34 MISC. PUBLICATION 162, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
Properly handled a farm woodland is in most cases a valuable 
asset to its owner. Besides the salable products it may produce, 
such as sawlogs, piling, plupwood, posts, and cross ties, it will 
provide its owner with wood for fuel, fencing, and the many other 
needs of the farm. This means a saving in the outlay of money for 
the upkeep of the place, as well as a tangible Income such as may 
be derived from any other farm crop. The woods may also utilize 
and make productive those parts of the farm not suitable for other 
crops; the rough, steep, rocky and worn-out lands (fig. 18). And 
the harvesting of the farm timber crop is usually done in the winter 
when the regular work of the farmer is slack. 
It is estimated that one-third of the cut of timber of all kinds 
comes from farms. According to late statistics farm forest products 
F-55996, F—202858 
FicuRE 18.—F arm woodlands. 
A, A South Dakota prairie farmstead protected from the prevailing high winds 
of that region by a windbreak of planted trees; B, 50-year-old white oak timber 
in an Ohio woodland. 
rank ninth among a total of 50 different crop items in the amount 
of cash income they produce. The gross income from farm timber 
products, both used on the farm and sold, amounted to $116,728,000 
in 1934. 
To get the best results from his woods the farmer should adopt 
practices worked out by the forester and aim to produce a con- 
tinuous supply of the best timber at the fastest rate. When he 
takes out his merchantable trees, he should cut lghtly—never more 
than one-third of the stand—so that he can come back often for 
similar light harvests. Thus he will always maintain a good stand 
of trees—capital in his woods savings bank. Trees of the less 
desirable kinds, the smaller overcrowded trees, and those that are 
broken, crooked, large-limbed, or diseased, should also be taken out 
and used for farm purposes or sold. This will allow light and 
growing space for the main-crop trees, and the younger g venerations 
fighting for a place in the sun will be helped to become the straight, 
