New Land

We purchased ~9.5 acres of land in North Alabama recently with a stream and a moderate amount of trees (unlike the heavily forested google image). Still deciding how best to use it since it's 1.5 hours from home and won't have day-to-day care.

One idea we're tossing around is pecan trees:

1. Beautiful
2. Eat and sell pecans from years 7-30
3. Timber value after 30 years (around when we retire)

Visited the property last weekend and an Army Corp of Engineer contracter was overseeing trees being hauled away after the tornados. We spoke for quite some time, and he was insistent on the value of pecan trees. He even quoted a timber value at $10/ft for board. I queston the accuracy of this quote (sounds terribly high), but prompts further investigation into the orchard then timber concept.

As you can see, there's a lot of fallen trees: around 30 total. Planning to call a lumber company and see if they're worth anything.

While we were visiting last weekend, a little beagle puppy followed us around all day. So cute, so shy. He seemed homeless (all cute dogs with no collars do), but the neighbor's grand-daughter was so eager to take care of him, he think he's in good hands.

Here's Mark cranking up his new chain saw. It's a little rough around the edges but does the trick (on part of 1 tree, that's the extent of testing thus far).

Our neighbors to one side have cows, to another have a horse, and to the other have chickens, just a few on the loose. Snapped a shot of them SLOWLY crossing the road.

Upon inventigating of pecan plantings and tree nursery's in the area, came across Westervelt timber company in Tuscaloosa, Al that grows 6,500,000 loblolly pine seedlings/yr on 17 acres to keep their 500,000 acres in max production. Had to look at the picture a few times to make sure I was seeing it correctly, thought it was a field of grass. Very neat.