hey friends so today we are talking about something that has been ongoing on our Homestead and I mean really honestly since we moved in and that is what to do with all these trees uh so we bought the property because it was a foreclosure property it was 10 acres and we thought you know we can afford this it's 10 acres it's close to where we live already um there were a lot of pluses the major negative was that there were trees everywhere we we bought a house in the woods
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and we did at the beginning have a ton of trees taken out because there was like 100 foot pine trees all around the house which was like terrifying and dangerous and you know everybody that you talk to in the south is like you don't want pine trees that close and the first ice storm you will find out you don't want pine trees that oh we actually were so so grateful cuz we had a bunch taken out and I mean our main goal was really just to create a space to Garden to start with um and then we thought oh you know we'll hit the rest with goats cuz that's what our goal was when we first moved in was to have a goat farm right um and that you know we took out a bunch and I think going back like we've both agreed we would have been far more uh aggressive with that we both I think we both it hurt us to cut trees down I mean it did almost physically spiritually emotionally you know like all the things I was it was painful to watch trees come down it was painful to watch them come down and thankfully we were naive the first round at the amount of effort it would take to clean it up and that because if I would have known I probably would not have cut down as many but we just like some guy was like yeah I'll do it and I'll just push it all to the side and you'll be fine oh the worst part was he dumped so many of them just into the pond yeah and he dropped them into the pond and couldn't get him out and then it was a mess and then we that was a different guy right that oh yeah that went across to the backs side of our pond and we have seven acres back there and we had that select cut and with the idea that we would open up the canopy so that we could have um grass to graze and we knew that the canopy had to be opened but we didn't realize how much and again I think we were like shy because we didn't want to take all the TR out well we also hired the wrong guy like the guy didn't know he wasn't like the kind of guy who was like what's your goal he was like uh I'll take out the things that are worth my time right and so he took out some pretty big trees some of the the older growth trees that he could get to and and manage and then he left a lot behind and not only that we didn't have a plan like going in after him of how to approach it and you know a year later it was nothing but undergrowth shading it out again yeah and I think like we thought um that we would he would take it out and then we'd go in there and we'd like plant grass seed and grass would be growing and like after he left we were like oh well this isn't going to work and kind of like realized sprinkled some seed back there over the years but ultimately we stuck goats back and sheep back there and thought well maybe they'll get it to where we need it but it was so much I mean I don't know what the ratios are necessar like that's how they measure we wanted a 60% open right 40% canopy is like the max and I think we had more like a 80 that's even after he cut it down and so this time now we have a had a new logger they just finished and um let's like reel it back because for years we've been like what are we going to do with those acre Acres back there we'll put cows back there we'll put animals back there but they're you know it's like seven acres that they're done within 3 hours cuz there's just not a lot of forage back there for them yeah and ultimately like we've had the same vision of Silva pasture like in Oak Savannah you read the mark sheeper books and you know like everybody's like this is the way to go and I totally agree but what I've like very recently learned is that there's two kinds of civo pasture development there's additive Silo pasture and subtractive Silo pasture and those are just like additive is way easier additive is way easier that's what like I was listening in this to The Silo post past your podcast and um that's what they were saying is like there's not a lot of work to that I was like yeah I wish that was my problem but that's not the problem we have we have the subtractive which is an insane amount of work and money and time to even get to the point where you can start trying to grow grass right and and so much money I mean I think that's the thing you would think okay you have these beautiful trees you could cut down and get lumber from them it's just not that straightforward and when you don't have a lot of property to do you don't have lumber companies really interested you know they they want to set up one time and take down as much as they can and seven acres on a pretty difficult to get to patch is just not ideal so we had we struggled and actually for years we're kind of looking for somebody to come in and take out more and then finally Drew stumbled across a guy um actually we heard from him about him from a few people the forestry service being one of those people because we have reached out to them and said you know what would you do how could you turn this into pasture and I mean the truth told the forestry service is very conventional and they have a lot of ideas that have been passed down from generation to generation at least decades and they aren't necessarily up to date on regenerative agriculture or