Southern Yellow Pine ?

[SwampDonkey]

Well if you could get land owners all to participate and hold foreign imports to the standards of the domestic business then it might be a step toward a solution. Heck I've seen it here many times. A mill will cry for wood. There are a number of crown leases that have volumes of wood that can not be processed by the mill with that lease. For instance a softwood stud mill isn't going to be producing paper and vise versa. Although, some companies are fully integrated and they have sub-licensees as well. But, when one mill is crying for wood, the other licenses should be supplying some volume, not exporting it. My point is, while this is going on proivate wood is going state wide, because of price and no playing around with turning on and off the deliveries. Heck we have contracts with these mills, honor the darn contracts or the land owner is going to say to hell with it. It all boils down to this, as soon as they make a deal with another lease holder for volume, they shut the tap off from private deliveries. Then when their supply runs short, they expect all the private volume to come through the gate at year end to fulfill the contract. Then blame the private sector for not supplying wood at their whim. Just makes you want to grab someone by the throat sometimes. 

[WDH]

For the small landowner, timing is critical.  The big Industrial guys cut all the time, regardless of the market, while the small private guy has to be more discerning in when to harvest.  I recently sold a first thinning (planted loblolly pine) that will be harvested this year, but it is a silviculturally driven sale.  I have some stands that are in their early 20's that need second thinning, but I am delaying that harvest because the prices are so low.  The growth on those stands has slowed (needs thinning), but the growth is on trees of sawlog size, so it will not take much of a price improvement at all to get me back even or ahead.

On the first thinning, those stands (ages 12 and 13) are growing lower value pulpwood, so the sooner that I can thin and get the new growth in the form of chip-n-saw (small sawlogs), the better I will be from a financial standpoint.  As a trees moves from pulpwood size to small sawlog size, the price/value for that tree doubles.

Anyway, you have to be smart when you sell. 

There will a Thinning WDH thread in the near future.  Tom has gone ahead and started something.........you have to keep up with the Toms .

Also, don't worry, these are true Southern Yellow Pines .