Charley Tarver
President, Forest Investment Associates, Atlanta, GA

My whole life is about trees and forestry. In my business of timberland investment, we manage forests all over the country, but I’m most turned on by longleaf pine forests. In my opinion, there is no forest prettier than a mature stand of longleaf pine with the setting sun making the trees and knee-high wiregrass seem to glow.

Several years ago, I began to look for a small property with longleaf pine growing on it. Since that time, my wife and I acquired about 800 acres in rural Baker County, Georgia and carved out a piece of land to care for. We call the place “Longleaf.” Our first impression walking over the property was the beauty of the old stands of longleaf pine and the carpet of wiregrass.

Our objectives on Longleaf are both recreational and to improve the land by preserving and restoring the longleaf pine forest. We want a place to hunt bobwhite quail and we’d like to sustain a mature, multi-aged longleaf pine forest with a forest floor dominated by wiregrass. We’ve invested a great deal of time and money trying to maintain these objectives. I can’t prove what kind of return we’re making on the property. However, when you’ve been making investment decisions in forestland as long as I have, you tend to rely on gut instinct. My gut tells me we’re making a really good investment. Heaven forbid, if we ever had to sell Longleaf, I think we’d get our money back because I believe someone else would recognize the value.

To us, the most appropriate measure of value at Longleaf is in terms of enjoying life. One of our greatest singlereturns on our investment in Longleaf happened last year. On a balmy winter day, we were able to get my 88 year old father (who could barely walk) and his 80 year old brother down for a quail hunt. After several tries, we were able to get the dogs to point a covey of quail close enough to the jeep. We eased my father out of the jeep and up behind the dogs. On command, the dogs flushed the quail. One shot later, my father had one bird. To us, the REAL value of Longleaf cannot be measured in dollars and cents.