even Silo pastoring they're they're like twinkling like here they you say it and they're like oh yeah I heard of that but it's not in practice for sure in fact the forestry agent that was like over our whole area showed up and she had like done Google research the night before to like come out and tell us how to Civ a p right which like so if you have a small piece of acreage that you want to log like listen up cuz here's some advice it's like how I feel like you know the the first thing was like you need to know your homework and you need to be solid in what your plans are before you welcome to the schoolhouse life and our iata Homestead now what podcast I'm lazy and I'm heste business strategist and between us we have nearly 40 years experience in homesteading parenting and totic living we love helping people live more sufficient deeply rooted and satisfyingly connected lives two to three times per month we post a new podcast on Wednesdays that will inspire ease and answer questions about this lifestyle you may not even know to ask people and Homestead strategy clients ask us all the time how why and what to do to make their Homestead less chaotic more efficient and mostly more peaceful the lessons we've learned the training we've had and our strategic approach will help you skip steps find more ease in your homesteading journey did you hear something you like did you learn something new please share with a friend or on social tag us at the school life thr to share and connect your shares encouragement and even question is one valid option for the forestry service for the forestry service which is like even more surprising but I mean I will say like when they came out like she was coming out to tell us like we couldn't do it and like it was like like that yeah I mean she she pretty much said like you can't have cows around trees and it'll kill trees that's a common thought for sure right so it it was like a I was like okay no I know about cattle I'm asking you to come out and help me with forestry right and um I think once we established that actually the turning point was we had a small piece that we had already I mean what's that like a 16th or a 32nd of an acre not much that um we've already developed into a civil pasture growing grass underneath trees and as and if you want to know how have we done that so the first guy that came out that cut trees cut several down in that area the several have died since we moved in and Drew has cut down like slowly but surely two or three of them you know over the course of the last 12 years since we've been here and then we've also fed hay there continuously like for the last I don't know eight years you know I think the turning point was we planted Sun hemp there one year because it was such a small acreage and it was by close by the house we were able to like seated it really heavy and that sun hemp I I still remember that kind of the pivotal moment is after that it grew like 8 feet tall and then we put goats on it and they ate it down to the ground and then the next year is when we really started getting grasses so I don't know how that's all related other than it probably turned the soil into more of a grassland soil from the fungal soil of the forest sh it had it shift gear maybe yeah well CU yeah you have all the debris from the trees and it's automatically thinking this is a forest and it's going to support the growth of more Forest yeah and so you want to have some kind of an alteration there that throws things off of that trajectory and it was so thick that it wouldn't let any like undergrowth grow it was like it shaded out everything else right well and if you've read um oh shoot the something of trees what is it the book anyway they're brilliant trees do these incredible things but like a tree mother tree will feed its own baby tree more through its roots so there I mean that system is happening and we're trying to interrupt it and make something that's a little bit more ecologically diverse and um supportive of human life yeah and anyway but so where we are at we've so we got to the point where we got found this small Lumber guy who would come out and he would cut trees and he did he went he came back and it took him about two weeks I would say and to like just to encourage you we I call probably 20 different logging companies over the last six years or so yeah well after we had the Forestry Department out they gave me a list and I I called the entire list yeah and so it takes this found he found his niche in doing he said like 30 Acres or less is generally what he does it's just him and another guy they work Monday through Thursday what seems like about 9 to 1 p.m. 1 p.m. and they're done and he said like that's enough for them that's all they need to live on and that's what they do and I mean really great guys really professional right and that's what I'll say is like first lesson learned is seeing the equipment so they showed up with this 14 ton versus the original guy yeah the original guy showed up with a skid steer on Wheels not tracks and um got stuck back there multiple times he made the biggest RS and messes yeah I thought our our property would never look good again but the other thing that I learned a after these loggers left talking with the next step that we'll talk about which is the land clearing guys is that um a lot of loggers don't care they'll come rain or shine and just leave massive ruts with these like 14 ton Vehicles which um quite I'd say two out of the four people that we've had out commented how little mess there was as far as like ruts and things so this logger he was like he came out like maybe 10 months ago now and um was like