Some places need to be wild
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Some places need to be wild
Eric Hanson wrote:Ideally, we would all switch from wood pulp paper to maybe hemp based paper. Farmers could get an easy, low maintenance cash crop, all our paper needs could be supplied by a tenth the acreage, and most importantly, somehow, someway, those wooded acres would be allowed to grow back into a permanent forest.
But that is just my dream and I am not certain how this could actually become reality.
Eric
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Some places need to be wild
Some places need to be wild
"Study books and observe nature; if they do not agree, throw away the books." ~ William A. Albrecht
Some places need to be wild
Some places need to be wild
Some places need to be wild
Some places need to be wild
SKIP books, get 'em while they're hot!!! Skills to Inherit Property
Some places need to be wild
Travis Johnson wrote:To me it is simple, because I live with the realities of this very question.
I am clearing land, and have been for several years because with Maine's paper industry in shambles, especially paper mills that made brown paper, which uses the type of trees we have abundantly in Maine. So my forest has no value. 3 paper mills closed in a week. They consumed 2500 cords of wood per day, 365 days a year. When you live in a state that grows way more wood than that, it is devastating. You have to have a reason to grow trees fiscally speaking.
I am clearing land for one reason; the value as a forest land has not kept pace with property taxes. I sent a load of wood to the paper mill yesterday in fact, and I got $250 less than I got 25 years ago! Yet taxes have tripled. (I make $480 for 10 cord of wood).
The only way to combat that is to clear useless forest that has no value into something that does. I intended to raise sheep since I can make far more per acre with lamb then I ever could with wood. So I clear cut over 100 acres of land, and will turn that into fields. I got cancer and cannot farm sheep any more, but that was the plan. Even as hay though, I will make more money per acre then I ever would as a forest.
It is absolutely sickening. We have been logging here sustainably since 1746...I am even part of the American Tree Farm System, but the wood has no value. Somehow I have to pay the taxes.
I am not alone in this. As I write, within a few miles of me there are four of us clearing forest to make way for fields. I would say in the last 60 days, probably 90 acres of forest has been cleared to make way for new fields, and it has been like this for the last four years. The State of Maine is at a loss of what to do. Now that the trade war is on, we have no market for hardwood logs, because if you look at Maine, you see our markets. Canada surrounds us, and yet we can no longer ship logs to them.
Beat me up. Rub my face in it. Do whatever you want, I just plain have a hard time paying property taxes, and my land just has to pay for itself. Hay, sheep, small grains...whatever...but it is no longer forest products that pays the property taxes.
(By the way, I would be logging now, but it is down pouring rain).
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Some places need to be wild
Chris Kott wrote:
Travis Johnson wrote:To me it is simple, because I live with the realities of this very question.
I am clearing land, and have been for several years because with Maine's paper industry in shambles, especially paper mills that made brown paper, which uses the type of trees we have abundantly in Maine. So my forest has no value. 3 paper mills closed in a week. They consumed 2500 cords of wood per day, 365 days a year. When you live in a state that grows way more wood than that, it is devastating. You have to have a reason to grow trees fiscally speaking.
I am clearing land for one reason; the value as a forest land has not kept pace with property taxes. I sent a load of wood to the paper mill yesterday in fact, and I got $250 less than I got 25 years ago! Yet taxes have tripled. (I make $480 for 10 cord of wood).
The only way to combat that is to clear useless forest that has no value into something that does. I intended to raise sheep since I can make far more per acre with lamb then I ever could with wood. So I clear cut over 100 acres of land, and will turn that into fields. I got cancer and cannot farm sheep any more, but that was the plan. Even as hay though, I will make more money per acre then I ever would as a forest.
It is absolutely sickening. We have been logging here sustainably since 1746...I am even part of the American Tree Farm System, but the wood has no value. Somehow I have to pay the taxes.
I am not alone in this. As I write, within a few miles of me there are four of us clearing forest to make way for fields. I would say in the last 60 days, probably 90 acres of forest has been cleared to make way for new fields, and it has been like this for the last four years. The State of Maine is at a loss of what to do. Now that the trade war is on, we have no market for hardwood logs, because if you look at Maine, you see our markets. Canada surrounds us, and yet we can no longer ship logs to them.
Beat me up. Rub my face in it. Do whatever you want, I just plain have a hard time paying property taxes, and my land just has to pay for itself. Hay, sheep, small grains...whatever...but it is no longer forest products that pays the property taxes.
(By the way, I would be logging now, but it is down pouring rain).
Travis, I didn't mean to suggest that those who have to convert forest to other production are guilty of some vile depradation. My opinions apply only to the concept of specifically converting wild forest to a tree monocrop enforced with toxic gick, and continuing to perpetuate that production model over ones more permaculturally aligned.
One of my many sins, according to some environmentalists with whom I have conversed on many topics, is my penchant to want to find a way to derive a livelihood off of projects, especially long-term management projects, for those living in close proximity to them, even, and perhaps especially, if the main motivation for the projects are conservation or rewilding, or generally to contribute to ecological welfare.
I am accused of greed, to which I respond that if the project is irrelevant to anyone's livelihood or well-being, nobody but whoever you pay to look after it will care, or protect it; a failure to engineer in such a spirit of vested interest is doomed, and the product of short-sightedness and a narrow field of vision with regards to resilient design.
I wish there was a model that could help you transition from pulp paper trees to maybe higher-value lumber in a silviopastoral arrangement, but you know what you're doing, and are a beacon of sustainability and resilience for the rest of us; no criticism was meant at all, and I apologise for any misunderstanding.
-CK
Some places need to be wild
Some places need to be wild
Graham Chiu wrote:Here we have a government plan to plant 1 billion trees. Sounds like we could save that effort by buying the trees you're about to cut down.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Eric Hanson wrote:Neil,
This is exactly type of situation that makes me scratch my head even more. I am now even more conflicted. On the one hand, I love that those acres are being put towards the purpose of growing something. Even better, I love that these acres are not being paved or built upon. Not thrilled that they get harvested, but better than the alternative?
Anyhow, thanks for getting the thrust of the question and adding to my confusion. And I really mean that in the best possible way.
Eric
Some places need to be wild
steve bossie wrote:up here they target the spruce and fir for lumber. and thats what they replant even though they cut a whole hardwood ridge. they replant with softwoods. i wish they would plant hardwoods instead because its better for the animals but apparently they grow too slowly to be of value other than firewood.. also all spruce and fir is hauled to canadian mills then sold back to us as lumber.
yep. here as well. they send all softwood to canada now. sad. we have a few pellet mills left and a hardwood veneer mill but i heard they are struggling. all of the softwood mills up here were bought out by irving in the 90's then closed and the jobs shipped to canada. we still have quite a few cedar mills still going but they are getting pretty expensive as cedar isn't being replanted either.Travis Johnson wrote:
steve bossie wrote:up here they target the spruce and fir for lumber. and thats what they replant even though they cut a whole hardwood ridge. they replant with softwoods. i wish they would plant hardwoods instead because its better for the animals but apparently they grow too slowly to be of value other than firewood.. also all spruce and fir is hauled to canadian mills then sold back to us as lumber.
Down here all our primarily softwood mills have closed (Bucksport/Madison/Winslow/Lincoln/Milly/East Milly, etc), so the only ones left are the hardwood mills like Rumford, Jay and Skowhegan.
In 1947 there was 147 paper mills here, and now there are only a few:
Westbrook
Auburn
Skowhegan
Rumford
Jay
Old Town
Calias
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