Your so right about doing control burns Patrick. I did them too on my farms. Out west they stopped doing such things and then over several decades the fuel laying in the forests piled up and led to the enormous wild fires they had a few years ago.
They have wild fires out west every year. There is a forester in the county beside me that earns a substantial portion of his yearly income traveling out to California every summer to battle wildfires. Lefties never learn.
Glad to see you doing this. I wish the government would go back to forest management and not political management. That is very important to the environment and does not harm anything. Well to the tree huggers out there it does. Good job sir. I’m a retired fireman and you did an excellent job sir.
Brings back many memories I’m retired now but I was a certified control burn planner and supervisor for many years Both hazard reduction and site prep. Carried a drip torch for a lot of miles and smelled a lot of smoke. Great video !
great video i appreciate what your doing in all the videos especially how you farm the red clay soil. GOODLUCK from ohio born @ raised , but all my family are from alabama @ georgia great people !
I am so glad you posted this video. You did an excellent job of explaining the benefits of control or prescribed burning. So many of the liberals who are supposedly animal lovers and tree huggers fail to realize the benefits of control burning and they are too narrow minded to understand how the burning is actually beneficial to the wildlife. But....liberals and common sense don't exactly go together anyway.
During the 80s and 90s we pushed up fence rows and cleaned up a lot of heads in order to install irrigation. But at the same time, we planted a lot of our dry corners and smaller fields that weren't really conducive for irrigation in pines. At certain intervals those pines have been selectively thinned and now, thanks to burning and better management practices, those areas are excellent for quail and rabbits. But the biggest detriment now is the damn coyotes and wild hogs.
Coyotes, wild hogs, and armadillos. We (the southeast) didn’t have any of those during the glory days of the Bobwhite Quail. Coyotes and armadillos showed up here in the mid 80s. Hogs arrived just after 2000. We have a quail and rabbit resurgence going on right now on the farm, but it is nothing compared to where they were even in the 90s.
And a lot of people don't realize that we, as farmers, view timber as a valuable crop. It's a long-term investment but with proper management, timberland is far more valuable than peanuts or cotton, it's a renewable resource, and it can provide for generations to come.
To be profitable you have to really watch the market and harvest your timber at opportune times. Timber (saw and pulp) prices fluctuate just as much as row crop commodities. If you plant slash or loblolly, on average, over the life of the planting (typically 30 years) they will make just enough money to pay for the site prep, planting, and 30 years of property taxes. If you don’t get a beetle infestation, and catch a couple of lucky price breaks during at least 2 of your harvest periods then you can make some money. Planting long leafs for straw harvest is a quicker cash flow and is very lucrative for a 5-7 year period…….but your grandkids will harvest that slow growing timber. The latest generation of super trees is making the fiber industry a quicker turn around, which will potentially make it more profitable. My cousin is a pine tree planter by trade. He said newest pine tree varieties can be 8’-12’ tall in year 3.
@@PatrickShivers the timberland has one other benefit. It has allowed us to offer a few "selective" hunting leases. You'd be surprised how much folks from Atlanta, Jacksonville, Savannah and Augusta are willing to pay just to hunt. Some of them only 3 times a year. We do however have one gentleman from Jacksonville who brings his camper and stays several weeks. He is one of a few because he is a very good steward of the land and he respects our property.
I don’t know the exact acreage. Each year it could be as low as 100 or as high as 400. Of the areas we burn, we don’t always burn every acre each year.
I haven’t been up that way. I’m always passing through on 118 coming from or heading towards Leslie or Dawson. If I have to go to Cordele, Macon, or Statesboro this is my path.
Mr. Patrick here in N.E. FLA. there are very few quail left round here l havent seen one in 15 years. Used to hunt quail all over N.E FLA. Have you seen a drop in population? I like those burns native americans used to burn every spring. Well once again like the picture show thanks.
The local quail population has bumped up the last couple of years, but is of coarse way lower than it was in the 1980s and earlier. All through the 80s and 90s farmers pushed up old fence rows and cleaned up hedges around fields. Farm land is optimized now but quail habitat is minimized. We also saw the introduction of armadillos and coyotes east of the Mississippi river in the 1980s. They both devastate quail populations. The fur industry (which is fed by trappers) evaporated, which means the raccoon (and fox)populations exploded….more bad news for quail. They got hit with a “perfect storm” of circumstances and it’s a miracle there is still any around.
I’m in between Fort Gaines, Bluffton, and Blakely, Georgia. About 45 minutes southeast of you. I pass through the thriving metropolis of Smithville from time to time.
Dad’s is a low hour machine. He bought it from Pulaski county Georgia road department. He runs it a little each winter. We tore it slam down, painted, and re-built 10-12 years ago.
Typical pine production here in the southeast USA goes like this: plant trees. 10-15 years later first thinning (about 1/3 of the trees), 5-7 years later 2nd thinning, 10-12 years after 2nd thinning clear cut. One year sit out. Replant next year. It’s roughly a 30 year cycle
Thanks for the detailed answer. I enjoyed the forestry video and all of your videos. It 's interesting learning about southern agriculture. Are the pine trees in your wood yellow pine? Here in Michigan hardwood forests are self seeding. Most private woods are not very well managed and thinning doesn't get done.
@@nezrom9864 Slash and Loblolly are considered yellow pine and longleaf is sold as heartpine (the most desirable of all pines). Longleaf is also the slowest growing. If you plant longleaf your goal is to make money on pinestraw because you won’t be alive when it’s sold for timber.
Interesting. I'm in Pennsylvania and it's not really allowed here to have a controled burn. Shame it doesn't control the rattlesnakes , I have no real fear of the bobcat population we have but the mountain lions are another thing
Have you ever seen the video where the mountain line stalks/chases the trail hiker all the way back to his car? It’s over 6 minutes long of hiker backing up trail, throwing rocks, and yelling at cat that just keeps coming.
@@PatrickShivers haven't seen that one. We have had 6 sightings in the last 30 years on the farm. PA claims that they don't exist here but one was killed in 1965 in local area
