By F.H. Jeter,
Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Wilmington
Morning Star on April 22, 1946
An easy way to make a living is to obtain 6,000 acres of
land, let the pine trees produce 300 board feet an acre each year and then sell
the timber as it matures! That probably is not so easy as it seems. Down in
Carthage, Moore County, lives a man who knows all about this and whose whole
life has been devoted to timber. Many years ago his grandfather owned
Shepherd’s Mountain in Randolph County and cut timber from all that area.
This grandfather built seven dams on Caraway River, in the
Uwharrie’s, and used the resulting water power to run his sawmills. His
grandson followed in the patriarch’s footsteps. But first he took a course in
agriculture at State College, managed Lake Latham Farm at Mebane, and the
Crammerton Farm, before located in Carthage in 1916.
Buys Tract
Last week, he bought the 1,200-acre tract of land which he
was hired to cut back in 1916 and he added it to his holdings to make the 6,500
acres total that he now owns. This original tract, which was the first timber
that Colin Spencer was ever cut, has been lumbered three times since 1916.
That year Mr. Spencer cut about 8 million feet of timber in
Moore and the three adjacent counties. At one time, Mr. Spencer operated
milling plants at Carthage, Hemp or Robbins, Glendon, and Bennett. He operates
only one plant today, the main one at his headquarters in Carthage, and he says
the black market in timber is about to close that one temporarily.
Replants Trees
After cutting timber for about eight years on leased land,
Colin Spencer began to see the wisdom of replanting trees and of using his own
sound commonsense in timber harvesting. Therefore, in 1922 he began to buy his
own land. Today he owns about 6,500 acres, mostly in timber tracts, running
along the fertile bottomlands of Moore County streams.
Although most of his land is used to grow timber, the
lumberman also possesses that inherent love of farming that is present in all
of us, and so he operates about six farms. One is a livestock or cattle farm,
and all six of them produce tobacco and general crops. He showed me, with great
pride, his cattle farm with his excellent seeded pasture on which 21 head of
purebred Hereford cattle were finding a good living.
Trotting Mare
Then he turned out his Tennessee trotting mare or walking
horse with as fine a highheaded, long-legged young colt as I ever saw. This
mare also had a young filly in the adjoining stable. Mr. Spencer owns a
purebred Percheron draft mare that had a beautiful colt about one week old.
Another mare brought down from is mountain farm and now too old to work is
being used as a brood animal to produce replacement workstock.
The regular commercial herd of Herefords were out on a swamp
pasture and Mr. Spencer selects and sends some of his best beef animals to his
mountain farm each summer where they fatten on bluegrass for a discriminating
market. The commercial herd in Moore County furnishes a double purpose because
they clip the young hardwoods and undergrowth where pine seedlings are set, as
well as furnish beef for market.
Wooded Acres
I visited some of the wooded areas where Mr. Spencer began
to set pine seedlings back in 1916. He plows a deep furrow through the forest floor,
and the seedling trees are set along this furrow. This allows moisture to
settle in the furrow and for mulch to accumulate there to keep his soil fertile
and moist. He has one tract, for instance, where he cut out all the hardwoods,
except the white oak, to provide fuel wood for an orchid farm near Pinehurst.
This orchid farm does not use coal because the soot seeps through into the
delicate plants and so it uses hardwood for fuel.
Loblolly Pines
After removing all the hardwoods from this area, the tract
was set in loblolly pine, and while some expert foresters said the plan
wouldn’t work, it does seem to work because the young pine trees are right
there now, growing lustily, under the white oaks that are with the dogwoods. By
the way, Mr. Spender sells his dogwood and persimmon timber to textile mills to
be made into bobbins for use in the weaving machinery. The white oaks will be
harvested later for sale as cross ties.
Colin Spencer never clean cuts an area unless the trees are
not making satisfactory growth and he measures growth with the eye of an
expert. He also, sometimes, clean-cuts by gradually taking out the mature
timber as fast as it grows into log size, leaving seed trees, and then when the
whole area has been completely restocked with young stuff, he goes in and gets
out all of the mature timber.
Re-Seeding Mixture
The lumberman uses a mixture of re-seeding and re-setting in
propagating or renewing his timber areas and he never takes out all the timber
in a given tract, unless as I said, he has seen to it that the area has been
plentifully replenished. He also is constantly alert to prevent forest fires
and there are fire control lanes all through his woods.
He showed me towering young trees over which he shot quail
just a few years ago.
“Lumbering is no wishy-washy job,” he said. “It takes a
long-time program in which you have to wait for the trees. The price of timber
goes up and down but it never goes down so low as it was the last time. My
father sold pure heart pine at $6 a thousand to be used in the old plank road
running through what is now the main street of Carthage from Fayetteville to
Winston-Salem. That same timber now sells for $125 thousand if you can get it.”
In Forestry Work
This progressive lumberman was drafted into public service
back in 1939 when he was elected president of the North Carolina Forestry
Association. He agreed to take this responsibility if the Association would put
on an educational program and try to teach North Carolina landowners the
importance of their timber crops. Then he was re-elected for three times before
the members would agree for him to relinquish the job.
During that three-year period, he did much to sell the state
on the importance of its lumbering industry. He is still chairman of the board
of directors. He is also president of the North Carolina Forest Foundation,
which holds the great Hofmann Forest in eastern Carolina in trust for the
Forestry School at State College. Mr. Spencer is a director of the American
Forestry Association and on the important Committee of National Parks for this
association. He maintains his home in Carthage but most of his waking hours are
out in the woods or at his lumber plant.
Bought Pulpwood
During the war, he has been buying pulpwood in the area
between Raleigh and Hamlet for one of the large paper companies and he still
buys timber and pulpwood, of course, on his own account.
Mainly, however, his interests are in the acres of trees,
young and old, now growing on his holdings in Moore County. He knows each tract
just as you would know your own garden, and he knows when one area of either
400 or 1,000 acres is ready for harvest, just as the tobacco grower knows when
to prime his plants.
He also knows the various varieties of trees, and he kept me
completely bewildered the other afternoon as he pointed out to me and “Red”
Garrison, Moore farm agent, the several kinds of pines, the unnumbered
varieties of hardwoods, and the characteristics of each. It was a lesson in
woodscraft that I shall not soon forget and should you have a chance to take a
trip with him to his woods at any time, do not turn down the opportunity. It’s
an education in itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment