Basically Joseph, you are going to want to know what your "site index" is, that is a combination of soil type, rainfall patterns and hydrography for the site, what sun exposure you have (North slopes do better for some
trees, south for others depending on the slope) and the type of trees you are planning to raise. There is also the question of soil nutrition, out here the hills have low Phosphorous, so P is (one) of the limiting factors.
You would probably want to look it over to see if you like it - no sense buying a tract of land if you just have bad vibes over it - and go talk to the small woodlands organization in your area, or one of the colleges with a silvaculture program. Take a notebook. If there are trees on it to start with you want to have someone cruise it to see what your stocking is, and what sort of work you will have to do to put it into production. If you aren't used to looking at seedlings you can miss the trees for the brush. Again, you may have trees that are diseased or have conk and you will need to clear them out. Around here, if you find you have firs with laminated
root rot (for example), you pretty much have to plant something else for the next couple of 20 year rotations in that pocket.
What you get out of a site is a combination of the site index, which tells you what grows well, if anything, and what species you put in. Also the market is a big factor nowadays: there may be an oversupply of lumber and logs come time to harvest, they may shut the national forests down again and restrict overall supply, they might make
cob and balehouses mandatory and you can only
sell dimension lumber to the Koreans. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, I think it is a wonderful idea, but you may want to consider other benefits besides the money in -> money out, cause you may not be able to depend on the place to earn your
mortgage payments, especially at first.
On the other hand, Mark Twain said, "Buy land, they've stopped making it", and our place is truly a balm to the soul, when I'm not clearing blackberries or plugging the holes the beavers dig in the dam...
Let me know what you decide to do, like buying a house, buying land is a fantastically wonderful spectator sport.
