SPRUCE VIEW, Alta. – Since the cows aren’t bringing home much cash, Wilhelm Vohs hopes to turn the trees on his farm into a cash cow.
A combination of high grain prices, low cattle prices and a general malaise hanging over the cattle industry since BSE was found in Canada has forced Vohs to look beyond the pastures to the bush for extra income on his west-central Alberta farm.
“After 30 years of doing the same thing, I wanted to do something different,” said Vohs.
In January 2005, a Charolais cow owned by Vohs tested positive for BSE. Forty-two of his animals were sent to slaughter as part of the national testing program. Vohs used money from the BSE payment to buy a $30,000 Wood-Mizer sawmill.
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Using the mill, Vohs hopes to selectively log the spruce and aspen from a woodlot on his farm.
“I just want to try something else.”
During the 1980s, Vohs and his father fenced off 320 acres of bush from the cattle that were often getting stuck in the low-lying area. Thirty years later, trees in the area have grown into towering objects, perfect for logging. Already he’s cut trees into beams, corral planks, shop and garage packages and into siding for a tree house.
Vohs logs older trees that are damaged or losing their needles. He allows the others to grow and mature.
“I concentrate on trees at the end of their life,” said Vohs, who set up the mill in part of a hay shed.
“I’ve got enough lumber to last a long time, especially if the cow business gets tough.”
The trees are cut down with a chain saw and skidded out of the bush using a hydraulic grapple hook that hooks on a three-point hitch and an electric winch with 160 metres of cable.
The winch can haul a 30-inch log to the grapple hook.
Vohs estimated he can squeeze more money out of his mill by custom cutting wood for neighbours or cutting and selling lumber from his own trees than he can from cattle.
“I can probably make better profit with this mill than with 110 cows,” Vohs told the Red Deer County’s Enterprising Agriculture Ag Tour.
“For me to cut $20,000 to $30,000 out of the mill wouldn’t keep me busy all year, especially if I went to beams or some special products,” he said.
Vohs also teamed up with the Canadian Forest Service to plant 38,000 hybrid poplar trees on 60 acres of marginal land. The federal agency provided the materials and labour to plant the trees for the test plot.
In 20 years, Vohs hopes at least 20,000 trees will survive and be ready for logging. Worth $5 each at maturity, he hopes to make at least $100,000 from the treed area, better than the roughly $36,000 over 20 years he could earn by cash rent on the poor soil.
“Yes, I’m taking a gamble on $36,000 over 15 to 20 years,” he said.
“I like working it so it’ll stay here.”
