That's one heck of a pest!!

-Raine (who just got back from vacation and didn't take good care of herself during...)

In my neck of the woods a nice black walnut tree brings about $100 from a tree buyer and then it has to be a nice one! "IF" you cut a 50-100 year old walnut and take it to the mill your self, you might receive $700-$1000 for your labor. MY Dad let a tree buyer take about 40 semi loads of trees out of his woods a few years back and received well under $5,000 and had to argue to get that much, I have seen many receive about $2,000 total for the best trees in their woods, trees have always been worth more cut into fire wood for the land owner, ALWAYS!

There are many middlemen to be paid before a walnut board reachs the consumers hands and the consumer does pay a small fortune for black walnut. About 30 years ago we owned what was known as the castle farm, because the 2 Piat castles use to own this farm well over 100 years ago and the woods was known for the black walnut and these 2 castles are all done in black walnut inside and much of the furniture was made of the local walnut.

Tree buyers spotted these huge walnut trees from the air and contacted my dad and asked if they could buy them, he didn't want to sell them so the next thing you know a man from the State stopped by and convinced my Dad id was good for the woods to cut the big trees and leave all the young trees and my dad eventually agreed and a huge amount of these old trees were cut down and shipped to Germany to the veneer factories. My Dad was paid well under $20,000 for the lot of rare size trees. When we sold this farm, the new owner was a house builder.

This new owner stripped the woods of all $$$ trees and made enough to pay for the farm and then covered it with about 100 houses and thus another RARE woods destroyed by civilaztion and the greed of $$$.

MH