My wife and I are closing on a 100 acre piece of property in a few weeks and will be starting to build a house at the end of the summer.  We plan on moving in next June-July timeframe and then the real adventure begins as we set up our land.  I've read through several of the homestead threads in the forum and wanted to ask, the collective group for any opinions/experience on what you'd do different (or the same) as you set up your property.

A bit of background on the land, currently its un-touched and has never been developed.  It is located in NH, the terrain is rolling hills and no areas are really inaccessible by equipment.  The property has no water bodies but we will be putting a well.

Our goals for the property:

Short term: (next 12 months)
Clear 5-6 acres immediately around the house for yard and a better view.
Build a house (includes putting in a well and septic)
install the 20KW standby generator I have along with 2x 2,000 GAL propane tanks

Long term goals (2-6 years)
Build a barn
begin acquiring livestock, specifically beef cows and pigs.  My family raised a few pigs growing up and a few beef cows, I'd like to do the same and intend to start small and grow into a few more animals over time.  I have a day job so my intent isn't to be a full time farmer.
Cut in and establish several fields (10-20 acre size), thinking about growing hay for sale down the road.  I have unlimited access to a family Kubota L4060 that's not being used much, but would need the bailing equipment and would eventually buy my own tractor.  

Second question is, does anyone have recommendations on how to store/stack logs for several years and mitigate or prevent rot.  The property is currently all timber and as we cut down tree's I intend to stack the bulk of the logs out of the way for future use.  Some would become firewood, but I'm also looking at getting a band sawmill down the road, figured I might be able to cut the lumber for my barn build in several years.  I also have brothers who have between 15-60 acre lots who would the mill as well.

As we get started on this adventure I'll update this thread with pictures of the land and the build.

Congratulations...
I bought 42 acres a little over a year ago here in SC on the NC boarder.
  We got behind after a lighting strike set fire to our home and was a total loss.
We just cleared a few acres for the new home which leaves the old site for planting.

Clearing land is a bitch ... mine had been logged about 25 years ago and a lot of crappy Virginia pine was left.
Is barely worth pulpwood and the Mills aren't buying around here.. I know it comes down to your personal resources but that is been my biggest challenge.

 On a brighter note I am purchasing a new tractor with the insurance money and a grapple is first on my list.
We used a 210 excavator and a D6 Dozer and cleared a couple acres in a few days on what for the home site.

We saved the smaller trees to do with the tractor which is going to be a long slow painful process I'm sure.

     Buying acreage was a dream for me around here it's pretty scarce to find anything affordable.

Congrats on the land...we bought 17 acres after looking at all sizes up to 100 acres....the land we bought was cleared with mature pastures except for 5 acres of hardwoods.   As a previous poster mentioned clearing land is both hard and expensive.  Be prepared for the battle and I would hire someone with the biggest and baddest equipment to get the job done.

I'm definitely planning on it being a battle.  I did some clear cutting on the side in college for family and friends (5-10 acre sites)

Option A is to get a logging company to do it and I spend nothing and they keep the wood as compensation.  This option might require me opening up some of my future fields now to make it worth their time.

Option B is a week of me and a brother cutting trees and renting a D6 and excavator to remove stumps and prep the ground.

We'll see which one pans out

If you don't mind my asking how much insurance did you carry on the house while it was being built?  Did the amount change as construction progressed?

Be very very careful on who you get to do any logging/timber harvesting on your property.  I don't know the age of the timber, but I doubt you are 8 years old, so you won't get to watch those saplings become 80 year old trees again in your lifetime.  I've seen the result of really crappy logging.  Don't let them high-grade it, take out the dead, dying, diseased, leaning, etc trees first, and that will establish the logging roads and let you see how the crew treats your land.  I put most loggers up there with real estate agents, and bad area of town used car salesmen.  

Get a forester.  

If you haven't lived on rural land, get used to buying lots of tools you didn't know existed.  We've owned our 160 acres for a few years, and it is fun making it the way you want.  


ETA: let us know how long before you start wanting more land.

I already want more . Their are two adjacent lots I'll keep my eyes on.

The property had about 50 acres select cut for hardwood 5 years ago and the logger did a professional job (appearance wise).  I'm definitely going to be cautious getting a logger, in this case it would be a straight clear cut of 10 + acres.  I prefer doing it myself and only opening up enough for the house lot now and then doing fields later once I get to know the land.

Any tools in particular you recommend?  I grew up on 40 acres so i have and am familiar with most "normal" tools (chainsaw, hand tools, generators etc..)

Saw you posted in another thread in the GD. What area did you buy in?
I'm in Landrum on the Greenville County side.

 We're good. Wife was at work and I was home and able to get the dogs out.
We believe God has a plan so I am just rolling with it.   Living in a camper does kinda suck though lol

 I'll let you know in a few days . We just got the final grading done Friday.  
We had good coverage but will have to go up with the new place ..

First thing to check.

Who owns the subsurface mineral rights? Do the subsurface rights have access through the surface?

Before you get to far into the clearing.

Have  a well study done.

Make sure your land is suitable for a septic and of what type of septic is allowed / needed, required permits etc.

