Buying 'woods' from a farmer?

[s219]

Around here, if you see a clump of forest in the middle of farmland, it's usually the site of an abandoned home. They almost always kept a woodsy section for themselves for shade in the summertime. It ends up getting really overgrown like jungle after the place is abandoned. A lot of farmers planted bamboo around homes for more shade, and it takes over when not kept in check. I'd say 9 out of 10 forested/bamboo'd farm parcels around here are hiding an old farmhouse in the middle.

 

[whistlepig]

Good luck. We have 1,100 trees planted here. Trees can be a good thing. Or they can get a bit weary over time. Be careful what you wish for.

 

[dave1949]

Most of the non-native and invasive plants on my lot are around the old cellar hole and barn foundation. That's pretty common as I understand it.
Black locust, Japanese knotweed, garlic mustard, and some sort of vine that can slowly smother small trees and climb 30 feet up the black locusts.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

NW Ohio is flat as a board. Remember being up there once, and a farmer said something about his barn on the hill. The hill was about 1' in elevation higher than where we were standing. Course, being from southern ohio, where we have hills, we just looked all around and said, Nope, don't see no hills anywhere. That's still a joke in our family. As far as the woods, sometimes the valleys up there, which are about 1' lower, have drainage ditches thru them, or are swampy areas. Usually areas not suitable for farming. But you might get lucky and find a nice wooded area that is suitable. Just gotta go walk the land.

 

[JamesHW]

Also, does anyone want to speculate what that somewhat noticeable diagonal path is running through the west side of the parcels?

I notice odd straight tracks like that in my area of the upper Hudson River Valley and can usually trace them back to either old roads or abandoned rights of way. There is one that cuts through woods in the swampy area West of my land which is overgrown and not marked for anything. Fortunately when looking at 1960's era USGS topo map of the area (I have this on my phone as well in a Topo Maps app) and the track is clearly marked "Telephone". Nothing, not even signage now, so figure the track was abandoned in favor of better routes (probably the Northway which wasn't built by then. The maps also show fire roads & abandoned town roads and details of streams which modern maps do not bother with. Very useful.

As for finding land, I like to monitor what is available in my area, especially if any adjacent lots to my property go up for sale, so I keep an eye on the Land Watch website. Has a lot of [properties that I do not see on other sites including vacant, unimproved acreage.

Good luck!

 

[dave1949]

NW Ohio is flat as a board. Remember being up there once, and a farmer said something about his barn on the hill. The hill was about 1' in elevation higher than where we were standing. Course, being from southern ohio, where we have hills, we just looked all around and said, Nope, don't see no hills anywhere. That's still a joke in our family. As far as the woods, sometimes the valleys up there, which are about 1' lower, have drainage ditches thru them, or are swampy areas. Usually areas not suitable for farming. But you might get lucky and find a nice wooded area that is suitable. Just gotta go walk the land.

:laughing:

It's true about the "hills" and valleys". An overpass on I-75 is by far the tallest "hill" for miles and miles around Bowling Green. Sharon is from Clark, a little burg on the Holmes-Coshocton County line where they have small hills and valleys, plus not so much open farm land and lots more trees. She never did really get to like the NW Ohio area flat, open spaces.

We left NW Ohio 1985, but it still has a homey feel to me when we go for a visit. I guess it all depends on what a person grew up with. The hemmed-in feeling I would get in hilly, forested areas is not as strong as it used to be. I still appreciate a long view though.

 

[bdeboer]

Northwest of Columbus where I live, the land is: Either too wet, floodplain etc., might be where the cow pasture was when they had cattle 40 years ago, or where the farm buildings were and the woods grew up around the buildings as fell down.

 

[roadhunter]

I knew a farmer in Iowa who used to sell off the wooded areas of the farms he purchased. Mainly to people who used them for hunting. Only problem was the hunters pushed up the price of that timbered land to a point where it was pretty close to the farm land as far as cost.

 

[forgeblast]

If I am not mistaken there is shale development also going on in Ohio. People may not want to sell acreage, let along sell it with o/g mineral rights.

 

[Ohio Chris]

Thanks for the additional thoughts. I used the topo map from post #25 and it says that that line is a pipeline.

I found out today that all of those parcels are in trusts, or trusteeship, or whatever the correct term is. What does that generally imply? That they're holding onto the properties for heirs, but with rules as to how it can or can't be divided up?