yeah I'll come out and I'll do the job but it has to be dry and he waited until it was dry but apparently some loggers will just come and just make an complete mess oh any a lot of a lot we've had fencers do it we've had you know L clearers do it I mean I would say most of them are willing to get dirty like in a gross way and sort of wreak havoc on your property no matter what and then just kind of leave and be likeor that's what happens um but anyway so we've he's come and he's gone and that leaves us in this new place of okay how in the world so Drew said we've talked to these land clearing options we've talked to um forestry mulchers we've talked to just a guy who would just move it into piles so that we could burn it um but there is should we talk numbers so much back there there's so much of this plant material that you know if we don't get it cleaned up the truth is the trees are just going to grow right back through where those logs are laying now CU it's the tops that they can't take to a lumber mill yeah so I think we should talk about numbers because I think it's important so we had approximately between five and seven acres cleared and it was not completely cleared we wanted Silva pasture so we went back and we selected I would say like 10 to 15 trees to keep um and after that the guy that was doing the logging selected more trees to leave because they're what are called pulp trees and this is like my first tip to you is he said at you know halfway through this process that there was no money for pulp so he was leaving those trees which what that meant was we were making less off of the logging which you know will come around in a second here for the cleaning and um but also that he was leaving more trees than we had anticipated which made the cleanup more difficult so in retrospect I'm not sure if I would have or not maybe have them chop I might have waited they're not going to cut trees unless they're taking them out but I might have waited until the pulpwood was up I don't know we probably still would have done it would you have waited I don't I mean I guess I don't know I would like to see the numbers what's the difference between the pulpwood how where can it go and what is it now and what are the chances of it going up right yeah yeah I don't know we might have made like another $500 off of it well and it's not even the money so much as the like getting them out of there I mean that was like I was take it all keep all the money just take it all and keep it all that's what my theory was yeah so that they would be gone so there's also loggers that will come and bring chippers out and they take What's called the slash so the slash is like the top part of the tree that where the tree branches out the loggers just cut that and they take what's from the bottom down and they take that to the but they can cut a straight board out yeah but what that means is they these loggers in particular and a lot of loggers do it they leave it especially from what my understanding now is the smaller ones have to because they don't have the equipment well I don't think you could probably get the equipment you need back there right the one guy told me that they would need to be able to get an 18-wheeler back there and turn it around and it's like there's no way not only is it it you we don't have a road back to it so he I mean they kind of made one they could make one but but also you get back there and it's very steep it's not I mean I guess they do it on mountain side so they potentially could do it but it it was just yeah so the first check that we got was for or cash actually you got to pay cash so that was kind of cool but um was for $500 and it was like I think it was two weeks worth of wood so they were getting $10 a ton for this wood that was kind of lower grade I think he took Tula popper out first he took Tula popper yeah so it's also like an interesting thing they take it out by species which uh well makes sense when you take it to the mill you're going to want it to be all one thing probably um and then they took out after that they started taking out the like Prime wood which was the White Oak and red oak and that they no the Hickory was after that but then they got um $50 a ton for that and so we ended up with5 $100 for that and then they took out which means they got 3,000 cuz he was splitting at 5050 they were splitting at 5050 so yeah and um and the other thing was when I first talked to him I told him he could keep all the money if he would just clear the logs which I'm so thankful that he said no to that why because I just wanted it cleared out there and I was like you know we didn't have another company so I was like just come and take the logs and you know open up the canopy so we can grow grass oh if he'd taken what is still on the ground out there I'd say youd definitely keep it is that not what he meant no no I mean like what he did uhhuh but like kept all the money because we couldn't because we couldn't find anybody to do it oh yeah we were grateful yeah yeah and I didn't really realize how bad of a mess it was going to be MH but so then the last load was Pines and hickories and um that was probably a week's worth of loads and that was another $500 no $1,500 00 we ended up with 4,000 total from the logging um so then the next step was we went back there and we were like oh my gosh it looks worse than a tornado and a hurricane coming through together it's terrible it's insane there the cool thing is is you can see light so like there's this really beautiful opportunity that you can sense being back there you can feel this this opportunity and I mean to be fair like there were some really beautiful