How Much Money are we Making from Cutting our Timber and How will we Spend it? By Stoney Ridge Farmer
Hi, this is Josh from Stoney Ridge Farmer, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the timber we are cutting here on the farm.
People are asking me, how much money are you actually making on the timber and is it worth it?
If you are thinking about cutting timber for a hobby or a living, this might be a little food for thought. This article is about forest management and some of the reasons why we choose to cut timber on our farm.
Insect Repellant
This is an item we cannot do without on the farm. We need to avoid being bitten by any insects on the farm, so I suggest spraying insect repellant on your clothes, and arms, legs, and any exposed skin you feel requires it.
I had a painful spider bite a while back, and while I wasn’t sure what kind of spider got me, I will not let that happen again. There are a lot of chiggers also known as grass mites or ‘noseeums.’ Those little guys will eat you up. Being outside on the farm at this time of the year can be nasty. It is chigger and tick season.
Why are we cutting logs?
We have here some poplar logs. It’s a beautiful wood, but the longer it sits out here, the greater chance it has of getting black spots.
As the poplar gets bigger, it becomes hollow inside, which is terrible for the wood, and needs to be dealt with. As a good steward of the land and a good manager of the forest, I am going to take back what I don’t need. I am going to mow what I don’t need and we’re going to get a little bit of money for it as a bonus.
Logging in North Carolina is not just a podunk hillbilly operation, because logging here is an operation that works closely with the U.S Forest service to make sure that we do the right thing and we cut the right trees. We do absolutely everything we should do to protect our watershed and the natural environment as we carry out our operations.
Timber Operations
Our operations are cutting somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 7 acres of timber per week. I’m getting $700 to $2,500 every week, depending on the quality of the timber from this setup.
The timber we have now is very profitable. It’s good timber that can bring in some solid revenue. The timber operation we split it 50/50. They cut the trees, they take them to the sawmill, they sell them and we split the returns 50%.
They also take the pulp wood which is wood that’s undesirable, and get it sent off to be made into paper, plywood, and other types of veneered furniture. I get a 35% cut of that, so it is can be very profitable.
This land is overgrown, a crappy forest that used to be fields and grew haphazardly. Now we are taking back those fields. We are taking Stoney Ridge Farm from about fifty acres of field all the way up to a hundred acres of pasture land and field. This is an arduous chore that I am going to have to handle.
So is cutting all of this timber going to be profitable for us in a vacuum? Absolutely not. Every single dime that we make from cutting the timber goes right back to the farm. It goes to equipment, it goes into clearing fields. It goes into grass seed.
To see more, check out the full video below!
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