The website
www.timberbuyer.net gets questions like yours at least once a week. here is my standard cut and paste letter that they get back. this is the one to out of Michigan questions.
First of all, in most cases people selling walnut trees out of thier yard for great amounts of money is simply urban legend. It doesn't happen very often if ever. Second, this is a Michigan website, so information probably wont apply to you. With that said, here is our standard answer to Michigan questions like yours.
We get emails exactly like yours weekly, and in slow economic times sometimes daily. My first question to you would be: Is this tree in a residential area? Is it in your yard? Or on the edge of a yard? If so, you probably won't find anyone that will touch it due to several factors. High harvest costs and liabilities involved in these areas, chances of metal imbedded in the trees. Another thing is that yard trees grown in the open tend to be short of trunk and heavy of limb, giving them very poor form. The high dollar walnut trees are found in dense forest settings where they grow long straight trunks without defect. They grow much slower and have tighter growth rings that make them desirable.
The Timber Buyers Network has contacts with several foresters around the state and their experience totals in the hundreds of years. Not one can remember ever documenting the sale of a such a tree in a residential setting.
If the trees are in a residential area, they are probably worth more for their landscape value and the nuts they produce then they ever will be for logs. If they must come down, and you cant do it, you will probably have to pay to have them cut. You could probably get a hold of a portable sawmill to saw them up for you for your own use, or you could try to sell the lumber.
I always hate to write these notes to landowners that really think that they have such a monetary asset in their yard and brake their bubble. The truth is they still are an asset. Stand back and enjoy the beauty that they give as a tree.
