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Despite depressed market, landowners have opportunities to sell their timber

Published: October 07, 2009

Story Source: Dusty Walter, 573-884-7991; Hank Stelzer, 573-882-4444

COOK STATION, Mo. - If the trees on your forest property are too small to attract bids from sawmills, you may still find markets for your timber if you're willing to do the harvesting yourself, said a research specialist for the University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry.

"There are opportunities for smaller wood products," said Dusty Walter at the MU Wurdack Farm field day, Oct. 2 in Cook Station, Mo.

Woodland owners need those opportunities. Last May, fierce winds and a string of tornadoes felled trees on more than 100,000 acres of forestland across southern Missouri. The sudden influx of salvaged wood depressed a timber market already reeling from the struggling economy.

However, even if loggers don't want your wood, that doesn't mean others won't buy it, Walter said.

He demonstrated the use of a Wood-Mizer portable sawmill then showed some of the wood products you can make with it, including boards of honey locust, a durable wood that takes a variety of stains well.

Walter also presented a gunstock made from a pair of 1-inch walnut boards joined by a layer of carbon mesh and epoxy. This makes the stock stronger than a solid 2-inch gunstock, and using two boards gives it an attractive grain on both faces-a quality difficult to find in solid 2-inch boards.

Walter then passed around several humble-looking 1-by-1-by-12-inch segments of spalted maple and black walnut with figured grain. These turned out to be blanks for making high-quality writing pens. Sawmills or loggers might buy walnut for 50-80 cents per board foot, but when milled into pen blanks that wood could bring in as much as $6 per board foot.

"That's what we call value-added," Walter said.

Walter will present a similar talk and demonstration at the Missouri Chestnut Roast, Oct. 17 at the MU Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Center in New Franklin. For more information about that event, see http://www.centerforagroforestry.org/.

MU Extension forester Hank Stelzer talked about the benefits to woodland owners of certification through the American Tree Farm System, a private forest conservation and advocacy organization. Certification through ATFS indicates that a tree farm meets international standards of sustainable forest management.

Stelzer said certification provides landowners with access to markets for timber, forest products and possibly carbon credits. To be certified, tree farms must be at least 10 acres and have a qualified written management plan. For more information about the American Tree Farm System, see http://treefarmsystem.org/.

Later in the field day, Walter gave an update on a five-year silvopasture study at Wurdack. Researchers have thinned selected stands to encourage growth of higher-quality timber and to allow forage production. Walter said that a certain amount of shade can benefit both livestock and forage by protecting animals from heat stress and improving the digestibility of certain shade-tolerant forages.

Wurdack Farm, part of the Missouri Agriculture Station, is a 1,200-acre research farm in Crawford County. The farm is the site of research and demonstration projects on integrated livestock forages, forestry and wildlife management.

Dusty Walter of the MU Center for Agroforestry at the 2009 Wurdack Farm field day, Oct. 2
Photo credit: University of Missouri Cooperative Media Group

Dusty Walter of the MU Center for Agroforestry demonstrates a portable sawmill at the 2009 Wurdack Farm field day, Oct. 2
Photo credit: University of Missouri Cooperative Media Group