THE WOOD LOT
If you have a bit of woods on your little farm, take care of it. By
intelligent thinning you can make an average income of five dollars
per acre from ordinary second growth wild woods. The cord wood,
barrel hoops, fence posts, and so on will decrease your expenses,
while the timber will increase in value. That lot is the place to
start your boy as a forester.
Instructions how to treat the trees can be obtained from your State
Forestry Department or from the National Forest Service at
Washington: the care of growing timber is a big subject and requires
study, but don't sell your standing timber without their advice.
Forestry can hardly be made to pay on a small lot with hired labor
or hired teams, and you must not pay much for your wood lot, else
interest and taxes will eat up the returns.
To be of high quality, timber must be, to a considerable proportion
of its height, free of limbs, which are the cause of knots; it must
be tall; and it must not decrease rapidly in diameter from the butt
to the top of the last log. In a dense stand of timber there is very
great competition for sunlight among the individual trees, with the
result that height growth is increased. Trees in crowded stands are
taller than those in uncrowded stands of the same age. When the
trees are crowded so that sunlight does not reach the lower
branches, these soon die and become brittle they then fall off or
are broken off by the wind, snow, or other agencies. By this process
trunks are formed which are free from limbs, and hence of high
quality.
It is evident, therefore, that trees in the wood lot should be so
crowded that the crown or top of each individual tree may be in
contact with those of its nearest neighbors. A crowded stand of
trees produces not only a larger number but also a greater
proportion of high quality sawlogs than an uncrowded stand. So vital
a matter is their forest shade that it does not do to set out young
trees which have grown in the forest. Ordinarily, the exposure to
the sunlight stunts them and often kills them. Nursery trees are
best; the next best are trees that have grown at the edge of the
woods.
The actual value of woodland as pasture is small. One dollar per
acre per year is probably a liberal estimate of the value of its
forage. Thrifty fully stocked stands of timber will grow at the rate
of 250 or more board feet of lumber per year. Adopting only 250
board feet as the growth and assuming the value of the standing
timber to be from $5 to $8 per 1000 feet board measure, the value of
the timber growth is from $1.25 to $2 per acre per year.
If the timber is given good care, moreover, the growth should be as
much as 500 board feet per acre per year. The larger value of the
wood lot for growing timber, as compared to the value of its forage
only, is therefore apparent.
It must not be thought possible to secure this growth of timber and
utilize the wood lot for pasture at the same time, because the stock
eat the seedlings and damage the trees.
If shade, however, rather than forage is the wood lot's chief value
to stock, it can doubtless be provided by allowing the stock to
range in only a portion of the lot. The remainder can more
profitably be devoted to the production of wood.
Owners are doubtless in some instances indifferent about fires in
their wood lots, because they do not realize that these may do great
harm without giving striking evidence of the fact. They burn the
fallen leaves and accumulated litter of several years, thus
destroying the material with which trees enrich their own soil. The
soil becomes exposed, evaporation is greater, and more of the rain
and melted snow runs off the surface. The roots may also be exposed
and burned. The vitality of the trees is weakened and their rate of
growth decreased. Don't burn leaves or waste growth: it is dangerous
and they are valuable for mulch and for manure.
It has been found in the prairie region that through the protection
afforded by the most efficient grove windbreaks, the yield in farm
crops is increased to the extent of a crop as large as could be
grown on a strip three times as wide as the height of the trees.
At present the following states maintain nurseries and distribute
young trees either free or practically at cost to planters within
the state: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Maryland,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, and Kansas.
The names of nurseries which handle stock of certain trees and their
quoted prices for all the more important species can be secured from
the Forest Service, Washington, D. C.
Whether your wood lot pays a profit or not, like the profit from the
rest of your land, depends largely on how it is taxed. The higher it
is taxed the harder it is to make it pay. In most states timberland
is assessed on the basis of its value, timber and land together.
Woodland assessed on this basis is overtaxed as compared with land
assessed on the basis of what it produces each year. The value of
plowland for farm purposes is established by what it will earn. If
the owner can make $10 an acre a year over all expenses by growing
say wheat, corn, cotton or alfalfa on it, his land will have a value
of perhaps $150 an acre. If it took two years to grow a crop, the
land would be worth only half as much. Its owner in that case would
kick vigorously if he could not get his assessment lowered. He would
kick still more vigorously if he had to pay a tax also on the value
of the standing crop, after having to pay too much on the land. "The
Lord loveth a cheerful kicker."
With woodland the case is still worse. Each year the owner may have
to pay a tax on the merchantable crops of many past years. It is as
though the owner of plowland had to pay a tax on the value of his
field crops twice a week throughout the growing season. When a
full-grown tree is cut down or burned up in a forest fire, it may
have been taxed 40 or 50 times over. Each year the land on which it
grew has been valued not on the basis of its earning power, but on
the basis of what it would bring if sold, timber and all. A tax
levied on the income-earning value of the land would be much more
equitable.
Certain states have applied this principle by legislation under
which land to be used for growing timber can be classified so that
the timber can be taxed separately from the land. The land there is
taxed annually on its value, without timber. The tax on the timber
is not paid until the crop is harvested. It is therefore a tax on
the yield. In New York this yield tax is 5 per cent of the value of
the crop harvested; Michigan 5 per cent of it; Massachusetts 6 per
cent; and Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania 10 per cent, with
different provisions for forests already established.
Such a method is much better than that adopted by a number of states
which exempt, under certain conditions, reforested or reforesting
lands for a term of years, or allow rebates or bounties on such
lands.
The profit of a growing forest crop will depend largely on relief
from excessive taxation. It is unthrifty public policy to discourage
putting waste land to work. ("The Farm Woodlot Problem," by Herbert
A. Smith, Editor Forest Service--from Yearbook of Department of
Agriculture for 1914.)