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  • From: Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] OT: Scratching My Head
  • Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 12:07:26 -0500

Franklin,

What kind of forest are you talking about? I think the forests of our large and diverse country differ greatly. What you have in NE is not what we have in the mid Atlantic. And while your shorter living forest up in the NE is one thing, those old growth redwoods, trees well over 1000 years old, are not "buggy and rotty and develop spider cracks in the trunks". Take a vacation out that way and look. Seeing the Sequoias in Sequoia National Park is worth the plane ticket out and back. I wish we were preserving more, just from the point of view of leaving something for our children to see.

On our land our oaks are mostly 40-80 years old. But the half dozen 200 year old trees that were left near the old homestead are as healthy and more beautiful than many of their younger kin. They have a value in themselves besides what I can get by hauling them off to the logmill.

Just because you might have an extra bedroom in your house doesn't mean you must rent it out to a roomer.

I manage our wood lot and harvest it, but that doesn't mean we as a nation shouldn't be preserving ancient forests too. Should we also be damming up the Grand Canyon and tapping Old Faithful for geo power just because it has economic value?

I don't think so.

In fact, I'm somewhat pissed at the Forest Services philosophy on timbering on government land. I shouldn't have to compete with myself. Cutting trees injudiciously on public lands unnaturally lowers the 'market' price of privately owned timber. Talking about government interference in the 'market'.




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