big trees kept a lot of those so if it you can imagine if it was just grass growing underneath those be so beautiful I can see it I can see I know it's there but it's so difficult because to get from where we're at right now which is all of these branches giant branches on the ground um and the other travesty is that it's like really really good firewood potentially but the hours and the labor and the time and the danger and the danger it's so dangerous back there cuz all these logs are just in willy-nilly piles and well they've been pushed by this 14 ton vehicle out of the way so or dropped on top of each other so the branches some of the branches can be like under an immense amount of pressure that it's like you cut the wrong branch and it's treeing back into your face um death trap so that's what it really feels like a bit is a excuse me a death trap does it does and but so the first guy I think the first guy we had come out uh came out and he looked around and he was like you know there's all these PPL tree so it's like this thing that I'm going to have to navigate through to clear it it'll be $80,000 and I my mouth just dropped I mean look let's remind ourselves what do we want to do the full potential of that property 7 Acres potentially full potential three cows per Acres 21 cows spending $80,000 to have a property that might eventually support 21 cows it's just you know like no it's insane I think it like goes back to the idea of you know we didn't know what we didn't know so we bought this property and we thought you know cut trees down that's not that big of a deal you can do this you can do that um it's you just don't know how much these things cost and I mean maybe now they're ridiculous like everything is you know like maybe it's I keep going back to the Pioneers have done and I think like one tree at a time one tree at a time I think like girdling the trees I don't know like thinking about that I think about like Paul and when they left the The Little House in the Big Woods I think they left because it was woods and he wanted Prairie maybe I think the value of cleared land and stuff he wasn't running cattle no I know but I'm just saying the value of cleared land he couldn't have planted wheat in the forest I think it feels like endless potential to have cleared land oh for sure right and so that's like well I look at some people that are like buying like a soybean field or something and I'm like that's maybe the other end of the spectrum yeah that's to me the other end because you could plant trees and you could plant some faster growing trees but like the healing of that you're still like a ways away and yeah and then you have the like soil and I I don't know I mean oh there's fertility back there I think it I definitely think it would be easier on a on a soybean field yeah but that's not what we have not but I think it's important to consider that if you haven't purchased a property yet what are you getting and how is it going to serve the needs that you have because maybe truthfully you just want to grow mushrooms and you could grow all the mushrooms you want back there yeah yeah you could which we talked about but we did talk about we want we want last stock yeah anyway um so then we had another guy come out and he quoted like 40,000 and then we had a guy come out that was like a forestry Mulcher and he quoted 6,000 so if you're keeping up we're we have a deficit of at least 2,000 if not more oh and that's like you know a forestry multra cannot these logs are giant I mean there are some of them yeah I don't know if you can see me like 12 Ines in diameter I'd say there's some that are 24 yeah at least and so you know the forest room multra can get through maybe 10 in they can do it it's just they're going to be there like so we have a good friend that's a for stream aler and he's going to like grind up as high as he can and then we're going to just keep some logs back there thankfully it's for cattle so it doesn't need to look like a park and um hopefully I think he's still on the schedule to come out tomorrow and get started and we're just going to spend the money that we made off the logging doing it and then we're going to pause and well first we're going to see what what happens in four hours of doing that cuz if it's just not really getting anywhere then we need to be you know Wise about that then I don't know what we're doing then we're going to call in all the beavers and anyone who has a chainsaw Lane said just light it on fire where it's at Lane the fireman I feel wow yeah I mean it feels like maybe after a big rain yeah um but it's going to be yeah it's a nut it's a mess it's just it's so hard to wrap your brain around and and I think you just feel kind of defeated I mean I know I feel defeated like how many lessons are we going to learn how many how many times are we going to come up to these walls these barriers and be like yeah never mind we're just going to let it sit for another seven years I mean that's pretty much what's happened I will say the other massive mistake I'm not sure if it's really is I had given up on the idea of having it logged so I fenced the perimeter yes but the win there and if you've listened to our fencing episode you'll know is that you it wasn't like a hardwire fence it's high tensil it's high tensil it's not woven wire it's not woven wire it's not um it's it's going to be movable it's all toost or trees so essentially what we'll do is just after this mess is cleaned up I'm just going to go in there and fix whatever is broken yeah and it won't be a huge huge deal like the wre the hardest part of high high tensil is pulling the wire well a few T might