Took 80 posts to a Knights of Columbus consignment sale. The best big 10' posts about 12" at the base brought 47.50 each. Ill be cutting more of them next year. Overall average was $21 each. 10% commission which I saw as very reasonable. Should have kept the black locust for firewood. $3, $2, $1 . Lesson learned
Black locust dont sell where osage orange is king.

Sounds good. Peeled?

Yeah all locust in my world.
There was an art to bark removal.

I know of a whole one Osage tree.
Big, in a yard, and likely invasive lol.

Nice action Mr. Benson!!

I've heard of the legendary (or is it near legendary?) aspects of Osage orange for fence posts. Farmers (well, at least farmers that still have some cattle) and ranchers here in SD use some sort of wood for corner posts-- this is where I nail skunks by a hind foot to skin out, none of those things come home to my wife's house lot whole, but I don't know what kind of (now usually treated) wood is used for those posts.

We have no native Osage orange or wild locusts of any species. There are residential street locust trees that have been planted in my metro but most not recently.

A person would think that Osage orange would acclimatize their way north, just like possums did but I guess not.

Is black locust as trashy as buck thorn, that crap woody plant has made its way here? We like "smooth" bark trees, with no spikes or "needles" sticking out of them from the trunks.

Different trees in the next state over but that’s not uncommon the scrub oaks south of us by 50 miles are not common in central SD the small towns can have about anything most trees are planted so they must of picked what they wanted to plant. The farms and ranch shelter belts were mostly ash, elm, cedar and Russian Olive.

The kind of trees you’re selling I wish we had them here but they are not here that I’ve ever come across.

I cut hedge post to order for local farmers.
$50 for corners
$35 for brace posts
$20 for lines.
Tops I cut for firewood.

Not peeled. Most is getting too big for posts and is dozed out and burned.
Black locusts have thorns when they are small but they disappear when the trees get bigger.
With the arrival of skid loaders now they set some hedge corner posts that will be there 400 yrs from now.

We have plenty of hedge around here. I cut 2 trees last spring to replace the cedar posts in my split rail fence in front of the house.

But, how did you manage to find trees with 10' long straight trunks to make posts?

The old timers always said a hedge post would wear out two holes.

Ever consider splitting for bow staves?

I have a 5 gallon bucket of Osage Orange mush that I have rotted down over the winter. I got all my hedge balls from upstate Illinois, but have never seen them grow down where I live. Ive been washing the seeds out of the mush and plan to try and get a stand of them going for future use for firewood & posts. I believe the milled lumber is fairly valuable as well, no?

That's what I was thinking. I'd like to find a stave that's long enough for me to build a bow. Seems that most you see are a little shorter than I'd want.

Finding a quality pair of billets and splicing at the handle may be a better option for you. Much easier to find high quality osage billets, then a full length stave.

They don't build fences around here anymore, just bulldoze out all the old ones and grade them flat to get a few more rows of crops in. Same goes for all the old tree lines of hedge apple trees, push them all in a pile and burn them, then bury the remains and plant some beans or corn, spray on enough insecticide and herbicide to kill anything else. Stewards of the land.

That's what I'm probably going to have to do k snow. I'd just like to have one solid chunk.

Jayme,
common practice here too.

Same here........hundreds of Acres of cover for song birds, rabbits and other critters, all gone.

I have a dozen 72 inch staves I’m probably not going to use. I’ll make you a deal. Split, sealed and air dried for four years then kiln dried to 5.6%. These are first class staves but arthrites in my hands and carpel tunnel prevent me from making any more bows. I’m in the mood to sell at $50 apiece plus shipping.

Snap them up Big Sam!!

That's a very generous offer.

9
Few and far between!

Hedge posts make great fence posts. I have taken out many line posts that the old timers, dead now for 30 years, said were put in before their time. After a few years, corner posts are easily burned. When doing controlled burns, I make it a practice to check them after the fire passes. I have saved myself a lot of work doing this.

