FIGURE 246.―The farm woods, if rightly handled, is a savings bank paying a good rate of interest
WOODS on the Farm Like Saving Account If Rightly Handled
Timber trees on the farm are like money in a savings bank. They are an investment. The farm woods are increasingly being used as security for loans.
In order to get the most out of the investment, the owner must give it good protection, as an element of risk is involved. Complete protection from fire comes as the first requisite, quite as much as protection from theft is a first essential in the case of money or other securities in a bank. Other forms of protection to timber are from damage by livestock, by insects, and by diseases.
The trees are the principal, and the new growth is the interest. Unlike the bank account, the better the care and the more complete the protection, the larger the rate of interest. There is a limit, however, to thus speeding up new growth.
The cutting of trees may be so regulated in amount as simply to remove the amount of new growth or the interest. This method of harvesting only as much as grows, known as a sustained yield, is a safe one to follow as a guide. If cutting is not properly regulated, it is an easy matter to over-cut the woods, and thus so reduce the principal in the woods bank that it will bring in but little interest. There is no more widespread and costly mistake being made than cutting that draws too heavily on the principal.
Farm woodlands have many times been the means of lifting a mortgage or of making the difference between loss and profit on the farm balance sheet. In the words of an Ozark Mountain farmer, "Timber is our legal tender.” “Farm timber,” says the head of the Federal land bank of Springfield, Mass., “furnishes an income from lands on many farms in New England that would otherwise be a liability because of the soil and rugged topography. The farm wood lot fills in the waste spaces, and wood and timber help out as part of the regular farm income.” In the coastal-plain region of southern Georgia, a leading farmer recently said, Young timber is the greatest investment of anything I know of. I'd rather have 300 or 400 young pines on an acre of my land than keep it in 25-cent tobacco.”
If the woods bank is used wisely and only the amount of the new growth is cut, the capital will be left untouched, and the land will be kept growing timber at the maximum rate and will make the largest profit for the owner. In a nutshell, good woods practice is to cut only as much as grows, to use the ax and saw rightly, and to keep fires out at all times.