  A fire box containing our marriage certificate and other paperwork etc.
The same box had a pocket bible that my dad carried with him in Vietnam as a infantry soldier. It was the most important to me.
Unfortunately pretty much everything else was destroyed.  Fire was 1900 + on the Flir. The fire chief said it was the hottest he's ever fought in 25 years.
  My Liberty gun safe held up the the initial fire but it fell Into a 8ft crawlspace and sat for two days.  The guns are all salvageable but suffered bad finish damage due to smoke after the seal gave way.
  Lots of plastic mags went unharmed and all springs were solid etc . Optics have smoked lenses so I am sending a few off to Leupold and we shall see.

  I did get my 3 dogs out . They were scared and hiding so it took what time I had finding them.  
I'm on my phone now but I'll post some pics soon

Responsible timber MANAGEMENT (I hate the word harvesting) involves many facets but I think the one that is most applicable here is that it involves harvesting carefully selected trees every 10 years or so instead of "size harvesting" everything above a certain size once every 40 years or so. This does numerous things that are more beneficial to the landowner and the ecosystem.

For the ecosystem it maintains more of a "constant" (there isn't such a drastic change when harvests happen) and the change is much smaller when it does happen. This also forces a more watchful eye on the health of the forest and individual trees. In a 40 year harvest cycle many trees will be lost to disease etc which can spread to others. By using a 10 year cycle those diseased trees can be singled out and harvested before the timber value is lost, and before the disease spreads widely.

Lastly, the biggest plus for the landowner is actively managed timber on a responsible harvest cycle will yield more timber value in the long-term, and the owner's income will be spread across numerous years (tax advantages).

Indiana has what is call the Classified Forest Program. You enroll forests in the program, and in return you pay $1 per acre property tax on it. The stipulations are that you cannot graze livestock nor do commercial agriculture on the land (can still be used for recreational purposes like shooting, hunting, hiking, camping, etc), you implement a timber management plan and stick to that plan, and keep invasive species under control. Another benefit is that you get the state forester to come out and look your place over and give advice for free. They will take your goals for the property in-mind and work with you on the timber management plan. IE, your plan can say, "I don't want to harvest timber except for diseased or non-native species" and they're good with that. Or your plan can say, "I want to cull non-desirable species to manage for maximum timber value potential" and they are ok with that as well.

As for me and my place, it hasn't been properly managed, I plan to get a forester out and help me come up with a management plan. It's currently full of sycamores because the last timber harvest was just a plain harvest, where they come strip everything of value and leave the rest, which leaves an unhealthy, unbalanced forest. The non-desirable trees need to be gradually thinned overtime to make room for the other species to grow back in, otherwise the trees that were left previously will out-compete the other species that were stripped out and only have saplings left.

Thanks for the great information.

I definitely plan to work with a forester when it comes time to manage the timber on the property.  The majority of the property is currently pine tree's about 15-20 acres of mixed hardwoods.

In the short term I plan on opening the house lot yard and driveway.  In the longer term I'll open several fields (sizes TBD).  I'd like to keep a healthy balance of fields and wooded area, both for aesthetics and for wildlife management.  Once I get a chance to better catalog the tree's on the land I'm hoping to be able to harvest my own lumber for building a barn down the road, but at the moment I'm focused on the short term goal of closing and then building a house.  Just sifting through various house designs is fun and daunting.  I'm going to be my own GC for the build, luckily I have family in the trades so that will be helpful in providing sane and trusted people to bounce questions off of.

Without knowing your area etc, I will relate my experience.

Hiring a forester to survey the timber, mark the trees, bid the job, and ensure that no other trees were/are cut is well worth the ~10% that you will pay for their services. Typically loggers will try to short the landowner on value because they know they can. Most landowners don't have a clue what the actual value is, what a veneer quality log is and what isn't. So the logger is going to cut 20 veneer quality logs, tell you that there were 4 veneer quality, and you're going to smile with a wide, brimming smile because you had 4 veneer quality logs!!! He's going to sell those other 16 veneer logs and pocket the HUGE difference in price and you'll never even know it.

A forester KNOWS what you have, the timber buyers KNOW this, and they also know that they have to be competitive if they want to buy your timber. Unless you have a great, very reputable and honest timber buyer (logger) that you can work with directly, dealing with a forester will almost always pay more even after their fee is taken out. Timber buyers/loggers generally HATE dealing with a forester because they no longer have the advantage.

That being said, the time to get a forester to look at your timber-stand isn't when you want to harvest, it's 10-40 years before you want to harvest. They will tell you what trees need culled to give the better trees room to grow. Culled trees, unless they're diseased, can be left laying to improve habitat etc. Some people generally get put-off by the word "cull"; "you mean you cut a tree down for no reason other than to let another grow in its place?". The word doesn't have to be bad, the dead tree will continue to provide habitat and benefits to the various flora and fauna when left lay.

