🚀 go-pugleaf

On 28 Jul 1997, Jay Eisenberg wrote:

(some statements about timber's status as a crop have been snipped)
> 
> You neither prepare the land, plant, nor nurture timber in any similar way
> to apples or squash.  You buy or inherit the land with the timber already
> present.  
> 

One of my parents' neighbors has been culling trees (similar to weeding a 
garden) for the past fifteen or twenty years.  He's also been planting the 
types of trees he wants to harvest (similar to what variety of apple or 
squash you plant).  He's also been harvesting some of the existing trees 
for sale at a mill.  Admittedly, many of the trees he harvested probably 
weren't planted by him, but his children might harvest the ones he planted.

In addition, Wisconsin has several tree farms where pine trees are 
planted in long straight rows and grown with heavy pruning.  Given the 
high density of planting and the absence of branches on the boles of the 
trees, I imagine that these are being grown for poles.  My wife and I 
laughed when we saw them because they were very small trees (compared to 
what we were used to seeing in Oregon), but in a few 
years they are going to make someone a lot of money.  If you can't call 
that particular patch of timber a crop, I'm not sure what you would call it.

Perhaps you are giving the terms timber and forest the same meaning?  It 
doesn't seem to me that they are mutually inclusive.  A forest has timber 
in it, but so does a tree farm.  I wouldn't call a tree farm a forest.  
(Though private holdings by timber companies probably blur the distinction.)

-Adam