Need advice..... Living near tree farms

[jassar]

Hi Everyone,

The DH and I had a deal ready to close, for our new home and life in N. Idaho. At the last minute, mold was found and the house was pulled off the market until remediation is completed. It is taking forever, and we are looking at other options, just in case.

We found a potential property, about 10 acres. There are tree farms across the street and down the street. They look to be about 20 acre farms, including the homes, and there are a few of them.


Has anyone lived near a tree farm before and if so, anything we should be particularly concerned about that comes to mind?


Thank you
Janna

[Paumon]

What kind of trees?

[Harry Chickpea]

There is some land down around Talledega that is tree farmed. When an area has been clear cut it looks pretty nasty for a couple of years and there sometimes can be erosion. There is a lot of logging of mature trees around here, and about the only thing I notice is the log trucks. Those and the feed trucks make me glad we built way back from the road. Gotta respect those guys. They do hard and dangerous work and the drivers are on the road constantly, but I rarely hear of an accident and when there is one it is usually not the log truck that is at fault.

[rhaige9]

I live a couple miles from a nursery/ tree farm. No issues of any kind.

[Dutchofsc]

No problems, every few years there will be some logging activity, a few years later new trees will be growing and the cycle repeats a decade to two later. Happens all over where my place is, not bad at all. The good news is that you will have many trees as neighbors, not a bunch of cookie cutter houses.
I live in one of those cookie cutter neighborhoods, and I can't wait to move out to my property out in the country, where there are many trees and few people. Best to you.


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[geo in mi]

Here in Michigan, it's Christmas tree farms, on land that is amost worthless for any other kind of farming. Pretty benign, maybe some fertilizer spreading, weed cutting and manual tree trimming in the summertime, then if it is a Cut Your Own, some activity after Thanksgiving, then back to peacefuless in January.

geo

[karenp]

What kind of tree farm? If you are talking about timber land around here they grow pine trees for timber. The occasionally do arial spraying to kill deciduous trees. I'm always worried about it drifting and killing our trees.

[rambler]

I too was wondering what type of tree farm, there is Christmas trees, there are places that grow saplings for landscape use with root balls, there is tree farms that are for logging every 25 years, and so on.

Any will create a little bit of traffic, and when they harvest the scenery will change, but if we want to have an ecconomy and jobs and other people paying taxes, don't see how there really is any problem with any of that.

Paul

[DEKE01]

My farm is a tree farm. If you use Angel Soft tissue to wipe your tookus, Brawny paper towels to wipe your counters, or build with southern yellow pine 2x4s, there is an ever so small chance you are using a bit of my farm output.

What are your concerns? Harvest is every 10 - 20 years. The big guys will clear cut a few dozen acre squares so it doesn't look good for a couple of years, but they replant. They will use herbicides to prep an area prior to seeding or transplanting, but at least around here, that is done from the ground, not the air. After that, the area will get largely ignored for years.

I didn't clearcut anything but one 5 acre and a couple of 1 acre spots in order to diversify the farm into other uses. Mostly I thinned down areas to create silvapasture.

[jassar]

Thank you all, I actually feel very comfortable with the tree farms now

They are a combination of Christmas trees, some Maples and others that are grown for nurseries. Not "logging" type farms

I really appreciate your input!

Banana dude, cause he makes me smile

[highlands]

At 20 acres the activity won't be very frequent for lumber. For Christmas trees it would be annually cutting and selling trees as well as any trimming and such.

We 'tree farm' that is we do sustainable forestry. We're cutting somewhere on our land every year but it could be a couple of miles from a neighbor. Around these parts most land is in forestry if it isn't built up and most isn't built up.

The only concern I would have is if they're using pesticides or herbicides. Explain you're thinking of buying and ask the neighbors. Good chance to get to know them before you buy.

[haypoint]

Originally Posted by geo in mi

Here in Michigan, it's Christmas tree farms, on land that is amost worthless for any other kind of farming. Pretty benign, maybe some fertilizer spreading, weed cutting and manual tree trimming in the summertime, then if it is a Cut Your Own, some activity after Thanksgiving, then back to peacefuless in January.

geo

As a teenager, I spent several summers pruning Christmas trees all over Michigan and northern Indiana. There are several insects that damage Christmas trees, so insecticides are used. To reduce weeds from competing with young trees, herbicides are used. The green paint used to color the trees, in the fall, is non-toxic, I think.
While many Christmas trees are grown on light sandy soils, Kalkaska, Baldwin, Lakeview, there are a few places where faster growth justified better ground.

[palm farmer]

I have a tree farm/nursery, palms, bamboo, some oaks,cypress, elms, spring n summer early fall a few trucks a week if all goes well, sometimes load trucks late into the night, I leave a buffer around the edge though for development purposes later down the line