whiskey barns and stone walls. I lived and worked there back in the 90s.
Morehead is the hardwood capital of the world… it sure doesnt look like it though. I go riding at Rush and stop in Morehead at the Peddlers Mall on my way to Court Days in Preston.
U ever been to Poppy Mountain Music Festival? Happy Poppy!
Nobody on here knows about Lees Famous Recipe… i think its better than Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I had a white oak that blew down a couple years back…about the size you mention…30 feet to first limb. Definitely 18 inches or more in diameter. (I refused to let loggers cut it in 1987…so you know it had value even back 35 years ago).
Bottom line, couldn’t give the tree away. I finally let neighbor across road make firewood of it for free.
It takes enough logs to entice the timber men out to your place…a couple or three good trees (even black walnuts) and they’re not interested.
Veneer trees bring even more money than stave trees…there’s a veneer mill in Clark Co. you might consider, Subdood.
When you get off the interstate there and head north, there’s a road sign that says that. I asked my wife about it and she said it’s because a lot of this area hasn’t been overly harvested, altho I’m sure it’s not like it used to be.
Morehead is the closest “city” to us, but it’s still a 25 mile/35 minute drive from here. It has the closest hospital, colleges (my wife works at Morehead St), Walmart, Lowe’s, etc.
Yes I’m very familiar with the Poppy Mtn Festival, my wife drives past the turn off on US 60 every day she drives to work. We’ve never went to it tho.
We were over close to the Peddlers Mall a couple days ago at a new Bargain Hunt store.
There was a Lee’s close by the Cracker Barrel there off the interstate, but my wife tells me they went out of business. I prefer KFC if I had to choose, but my wife liked Lee’s.
We went up the hill behind the house to see what we have and I think we counted one or two White Oaks. Lots of Tulip Poplar, which ain’t worth an eighth of WO.
A local logger who used to live close by asked us years ago if we were interested in harvesting some WO he saw up on our hillside. I went out this evening and looked, but couldn’t really see much. I did see about 3-4 WO below our orchard on the hill, so there might be more that I can’t see. I have to bush hog our pasture which is above that hillside so I can get a better view.
We also own more land up the holler from our in-laws that we need to inspect. But, yeah, right now we don’t have enough timber to make it worth a logger to cut it.
This evening, we went over to the cousin’s who is having their trees cut, and I counted about forty 25-30ft WO trees that’s been brought out of the woods laying in the field. And he’s not even done cutting yet. Most of them are in the 16-22in diameter range, just huge trees.
To ship them, they have to cut those up into 8-12ft logs, and can get about 25 logs on a truck so they might have 6-7 truck loads worth of timber to sell. A lot of that place has never been cut before, so it’s got a lot of choice timber. Seems like WO likes to grow closer to the valley floor as opposed to more hillier terrain like we have.
I’m not really an expert in prices but I can tell you how difficult it can be to get clean heartwood 18 inches across and 30 feet long and reasonabley straight.
Here’s an example
The good heartwood in it is neither fully 18 inches across nor anywhere straight.
And that’s only one of hundreds of fugly trees on the property I farm. And that’s why the guy’s not insane and the price might not be as far fetched as you think
If the trees on your property are decent it’s tempting to cash in.
It’s also tempting to let them grow.
There was a thread about logging in WV a few years back and the general consensus was that hiring a forester on your side keeps the logging company honest and would be worth the investment.
I recommend having a certified forester prepare a forest management plan. You can apply for funding under the EQIP program and possibly get reimbursed. A good fmp will give you the density and ball park value of the standing timber.
Unless that part of Kentucky is considerably different than this part of Tennessee… There’s little need to “replant” anything in or around a mature deciduous forest. Clear a little ground here and all sorts of tree seedlings pop up like magic. I bet it’s similar there…
I’ve posted previously in some other conversations about how we’ve been having a lot of large whiteoaks die. Wish I could figure out why and do something to prevent it. One in our back yard was almost 4’ in diameter, there’s still a bit of it I’ve not ran through the wood splitter yet. I assumed there wasn’t much if any veneer or similar value if one died and stood for a year or more before cutting. Borers were dropping all sorts of “sawdust” from it. Maybe I passed up a few thousand $$$ though
