Norm Lake, a Grafton, Vermont, logger, whose work in the woods began during the transition from axes and crosscut saws to chainsaws, died this spring at the age of 89. I had a chance to visit with Norm the year before he died, arranged by his granddaughter, Norah, who was doing an internship with Northern Woodlands at the time. By then, Norm spent his days in a wheelchair, but when he began talking about the woods, the lanky lumberjack reappeared and looked like he was ready to pick up a saw and notch a tree.
As a young man, Norm left Vermont during World War II and went to work for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company, in Hartford, Connecticut. According to his son Tracy, who joined our conversation, Norm “was wearing a suit and rising up through the ranks” when he made the decision to move back to Vermont.
Norm brought with him an enthusiasm for working in the woods and growing good trees. He began logging in 1945, and soon after, he began buying woodlots. His first one was the Fairbanks place, a 150-acre hill farm (it was sold to him as 250 acres) that he bought for $1500. Later, he bought a Norway spruce plantation that was so overgrown he had to crawl through it to reach the other side. He thinned it, pruned it, and tended it to maturity. By the time he was done, he owned more than 1,000 acres.
Norm was not alone in this strategy, nor was he the last. Those who held onto their land long enough became millionaires – at least on paper. By now, though, the opportunity to turn forestland into a fortune – without liquidating the timber and subdividing the land – is gone, at least on this scale.
Norm said, “In those days, farmers would cut off their woodlot when it had grown up enough to attract loggers. After they cut it, they wouldn’t want to continue paying taxes on the land for the 40 years it would take for there to be anything at all to cut, and they would sell it off.”
So it was in the wake of other loggers that Norm bought woodlots. “Most of it had been raped before I bought it, but it was all I could afford,” he said. In our conversation, Norm took great pains to separate his work from that of other loggers, the ones who went into a lot and slicked it off, removing anything of value for the foreseeable future. “Choppers would frown on people like me who wanted to save some of it for the future forest.” He wasn’t shy about enlisting the expertise of the first county foresters. “I would encourage landowners to use the services of the county forester. Gil Cameron was down here in Brattleboro. He would mark it and I would cut it.”
In the 1960s and 70s, he shifted his focus to a business he cultivated, supplying pilings to builders in Boston. Engineers would designate a butt size, a tip size, and a length, and Norm’s company would supply the pilings. A common dimension was a log 50-55 feet long with a 12-inch butt tapering to a 7-inch tip. Because the pilings would be under water their entire length, they wouldn’t rot.
Red pine was the favored species, and Norm knew every red pine plantation from the Berkshires to the Northeast Kingdom. “We were always looking for wood,” he said. “It had to be straight from butt to tip. You get good at eyeballing them, imagining if a straight line would stay on the piling from butt to tip.”
In his spare time, he would do improvement work on his woodlots. When he bought the Fairbanks place, it had few mature trees on it, except for the spreading but gone-by maples that had been tapped for sugarmaking for decades. Over the years, he spent many days cutting poorly formed trees and leaving them on the forest floor, favoring the well-formed trees so they could put on diameter and value. Pre-commercial work on forests full of saplings takes years to pay off, but one way Norm’s diligence was rewarded was that after working on it for 20 years, the Fairbanks place was named the Outstanding Tree Farm in Vermont.
Norm was proud of what he had accomplished with that lot and with others that benefited greatly from his years of tending, but in his later years, he regretted that he hadn’t bought better forestland.
“Now,” he told me, “I would concentrate on land that hadn’t been spoiled. I would have to buy less land, but the silviculture could be so much better. It just seemed like forever with some of the lots before we could do anything with the land.”
During my visit, we went for a ride to see his woods, and for him it was like calling on an old friend. Clearly, his restoration of his woodlands had been very effective. The woods are beautiful, well stocked with nicely formed trees, and serve as an example of good stewardship.
By all reasonable measures, he had done quite well. It’s only when you compare it to the land’s increase in value as real estate that the timber improvement work doesn’t measure up. Today, the land that Norm bought for $10 an acre is easily worth more than $2,000 an acre. Disregarding any of the considerable income from timber sold over the years, this woodlot appreciated at an annualized rate of nine percent a year. It’s possible he could have done better in the stock market, but as Norm said, anybody could own stocks and bonds, while owning land and particularly forestland was special.
Over the years, Norm and his wife, Joan, who survives him, have sold about half of the land. His investment in woodlots certainly helped them to have a comfortable life in retirement. But that didn’t matter much to Norm, because it was all about the pride of owning and taking care of a piece of land.
In a perfect world, the land would be worth so much more now because of all the good work Norm did on it over the years. In truth, it’s because the real estate market has gone through the roof, with most of that gain has happened in the last decade. When Norm was buying land in the post-War years, its price was based entirely on the value of the logs it could produce. Today, except for very large parcels of land (on the scale of paper company holdings), the purchase price for forestland has very little relation to the value of the timber. Gone are the days when you could buy a woodlot at a price based on the value of the trees growing on it, tend it for years, and have it appreciate in value. Good silviculture will always add considerably to the value, but what used to be a forestland investment has become a real estate investment.
What does this mean for the future of the forest? The answer depends on who owns the land now and who will own it in 20 or so years. We are on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of forestland in the nation’s history. A joint study by the U.S. Forest Service and the Pinchot Institute found that 60 percent of the owners of forestland are 55 or older and more than half of those are 65 or older. The aging of the landowner base means that a significant amount of that land is soon going to be sold or bequeathed.
Given the tremendous increase in value of forestland, it’s fair to ask how many of the aging current owners or their heirs will choose to cash in on that appreciation. How the new owners acquire the land – whether they inherit it or pay top dollar for it – will in most cases influence what happens to that land. If you come by your land the old-fashioned way – by inheriting it – then much of the pressure is off. A high purchase price, though, may prove enough of a burden for the new owners that they will need to help finance the purchase either through quick subdivision – “let’s just sell off 10 acres, we’ll never miss it” – or through premature cutting of any timber with value.
It’s important to note that much of the forestland that will change hands is an adjunct to the house or camp that it accompanies. What kind of relationship will develop between these new owners and their land? If the land is solely a financial asset, the relationship will be charted with a calculator and a spreadsheet, so the forest and all that depend on it can’t help but lose, either through parcelization or cash-flow harvesting. On the other hand, those woods might become a truly significant part of the new owner’s life precisely because it is adjacent to the house and thus has so much to offer every day: peace and quiet, chances to see and hear wildlife, a beautiful place to walk. The land becomes home and much more than a piece of real estate.
Not all of them can be expected to make it their life’s work, as Norm Lake did, but many will come to understand the pleasures of tending land. They’ll do the right thing for the land simply because it is the right thing. They’ll take their tenure seriously, wanting to leave the land better than they found it. Norm was right: owning forestland means more than owning shares of XYZ, Inc.
While it’s undeniable that the yield from forestry operations will no longer cover today’s purchase prices, the land’s productivity can still be a factor. And there are still bargains out there, particularly if you define a bargain as something that is worth more to you than what you paid for it. As you tend your woods, you get the satisfaction of knowing that the land is appreciating. Along the way, you’ll be able to cut some timber to help cover the costs of ownership (property taxes and any improvements you make to it), and maybe you will be putting your heirs in the position where they’re the ones who haven’t paid much for something wonderful.
There are few pursuits more noble than the stewardship of land, making it hospitable for wildlife, a productive part of the local economy, and a beautiful place for you and your family.
Norm Lake told me, “I’ve always said, ‘I’ve never dreaded a day’s work in the woods.’” And like a true Yankee, he paused the perfect amount of time before adding, “That’s not quite true, but it’s almost true.”