With the NSW government actively pushing a revitalised farm timber supply chain, the theme of this week's Forestry Australia Symposium at Albury - "reimagining forestry" - is particularly apt.
One of the speakers will be Michael Taylor, The Hill, Terrible Vale via Kentucky who is part of a multi-generational push to plant more trees on farm, for timber but also for shade and as wind breaks.
Three decades after sinking seedlings on the bare and undulating Salisbury Plains, the Taylor family are now harvesting pine planks in an operation that encompasses three generations of the family.
Jon and Vicki Taylor were passionate about planting trees and in the late 1980s and early 1990s operated a contract business that established plantations of pine and other mixed exotics and native trees. Many species succumbed to frosts and droughts or just didn't grow into suitable trees. Radiata Pine, however, has proven profitable - and yet only a few years ago the market was different and logs from nearby Niangala were being shipped by container to the lowest bidders in China.
Markets are dynamic, however, and for the moment the needle has swung in the family's favour.
At Taylors Run, seedlings were planted in various layouts including some that followed landscape contours with the benefit of windbreaks to shelter sheep and cattle.
"The real benefit to us from having trees on farm has been incidental things like shade and shelter, not necessarily the timber," said Michael Taylor, the son of the planter and father to the next generation of timber millers.
Meanwhile, third generation Remy Taylor has taken a break from studying rocket science - quite literally - and is driving a New Zealand built Mahoe sawmill that efficiently cuts boards in one pass with two blades and allows the Taylors to produce up to eight cubic meters of sawn product per day with one or two operators. Current orders are being strapped green, bound in packs, and sent straight for treatment at Tamworth.
The current prices allow for everyone in the supply chain to make a dollar, and the younger Taylor says it's a satisfying feeling every time a fresh length of sawn timber comes off the log.
The portable sawmill was selected for its capacity to operate commercially and yet remain small enough to own outright, without fear of the machinery sitting idle during low market periods, or times when other farm enterprises have to take priority.
"Farm forestry is more common in New Zealand than here," says Mr Taylor. "So we initially looked towards their industry and the management of their pine trees to add value while integrating plantings into their grazing farms."
Not all the logs grown on this farm are milled under the shed roof on farm
With much of the original plantings now at the age for optimum harvest, the family is taking advantage of historically high prices for wood and is creating a silviculture re-set, with woodlands replaced by planting anew, this time managing for thinning at various growth stages better than before.
"This time we will replant on the contour with wide spacings between stands," Mr Taylor said.
Part of the rotation will include rest, with areas once covered in forest returned to grazing pasture.
The family has engaged contractors to harvest and select logs for various markets, with the biggest and the best radiata pine going to Big River timbers at Grafton for veneer.
Smaller diameter trees for sawlogs and pulp are being trucked to Oberon, to help fulfil a pledge by Forestry Corporation to maintain jobs for millers in the Victorian high country, following the loss of plantations to fire.
The contrast between value added sawn timber versus pulp is highlighted by the fact that two tonnes of pulp sold is equivalent to the purchase price of one nursery grown pine seedling whereas rough sawn pine prices are currently as high as $500 a cubic meter at the farm gate.
It's hard to know what trees to plant to fit a market 25 years from now.
Only just before the pandemic there was little demand for pine but fires, European bark beetle and COVID-19 changed the dynamic.
"When you plant a tree the only thing you can guarantee is that the market will be different," Mr Taylor said. "But the value of the tree is more than just its timber. There's carbon in the soil; shade and shelter."