Haha, I'm not a forester, but I play one in my fantasies... or something like that... I'm nothing more than a good ole farmboy that has a penchant for learning new things (studying/reading), doing EVERYTHING myself, and mastering whatever I set my mind to. As far as my forestry background. I know trees and cutting trees (felling and cutting for firewood), but I don't know logging timber other that what I've shared in this thread. In High-School I was on the FFA forestry judging team, which is primarily tree ID, but a little more than that too, I ranked 2nd in the state at the competition one year.

When it comes to managing the timber on my place I will call one of 3 people. My buddy that writes timber management plans for those that wish to enroll in the above mentioned Classified Forest program, a state forester, or a private forester.

Start with your state department of natural resources and drill down from there. You should have a state forester and maybe even district foresters. They will at least be able to give recommendations on private foresters that are trustworthy and reputable.

We close on the property in a week, just waiting on the surveyor to finish up.

House is going to be a country farmhouse style, two floors (not including basement. Right at 3,000 sq feet.  2-3 car garage, we don't have 3 cars but I'd like the last bay for all of the seasonal things that accumulate.

We don't think we're going to have to blast based on what we can see and based on talking to the neighbors.  The rock is pretty deep so we should be ok

That's good... if you do hit rock, don't settle for a crawlspace, do the blasting to get the rock out and be done with it.

Definitely 3 car garage, even if there are only 2 overhead doors. When my dad added the garage to his house that's what he did and it's wonderful to have the extra space. They ended up finding some kitchen cabinets so they put them in the garage with a sink and microwave. If dad comes home for lunch and he's too dirty to go in the house it's not a problem, he eats in the garage. The cabinets are great for keeping things out of sight and stored neatly.

SigOwner_P229 hit it right on the head, heed his advice. You MUST hire a forester for all the exact reasons he said. Your forester should also explain to you basically everything SigOwner already did, haha (benefits, reasons, methods, etc). Good Luck!!! keep us posted!!

Blasting if required has been budgeted for, though I'm hoping we don't need to use that contingency.  

Thanks for all the great advice/tips

Hey I do not know if this has been said before I just kind of skimmed over everything real quick.

If you plan to hire a contractor to preform work or build your house please take a bit of advise

1- Check out first hand some of the contractors previous jobs and the quality of the work
2- Make them sign a contract with a completion date and a deduction of XXX per (week,month,etc) - If they refuse to do this look elsewhere
3- Talk with previous customers and ask how he is to work with


I wish someone would have given me this advise before I picked my concrete contractor for my garage the work sucks and its 2 months late from the date they said they would even start and I am just ready to be done with my nightmare of a contractor !!

Well the ink is finally dry on the deed,  completed the deal last week and the survey.

Proud owners of 102 acres.


Driveway gets cut this week, going to start digging the foundation next month.

They are coming.  Gotta figure out how to post pictures,  sad to say I've never posted a picture in 15 years on this site

Below the text box in your reply, click on the "Select File" tab.  Browse to where the picture is stored on your hard drive and select it.  Make sure your cursor is located in the text box where you want the picture to appear.  Then click the "Upload" tab.  Do that for each picture.  If the file sizes are too large, you will need to resize the pictures before you try uploading them.

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of ballpark price per acre did you end up paying?

Right around $1,600 an acre.


Thanks for the help on the pictures, I'll get some up tonight

Looking forward to pics.

All about the location.

Couple years ago I paid about $6k/acre for 20 acres. In the township where I bought, it was a damn good deal.

First attempt at uploading a couple pictures

ETA:  it worked . Not a lot of great shots of the interior yet.  I walked it with the wife, but didn't take many pictures, to busy dodging thorns and ticks. The google earth image is about 5 years old, it looks like it was taken right after the select cut.  It's grown up much more since then.

Lots of pictures to come as we start building

Thanks!

Were pulling the driveway in off the northern road (off the end). Probably go in 600-800 feet.  There is several ridges in there that put you 100-200 feet above the surrounding terrain.

Lots of trees to cut and dirt to move

Couple more pictures of the initial driveway cut.  were cutting an initial 100ft driveway entrance to give space to bring in equipment.  Once we decide on the house location we'll complete the driveway.  I expect the driveway to be about 700-800ft once completed.

1) 30 kw GENSET AT A MINIMUM FOR YOUR PLACE natty gas if you can.
2) If you plan on traveling forget livestock
3) Looks like a great place!!!!!!!
4) We have 110 acres and a private lake. You need water.

Are you cutting in the driveway yourself?

Already have a 30kw sitting at my Dads place waiting on install.  I'll probably end up with propane, 2,000 gallon minimum stored on site.


Their are a couple seasonal streams on the property.  I'm hoping in the future to build a pond, we'll see.

The first cut is being done by a local guy who runs an excavation company.  The rest of it will be price dependent.  I might do it myself (I have the equipment). But time is valuable so we'll see what they come back with for prices.

Driveway is coming along

I'll upload more later

Couple more pictures.  






Just past the excavator is where we are stopping the initial driveway.  Once we determine the house location, well location and septic location we will finish the driveway.  Needed to get a curb cut done so we had a place to park vehicles and unload equipment.

indeed. I'm probably going to pay 6,500 an acre in an ok area with a poor school district.