Timber sales were better than expected from the Mill Pond Demonstration Woods.
That’s according to local forester Bruce Wakeland. He has been working with Marshall County to help manage the 35 acre woodland to remove dead trees, invasive plant species, and help funds its management through timber sales.
The Mill Pond Demonstration Woods held a bid opening last week for the site. 27-thousand feet of timber is available. That quantity is considered fairly small.
Wakeland says there are typically two types of bidders: saw mill owners, and producers.
“They buy standing timber, they have logging crews, then they log it, and then they sell the logs to whoever they can get the most from the logs,” says Wakeland. “So they basically broker the logs after they log them.”
Marshall County anticipated about $12-thousand in revenue from the sales. One of the bidders, from Waterloo, Indiana, works with a logger that lives within a mile of the site. They were the high bid, coming in at more than $14-thousand.
The trees – which have been inventoried and marked can be removed from the site within the next two years. Wakeland says loggers use a variety of factors to determine when they will harvest the timber. Other bids ranged between $5-thousand and $10-thousand.
The lag in harvesting the timber from the Mill Pond Demonstration woods will allow Wakeland and volunteers time to remove the invasive Bush Honeysuckle.
“We already have a contract to do the honey suckle on this tract,” says Wakeland. “It’s common for honey suckle control to take three years. You get most of it, then you get what you missed and then you get what came in from seed the third year.”
Wakeland says the quality of the wood is high in his estimation.
The Marshall County Commissioners approved a Forestry line item in their budget to manage the funds received from the timber sales.
