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New Land Acquisition

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richhagen:
Last week I closed on 18 acres about 40 miles outside of St. Louis, on the Illinois side.  There is no power to the property, however there is a pole near one corner of it, I think the wires to that pole actually cross the corner of my parcel.   It is all trees.  there is a sliver of creek on one corner, and the rest is all hills, the start of a ridge between drainage into that creek.  The land is currently zoned for agriculture.  The purpose for the purchase was to put up a storage building and maybe try my hand at growing some things.  Toward that end I may clear a bit of the land for crops, however most will remain forest.  In this diary I plan to document what improvements I manage for that property.  Currently I am only at the planning stage. 

My current thoughts are as follows.  First, I will need to redo an area where I can pull in off of the road as the drainage does not appear to be that good.  There  is a corrugated galvanized steel tube along the ditch with dirt on it currently, but this corresponds with a low spot where there is run off and hence some erosion.  I will need to redo this area and plan to pour a concrete pad for parking.  Currently I plan to put up a small utility building of poured concrete on one side of the parking pad to store a few implements and ultimately put an initial small power system.  vandalism and theft at an unattended property in these parts is a real concern, so I am currently thinking of building the structure out of poured concrete with ample rebar, and to put a single door entry and a steel door and frame with another steel plate door with a protected padlock to secure it.  It will need to be tall enough so that a couple of solar panels are out of sight, mind and out of easy reach on the top of it.    Once this is done, I plan to build a larger structure with a workshop to process any agricultural products from the property as well as store some excess equipment. 

Some of my coworkers seem to think that I will have a 'deer problem' on the property and have volunteered their services to remove a few of them.  I am not much of a hunter of four legged game, so I will probably let one to a few come down in hunting season and try their luck. 

Other than that, I am going to try and inventory the valuable timber on the property and initiate some type of forest management to enhance the economic value of the timber way down the road in the future.

Bruce S:
Rich;
Nice looking plot you have there!
I would have offered to assist with culling the herd, but I'm sure you've had more offers than there is a herd :).
Let me know if I can assist with planning stage NiCds my new supplier types are "A" sized and 4Ahr.
You know them as 7.2Vdc 800Mhz radio batteries :->.
I can also assist with raising the barn when that day comes the mind ain't what is used to be , but the back is still solid.

thirteen:
Maybe take a quick look at forest management for a tax break if you manage your forest they maybe require you to plant certain trees in the future for that region. A person used to get a state tax break and a federal tax break several years ago on their  forest management. Bees might be a good idea to have. Look into the history of the land and maybe find a old structure there and use a metal detector for a fun excursion.  If there is one look for a well you may have to fill it in for safety reasons or develop it. Best of luck with the new property.
 Just a few ideas. 13

Frank S:
when you start your inventory catalog of the current timber do so by creating a series of smaller mapped & numbered grids try to use some sort of semi permanent land marks but avoid attaching anything to the trees since what ever is placed or marked on them will be over grown or cause scars.
 Also if any of the trees show evidence of large burls make a special category to list these as burls often have more value than the amount of timber in the tree.
 A friend of mine in the pacific Northwest felled dead tree for fire wood, that he thought was a deformed old growth tree. It turned out to have been a pair of western ceders that had  grown around an alder, the stump turned out to be worth many thousands. 

aerotron:
Consider building a storage shed in the local tradition, with material from a nearby building centre.  Buy all your implements at yard sales and second hand stores so when they might go missing, you won't be crying. I remember when my father bought some rural land, somehow the idea of managing a woodlot led him to allow responsible forestry scouts to mark with paint the irresponsible trees as and incentive to sign a contract with them. I had a laugh when I noticed that there wouldn't be any large old crooked hollow rotten trees left...only the same small single stemmed pole looking trees...zzzzzz....boring...no perchs for birds to land, or hollow limbs for bats or rotten branches for fungi....no no, just sterile monotony!

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