Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions regarding logging your timber and harvesting your woods.
Deciding to harvest your timber is an important decision. Timber Works holds proper forest management as our highest priority and will never pressure you to cut any trees that aren’t well suited for harvesting.
Our company works with the landowner to educate them about the ins and outs of timber management, answering questions along the way and going the extra mile to ensure the harvest is low impact, and that the tract is left with health and vitality. Properly managed, a woods creates an excellent stream of cashflows to a land owner that is environmentally and economically viable.
Frequently Asked Questions Re: Logging
Answers and info about the most frequent concerns of timber owners.
We take care to only log under dry and/or frozen conditions. This allows us to minimize our footprint in the woods and ensure the timber owner’s property is kept in the best condition. Given appropriate weather conditions we usually begin logging within 2 – 4 weeks after a purchase contract has been signed. However this is highly variable depending on site conditions and for planning the timber harvest.
We work carefully with the timber owner to come up with a complete harvest plan before any trees are cut. These trees fall within an optimal range best suited for harvest both financially and from a forest-management perspective. Timber Works never pressures a landowner to cut trees they do not agree are appropriate for harvest.
The area of a circle grows exponentially as its diameter gets larger. So a tree that is 20″ across has much more volume (board footage) than twice the amount contained in a tree that is only 10″ in diameter. That’s why we prefer to only harvest mature timber, leaving the rest to grow and increase in value. Specifically, Timber Works prefers to cut trees at least 18″ to 20″ in diameter depending on the species. Diameter for calculating timber volume is the width of the tree taken at breast height.
It is impossible to harvest timber from a woods without a footprint, but Timber Works strives to minimize the impact to your property as a result of skidding logs and tree top debris as much as we can. In fact, once our loggers are finished with a timber harvest, they always smooth out log and skid roads and offer reseeding with site-appropriate grasses. This step is complimentary, prevents soil erosion and is just one of many ways Timber Works is striving better service than the competition. We also offer top removal and mulching services to ensure that your stand of timber looks as good as it ever did, even after harvest.
Absolutely.
In fact, timber harvesting is an important part of any proper forest management plan. Like anything organic, trees have a natural like span. They grow rapidly taller in the first portion of their lives. Once they reach the canopy, they begin to grow steadily wider. If left to mature indefinitely, they begin a slow, steady decline which for many species can last hundreds of years.
Our method of timber harvesting balances the return from a stand of timber with longer term goals of increased ecological vitality. We prefer to harvest only nice, mature trees before they’ve started to decline—the the remaining trees are left to continue the natural cycle of timber growth.
Yes. Because of the fixed costs related to moving our equipment and logging crews to a timber harvest location, Timber Works prefers to buy a minimum of 12 trees at any one location, though we sometimes make exceptions for small stands of timber when the property in question is located close to a different, larger harvest or when the trees are exceptional.
That’s a hard question to answer because each timber stand is unique.
Buying timber on the stump is essentially when a logger purchases timber harvesting rights for a predetermined amount of trees from a land owner’s woods. You can get an idea of the average prices being paid for such timber from The Ohio State University’s Timber Timber Price Report. This report is compiled every year with data collected by OSU Agriculture Extension offices and reflects the prices paid for timber while still on the stump.
The numbers contained in this report reflect averages from the millions and millions of board feet of timber harvested in Ohio, so they may not necessarily coincide with the value of your standing timber. In fact, Timber Works has paid amounts much greater than the averages quoted in this report for exceptional or veneer timber. Still, this stumpage price report is a good place to start your research.
The easiest way to assess your timber is by allowing Timber Works to conduct a site visit, but read over our blog articles Estimating Standing Tree Volume and Estimating Standing Timber Value for an idea of how the process works and to learn how to conduct a self inventory of your timber.
Yes. We do not utilize all of the timber we harvest at our sawmill, and therefore maintain markets for saw logs, veneer sticks and even pallet grade material. If you’re industry requires timber inputs in the manufacturing process, give Timber Works a call.
