Page 12 - Georgia Forestry - Winter2017

Story by Elizabeth Lenhard
Photography by Stephen B. Morton
Stewards of Georgia’s Forests
A sk most folks to name Georgia’s most prominent crop, and they’re likely to seize upon peaches. Maybe cotton or peanuts.
Many forget about the well-managed forests that cover about two thirds of our state. Of Georgia’s 24.7 million acres of forestland, 22 million are privately owned and commercially available. No other state in the union has as much privately owned timberland.
Alittle less than half of Georgia forests are held by corporations such as Weyerhaeuser, which owns about 800,000 acres here.
But 55 percent of our forestland belongs to the farmer next door. The hunter who wants to cultivate an ideal
ecosystem for wildlife. The conservationist protecting forestland from development. The investor who can make her land pay for itself with sales of timber and pine straw. The heir, whose land is his birthright and his legacy.
Here, we meet four of these landowners. Their parcels are large and small. One family can trace its ownership back to the year after the Revolutionary War. Another bought his first Georgia tract in 2000. Some put more dollars into their land then they get out of it. Others manage their land with an eye on finance first.
All look to the future — to passing their forests on to their descendants. And they worry whether such a blessing might also be a burden.
But universally, these tree farmers love their land with a fierceness that they don’t question. They have a fundamental connection to their trees and to the quiet, straw-strewn soil beneath them. It’s that connection that gives them the patience to wait out a growing cycle that might be 35 years long. It’s that connection that powers them through wildfires and taxes and pine-shearing storms.
It’s a connection fed by walking their acres and monitor- ing every planting, every cutting.
There’s a saying quoted by Lynda Beam, whose land has been in her family since she was a child: “The best fertilizer on the farm is its owner’s footprints.”
In our talks with these landowners, one term surfaced over and over again: Stewardship. As meaningful as they find ownership, they also know their land is in their hands for a brief time. That their duty to their forests, and them- selves, is less to use their land but to take care of it. They aim to send their forests into the future well-managed, but otherwise little changed.
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