Our timber was cut in late December of 2019. We wanted to limit the possible damage to our land. The big log skidder and dragging logs can cause ruts. So the ground needs to freeze pretty deep – maybe 5 inches down. Also if there is too much snow the skidder can’t get around. So we were lucky and had good conditions for logging in late December.

The first trees cut were the most valuable – the Black Walnuts. We had 20 very large Black Walnut trees. The above shows one of the big trees with my middle daughter showing how big one of the logs is. You can also see that they also keep smaller branches.

The above picture shows just some of the Black Walnuts on the landing waiting to be transported to the sawmill.

The Black Walnut log that split above shows the beautiful grain of the wood and why it is so valuable. The loggers didn’t take that piece so I am thinking of using it for some type of wall art in our house.

After the Black Walnuts were hauled off the landing the logger started work on the rest of the harvest. In terms of quantity Red Oak was the most common tree we cut. The main picture for this post shows me by a really nice Red Oak log. In the picture above, which is also a Red Oak log you can see decay in the middle. In fact the logger left many large 2-5 foot bases which had too much rot in them to bring to the landing.

The above picture shows one of the larger Red Oak stumps. This stump has very little rot in the center. Most of the big Red Oaks had quite a bit of rot in the center. I will post more stump pictures in another post.

Most of the White Oak we cut was Bur Oak. But we did have a couple White Oaks on our ridge growing with the Red Oaks and Maples. The picture above is the stump of the White Oak which I pointed out in the previous post.

The picture above and below give an idea of the number of trees on the landing.

Of course the landing changed daily as more cut trees came to the landing from the woods while logging trucks picked up trees from the landing and transported them to the mill in Western Wisconsin.

The picture above shows a logging truck picking up trees. I was generally working during the day so I don’t know how many truckloads went out. I do know we had over 29,000 board feet of mixed hardwood and around 6,750 board feet of Black Walnut.