I remember going with my dad and cutting up hedge posts.. I learned to wear gloves handling it,,, that sap is pretty hard to wash off your hands.
Dad used the scraps for firewood in the wood burning stove… had to be careful with it because that stuff burned mighty hot.

Speaking of burning corner posts of osage, here is a story for you. I used to log osage for the archery industry in the late 90’s / early 2000’s.
One day I was driving around with a farmer who had several miles of hedgerow. He was just showing me the extent of his rows before I started cruising them and marking the trees.
We got to one section of row with almost all the trees missing, and he said “grass fire went through that one a few years ago and burned them all down”
“So they were all standing dead?” I asked
“Nope all alive, mid fall, leaves were dropping” he replied.
I was not sure what to make of that, so I started asking questions.
He said that the grass fire went through the row, and he did not think much of it because the fire could not go anywhere. He just went back to whatever he was doing, and the next time he looked at that row days later almost all of the trees were gone. Well, not gone, just all fallen over every which-way, and many were still slow-smoldering at the bases. He said he was as shocked at the time as I was to hear him tell me that. Living trees, smoldered until they fell from just a quick grass fire.
I ended up cutting 50 or so very nice trees from his hedges that following winter.
One other funny thing that happened with him, one evening I was trying to get some tops cut up and it got dark so I put on a headlamp and kept working. I was a good half mile from the road, and all the sudden I see everything light up from headlights coming across the field. He pulls up in his truck and says “what the “heck” are you doing kid!?” I started to explain that I was just finishing up this top, blah blah blah, and he just cuts me off mid-sentence with a stern “NOPE”. I was confused and asked what the problem was. He says “you don’t run chainsaws after dark on my ground, pack it up and come back in the morning AFTER IT GETS LIGHT!” I thought about it for a brief moment, shook my head in the affirmative, and started packing up. He was actually a great guy to deal with, and I made him a bow from wood I cut on his property because I did so well there. But he was definitely not having any chainsawing after dark…

It makes a better duck call (in the right hands of course), than a fence post.
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Lots of good uses! My brother crackef the stovebox in a brand new Ashley with dry hedge.

Hay how much would it cost to ship a few of those post if a guy wanted some ? Osage orange is supposed to be some good bow making wood

It grows down here ya know....

Never seen it in my area, I looked plus posts would already be dried

Make sure your fireplace screen is up when burning bois d’arc. About like a roman candle

Same here brother. Then they sit and drink coffee and chat about where all the pheasant and quail went.

And then get a hand out on top of it.

Theres plenty of habitat around here but no pheasant or quail. Still see a few quail but one pheasant the ladt year and I drive a couple hundred miles a day. Some say its because nobody grows milo
Some say its turkeys busting nests. Nobody knows.

Wood rat nests at the base of a hedge tree will burn a tree in a heartbeat.

Around my place, the fences haven’t been removed, but the crops that were there 50 years ago, disappeared with the 40 acre farms. Timber(whether planned or natural growth) replaced the crops. But regardless, the fence row habitat needed for quail, is gone.

Hedge post', when planted while still wet/green will frequently sprout and take root, many a fence line windrow came about this way.

I just got about 50 ten foot posts cut for a new fence I'm starting next month. My timber is full of them. If they grow in with regular hardwoods they will grow straight and tall like a hickory. You get some beautiful post out of those timber trees. Some grow with one truck. Some grow multi trunked and will have a lot of posts in them. My record is 54 posts out of one tree. It was a big one. There was a lot of splitting.

I have some hedge apples I am letting rot, to get the seeds out, to grow che on the root stock I grow from the seeds.




Che is an Asian fruit that is supposed to taste like a combination of watermelon, fig and strawberry. It can take down to -20F, but tastes tropical. The fruit is good to eat, but doesn't ship well, so it's not commercially available. I know a guy who will trade me cuttings to graft on the Osage.

The che available in the US is completely seedless, so you have to grow it by grafting. There is no worry of it becoming invasive.

Keith