be busted but other than that material is still there right and so you know if you did that to a regular fence like it would not oh a w and wire fence yeah that would be oh that would be horrible in fact the guy did we have you know this other little section that is in a hard wire fence up near the road and um he was like yeah I think better not do anything in there for the sake of the fence right so I mean if you're taking notes I I would say like my takeaway so far on this and we'll update you in the next part but is you know find a legit Logging company which seems like it kind of goes without saying I mean at this point you think about that like I haven't pieced this together yet but I'm having this Revelation but $8,000 we could buy you know eight more cleared Acres somewhere close by it would be SM or we could buy a really nice of piece of equipment to start forestry mulching that back there like that's what that's what I laughed about to myself I mean $80,000 like buy your own excavator I mean maybe it's going to be $100 grand for a really big excavator but I mean when you're at 80,000 what's 20,000
more do I just couldn't believe the guy looked at me with a straight face well and you know to be fair it's his work is in like subdivisions not in pasture clearing I mean in the reality is even the guy that said 40,000 he said he felt really bad saying that number but knowing what our goals were knowing but he he's like that's really what it would take so yeah I mean I would say like I think it to do it again I would want to know what the cost of cleanup was going to be before I started I don't know if they could have projected that I mean I don't know that I don't know maybe maybe the lumber guy maybe yeah some people say like a forestry consultant you know you should think about hiring I've seen some people say that forestry Consultants were like absolute trash and not worth having and then some said they were good where do you find one the Forestry Department has a list of Forestry Consultants interesting and it's not the people from the forestry service that came out and walked property with us no it's like a professional who they take I I think they take a cut from you know it's like 5% or something like that from whatever you make but they but they're more into like making money from cutting the the property yeah they like negotiate the best price I think they even work with the Mills so like you know they're making sure that you're getting the most money because it's advantageous to them but they the ones that I could find were not interested in are small acreage either so it was kind of like you know they're doing like hundred hundreds of Acres at a time so I I don't know that I I I that's the wall that we bump up against constantly in this lifestyle is you know you have this Homestead and it's what 5 10 acres maybe total and you're you're trying to then go to extensions agent and they're like yeah sorry unless you have 100 acres they're like you're not a real father I mean there's so many like regenerative things out there that I've written about like to to people about and they're like oh you have to have 80 acres or more and it's just so frustrating because it's like how much more power would we have if everybody who had five acres could use these Services I mean right and I mean I will say like so our nrcs agent we had a rough start with him but I feel like we're kind of starting to get somewhere with him and I called him the other day and was like hey we finished getting it loged because he was kind of like you know that's the next step and he was like okay that's awesome we'll talk in January and I was like do you know when in January he's like no I'll call you and I was like okay so there's like potentially funding from that that we can get maybe but um like the potential for that is more for like uh an 80 20% on seeds yeah and my experien is it's generally so far it has not been worth waiting for the government on that I will say there's also Soil and Water which is different than nrcs that we maybe should talk to them and see how they could help us also yeah but um yeah that's where we're at which is we have um a few trees standing a whole lot of mess on the ground and we're waiting to see how much a for stream aler can do if you would like some firewood and you're willing to cut it yourself come and talk to us I will say so far all the firewood people have been like nope don't want it oh I mean there's like thousands and thousands of dollars worth of uh oh my go back if you had the right tool it it would be a great deal for someone I'd give it away for free yeah no it's yours your name is all over um so yeah if you know somebody that's getting ready to log their property or need some help with the idea of logging or buying a property and they you know don't know that they shouldn't buy a forest right yeah share this podcast with them if you're in the midst of this and you're in the same kind of scenario and you want to commiserate send us a message DM email text yeah but you're not alone you're not alone you're not alone right not everyone inherited a beautiful set of like decades worth of free farmed land to make their make their Homestead on and so we're trying to you know carve it out of the Wilderness and essentially like I like to think we're doing it for you because now we've learned that hard lesson this is all that when we come out and do a consult for you we can tell you like hey don't do this or this is how you can do this and um we have more knowledge let's think about an alternative spending that kind of dough on clearing this land anyway all right well thank you for listening
