The Amish Secret to Knowing If Your Backyard Tree Is Worth $1,000 (Or Worthless)

My name is Isaac Miller. I am Amish, and I have run a blacksmith shop in Lancaster County for thirty-one years. I have bought logs off farm woodlots my whole life and stood at sawmill decks in Berks and Lebanon County. You have a big tree in your yard. You have watched it grow for years, and you figure its worth is in its size, its age and the spread of its branches. Then a crew quotes you a price to take it down, and nobody mentions that the tree might have a price of its own. That is not your fault. Nobody ever showed you where to look. Nearly all the money in a hardwood tree sits in the butt log, the first ten to sixteen feet of trunk above the ground. A straight, clean trunk with no limb scars, no twist and no metal can go to a veneer buyer, who pays several times the sawlog price. The same tree with limbs low on the trunk drops to the sawlog rung, or to firewood. A huge spreading walnut can be worth less than a thin one with sixteen feet of clear trunk. One buried nail or limb ruins every sheet it passes through, so buyers grade hard. The fix costs three dollars and about ten minutes. Wrap a clothesline around the trunk at four and a half feet, measure it, divide by three, and you have your diameter. Count the clear trunk, read the bark for scars and look for old wire or hooks. Then call your county service forester, who walks your property free. If it is worth selling, get three written bids. If it has to come down, write log lengths into the contract. My neighbor Dale paid twenty-three hundred dollars to turn a log worth eight hundred to a thousand into sixty dollars of firewood. In this video I show you how to tell a money species from a worthless one, measure the diameter with a clothesline, count the clear trunk, read limb scars and bark history, spot the metal that kills a grade, use your service forester, write log lengths into a removal contract, and recognize a burl. I also tell you where it falls short. Most backyard trees are worth nothing at the mill, and many mills will not touch a lawn tree at any price. WHAT YOU WILL NEED Clothesline, $3 Your own two eyes A free call to your county service forester Three written bids from log buyers A removal contract with log lengths of ten foot six or twelve foot six Portable band mill operator, forty to seventy dollars an hour A WORD OF CAUTION Do not fell a big tree yourself. Felling kills experienced men every year. Your job is the clothesline, the forester and the contract. Leave the saw work to the insured. Never nail or staple wire into a young walnut or cherry, and never take the first offer on a log. Subscribe, and next time I will show you how to sticker and air-dry your own lumber so a worthless log becomes a workbench. #amish #blacksmith #walnut #sawlog #timber #lumber #backyardtree #forestry