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"My family is not only in the timber business but also in the relationship business," says Nordeck Thompson of Huntland, Tennessee. "If I'm going to do business with you, I want to be your friend. So I use my family's forestlands to build friendships and business relationships that help me grow my family's business on the land where we also grow timber."
Nordeck Thompson has learned that forestland owners often overlook the recreational value of the lands where they grow timber. Thompson and his family own and operate a hardwood sawmill-manufacturing plant that produces high-grade lumber. Thompson also manages a wholesale-lumber division of his company known as Thompson Appalachian Sales that manufactures cypress lumber and also manufactures and exports oak. Nordeck and his brother Bert Thompson of Macon, Georgia, own about 3000 acres of timberland in Camden County, Georgia. They also own approximately 2000 acres of pine timberland with hardwood bottoms in Montgomery County, Georgia, with their sisters, Edie Faircloth and Phyllis Johnson. Some of their land comes from an original land grant given to the family. "The most-important thing our family does on our family lands is turkey hunt," Thompson said as he smiled. "However, we also realize that the land has to pay for itself and make a profit. We actively plant and harvest pine timber on our family property. We use herbaceous weed control, and we fertilize and thin our trees for maximum yield. On the Camden County property, which is our hardwood site, we don't do a lot of active harvesting."
Thompson has learned that actively managing timberlands by planting and harvesting pine timber actually increases the deer and turkey on those lands. According to Thompson, "Our better game populations are on the lands we've clear-cut." Having a wide variety of biodiversity on the property that you either own or manage provides the framework for successful wildlife management and quality timber management. "Some of our property hasn't seen a saw in 50 years, while other tracts are managed very intensely," Thompson explained. "We have all ages of pine and hardwood timber growing throughout our land, which provides a wide variety of habitat for our wildlife."
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