The Rural Voice, 2003-10, Page 18Measuring Success
40 gears of meticulous record-keeping
allows Murrag and Wilma Scott to put
an exact value on their woodlot
By Keith Roulston
The Scott farm woodlot has a long and profitable history. Murray Scott's
father Walter (top) skids a huge log from the bush with horses. Below,large
squared timbers are transported using sleigh bobs about 1938.
As Murray Scott bounces along
the trails of his woodlot on a
four -wheeler he can recite the
history of every corner of the bush.
It's a lot of history with the 100 acres
spreading over the back end of two
200 -acre farms that have been in the
Scott name since the land was settled
in 1857.
14 THE RURAL VOICE
Back then brothers Walter and
David left their family in Halton
County and walked up the Huron
Road (now Highway 8) to Clinton,
turning north on a trail until they
found the 200 -acre lots each took up
near Belgrave in what was then East
Wawanosh Township. Murray, a
descendent of Walter, grew up on his
family's home farm (along with his
brother Alan, who served as many
years at Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture and Food Ag Rep in
Perth County) but in 1963 bought the
farm next door originally settled by
David.
The Scotts have always felt trees
were a big part of their farm and
Murray and his wife Wilma, the
record keeper on the farm, have the
figures to prove it. Over nearly 40
years they've taken more than
600,000 board feet of lumber out of
the 100 -acre bush.
Those records also show that,
unlike other farm products where the
price seems to stay the same despite
inflation. income from each tree
harvested from the woodlot has been
increasing in value. Back in 1964
when the young couple made their
first harvest after buying their farm
the previous year, they received $120
per 1000 board feet of maple lumber.
In 2000, their most recent harvest,
they received $2,000 per 1000 board
feet for veneer -quality maple and
$1,000 to $1,500 for the rest of the
hard maple.
Through 40 years of management,
Murray has aimed to produce more
veneer -quality maple by taking out
the lower -quality trees to let the best
quality grow. By that 2000 cutting,
40 per cent of the maple cut reached
the top prices in the $1,500 to $2,000
range.
With a woodlot that big, the
normal impression that you have to
wait for a long time to see money
from a woodlot is also proven wrong.
In the past decade the Scotts have
harvested every two to three years:
four harvests in all totalling 270,000
board feet. And he'll probably do
another harvest this fall, he says.
Given that he's involved in a beef
cattle operation with his three cousins
in a limited company called Scottslea
Farms Ltd., the revenue from the
woodlot may prove handy given the
situation in the post -BSE world.
Again history comes to the fore here
because it was a major infusion of
cash from a harvest of the bush that
helped save the farm back in the
crisis years of the 1980s when high
interest rates collided with low beef
prices.
The woodlot, stretching across
four farms, provides an interesting