Cherry plantation?

[Blakesmaster]

I was wondering if any of you guys have experience with this sort of thing. My boss did a logging job a year back on a "cherry plantation" ( for lack of a better phrase ) where every tree that wasn't a cherry with a DBH of 20" or more was cut. The cherry logs over 20" were skidded out and sold while all the ash, maple, oak and everything else was left on the ground to rot. My boss estimated over $50K in timber was left simply because it wasn't cherry. The cherries less than 20" were left standing for seeding purposes. Anybody else ever do this kind of work?

 

[ropensaddle]

I was wondering if any of you guys have experience with this sort of thing. My boss did a logging job a year back on a "cherry plantation" ( for lack of a better phrase ) where every tree that wasn't a cherry with a DBH of 20" or more was cut. The cherry logs over 20" were skidded out and sold while all the ash, maple, oak and everything else was left on the ground to rot. My boss estimated over $50K in timber was left simply because it wasn't cherry. The cherries less than 20" were left standing for seeding purposes. Anybody else ever do this kind of work?

Seems mighty wasteful to me. How far would they have had to haul it?

 

[Blakesmaster]

I know the place was pretty far out there but they were obviously already set up to haul logs which seems to me to be one of the most costly portions of logging, but yeah, "wastefu"l was my exact thought. I could only come up with a few MILDLY decent explanations for it.

1. The mess from the other trees made it harder for wildlife to eat the cherry saplings.

2. The obvious benefits of putting nutrients back into the soil. ( But it seems that spreading mulch or wood chips in the forest would accomplish that same task and still allow you to reap the harvest of the other timber. )

3. The fewer amount logs you pull out of the woods lowers your chances of scarring or killing the future cherry crop.

These explanations work but it still seems a bit of a stretch. Hoping someone could help me connect the dots.

 

[ropensaddle]

I know the place was pretty far out there but they were obviously already set up to haul logs which seems to me to be one of the most costly portions of logging, but yeah, "wastefu"l was my exact thought. I could only come up with a few MILDLY decent explanations for it.

1. The mess from the other trees made it harder for wildlife to eat the cherry saplings.

2. The obvious benefits of putting nutrients back into the soil. ( But it seems that spreading mulch or wood chips in the forest would accomplish that same task and still allow you to reap the harvest of the other timber. )

3. The fewer amount logs you pull out of the woods lowers your chances of scarring or killing the future cherry crop.

These explanations work but it still seems a bit of a stretch. Hoping someone could help me connect the dots.

Yeah, I thought of the soil scarface and skidding concerns, profit was most likely the verdict, not enough for their time at least firewood it sheesh!

 

[Blakesmaster]

My boss is just a tree guy, not a logger, so I do question his estimates as far as timber value goes, but even if the value of the left behind logs was half of what he guessed it's still $25K!

 

[farmer]

Demand is pretty low for sawlogs, or so I read. Lumber prices are down while everything else is up. That should be a good indicator. Firewood with a processor would seem to have made sense though.

 

[lumberjack333]

Yeah those logs were probably worth more as pulp than sawlogs... however it sounds very excessive to me and VERY wasteful to drop that much timber just to let it rot, some selective cutting of the diseased trees would have been a much better route and over time would genetically improve the stands health... and just cutting every cherry over 20"dbh is also a bad idea as some of those larger trees should have been left behind because they put out a much larger seed crop. However cherry also returns vigorously as stump sprouts (although the lumber won't be great because sprouts often = co-dominant leaders) and they will germinate well in all the slash. The now open canopy will also provide plenty of light that cherry requires, as they don't survive well in low light conditions. Ideally forestry is a slow process and managing a stand to produce the results you want takes decades, the correct procedure to manage that stand was probably to remove a little less of the other hardwood species, selectively cutting out the poor quality timber, giving the cherry emulated "natural disturbance" openings in the canopy but also avoiding wasting quite so much potentially good timber.

 

[Blakesmaster]

Thanks for reviving this, I feared it dead!

From what everyone's been saying here, the landowner could have gone a lot of other ways and made more change but you shoulda seen the skidder looking like a Tonka Toy next to the pile of cherry they did pull. He's obviously doing something right.

 

[lumberjack333]

Oh I have no doubt that he pulled a good pile of cherry out and made some $$$, just from a management perspective... maybe not the best route to take. He may have made money now, but the future potential of the stand to produce results like that again may not be as good... also if there was poplar in the area BEWARE - they could choke out the returning cherry.

 

[farmer]

Monoculture is a dumb idea too. Who is to say that cherry won't get a disease or insect infestation. Managing for long term should return much more than cashing in all for now.

 

[lumberjack333]

Without continuous management it probably wont succeed into monoculture... probably just going to be an impenetrable mess of mixed species saplings and juveniles anyways :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[userrqme]

Without continuous management it probably wont succeed into monoculture... probably just going to be an impenetrable mess of mixed species saplings and juveniles anyways :hmm3grin2orange:

u R FUNNY ) HAHA..!