What's a person need for horse property?

[airbiscuit]

I'm not sure there is an ROI on clearing some of the land. That said, making a few nice trails might be worth the effort. Everybody loves trails

 

[ultrarunner]

Everybody loves trails... a little meandering and big enough for a gator or horse or walking two by two...

 

[Pilot]

Wow! Lots of good suggestions.

Thinning I will do--not to prepare the place for horses but to get a few bucks as the timber has some value. I planted 1,300 trees 23 years ago and they are now ready for a commercial thinning.

I was considering since I would be thinning anyway, would there be an advantage to do anything to make it more appealing to horse people and the resounding answer from you guys is "no". That's good info, it makes the thinning simpler.

Everybody who visits loves this place. House is on the back corner, 1,200 ft. from the road so we have privacy. Privacy with a view of Mt. Hood, 11,000 ft. high and snow covered most of the year. And in Oregon the land use laws are so restrictive that acreage goes for a premium--the powers that be want everybody to live in a tiny condo stacked on top of one another, all downtown and ride a bike, walk or take public transit wherever they go. They think it is immoral to build a house on acreage. Getting on in years we need to be closer to town, which is the only reason we'll be selling in a couple years. We are spoiled & we expect to have a hard time finding a place we'll like.

 

[airbiscuit]

Thinning is a perfect time to make trails! Are you going tp be able to keep your tractors? They are good therapy.

 

[TractorGuy]

More like a cult than a religion in my experience!

There's a difference?

 

[TractorGuy]

Having the land prepped for pasture would cost at least 4 times more than you will get for the timber. Just had 5 acres clear cut here. Estimates to get the stumps out and burned ranged from a $1250 per acre from a guy that said I would need a bigger tractor to come behind him to $4500 per acre to have it finish graded. Not sure if it's gonna work out for me but I decided to buy a backhoe and attempt it myself then sell the backhoe. Check back with me in 5 years and I'll let you know how that turns out.

 

[hslogger]

I'm happy to hear that you consulted with Roger. As well as anyone I know I believe he has the years of experience and always a wealth of knowledge in the field. Stand improvement WILL add to the value of your forest. A prospective buyer might not know the difference until after purchase, but a savvy one will say, yeah they took some of the small stuff out, took some overstory out to release some other good trees, did a nice job, and took pride in the way the job was done. I always said the important thing is......"it's not what you take out of the stand, but how you leave it for the future." You know him and you know he is a conscientious logging contractor.

 

[sea2summit]

Don't bother trying to cater to horse people. They are the hardest people to please and you are going to lose your butt trying to attract them in. Someone is going to be interested if you price things right. Now if you want to put horses on your 10 acres it's easy. Just start with a couple sacks of money .

Also Set the stacks of money on fire.

 

[JamesHW]

Having the land prepped for pasture would cost at least 4 times more than you will get for the timber. Just had 5 acres clear cut here. Estimates to get the stumps out and burned ranged from a $1250 per acre from a guy that said I would need a bigger tractor to come behind him to $4500 per acre to have it finish graded. Not sure if it's gonna work out for me but I decided to buy a backhoe and attempt it myself then sell the backhoe. Check back with me in 5 years and I'll let you know how that turns out.

Sounds about right. We just had 5 acres of an overgrown agricultural field cleared and the price quoted was a bit over 5k per acre in our slice of Upstate NY. We defrayed the cost by selling selected saw timber on another 50 acres. Very professional job and the field was done in a few days.

 

[DrRod]

Could be drifting a bit off topic here but, in my experience, any timber operation on your land will leave a real mess. The loggers only want the clear trunks up to the first large branches. This leaves a lot of big tangled limbs on the ground. Now this does offer a great deal of firewood and you can find someone interested in taking it, but it will take several years before all the ruts, scrapes, slash, et al has faded and until then it won't look good to a prospective buyer. Also, when you thin out a stand of trees you can get a lot of brush [depends on you area]. But you might not get nice walking/riding trails without some repeating mowing. Sorry if this comes across as negative but I guess that's the price of experience.