Thursday, June 2, 2011

Predictability

                                                            Click on photo to enlarge.

3382 Belknap and 72 Sharon soils are riparian soils you find alongside streams in southern Illinois, and they always are sites worth looking at.  Most of these sites were cleared for growing corn on small farms long ago, but modern farming methods have caused them to be abandoned.  Seed sources around the fields determined what tree species came up, and often these fields came up in river birch or soft maple, but sometimes you get lucky. 
Black walnut, with companion boxelder trees are a nice surprise that I find on a fairly regular basis.  Most landowners consider boxelder to be a weed tree, but they are a valuable trainer in a young walnut stand, forcing the walnuts to go upward for light, and they block light out of the understory, which helps shade off the lower branches on the walnuts. 

The trees in this stand have grown from about 14" diameter fifteen years ago to 20" now, or about five growth rings per inch; which is a respectable growth rate, in valuable trees.  On rare occasions when someone asks for my advice on buying timberland, I recommend that they consult soil maps, and look for timber that is pole size, which most sellers do not recognize as having any value.  Productive soils, and a thinning can take a pole stand into sawtimber size in a short time, allowing the landowner to retrieve some of the investment in a relatively short time.

3 comments:

The Freeholder said...

Sam, just what is black walnut good for? Between my neighbor and I we have several here in NC, ranging from 8" to the big guy that is around 24". Blasted things make a heck of a mess, and I'm seriously thinking of having the big guy taken down.

David aka True Blue Sam said...

Black walnut used to be grown around most rural homes in southern Illinois for part of the winter food supply, but it fell out of fashion. Homeowners don't want to track in walnut stains on the carpet, and walnuts are downright dangerous when flung by a rotary mower blade. Walnuts are still processed into veneer, gunstocks, furniture, and etc., but the switch from M14's to M16's killed a major part of the demand for walnut, and that has also changed a good bit of the domestic market for gunstock material.

Walnut and white oak are about the only woods that have kept a strong price through the current recession. Red oak prices never have recovered, but it is a good time to sell walnut. Take a look at this article from Ohio State: http://ohioline.osu.edu/for-fact/0044.html Urban trees, and single trees from around homesites can be very difficult to sell for several reasons. Loggers won't generally touch a tree on a homesite because their insurance won't cover them. They can't afford to move logging equipment for just a few trees, and they are afraid of buying trees with metal hidden in them.

If you can move your trees to a log yard, a buyer may be interested in it; you will have to visit a sawmill or concentration yard in your locale to see if this would work. You might have it cut up on site by someone with a portable band mill. You could then store the lumber under cover until it is dry, and use it or sell it to woodworkers.

The Freeholder said...

I didn't realize that this was the sort of walnut for gunstocks. Well, well, well! That makes the big guy a tree of a different color.

And those #@%$ nuts don't do sheet metal any good, either. You ought to see my wife's car after one "fall" season. I told her to move it, now she gets to drive it, dents and all.