I'm also interested in hearing about the visits. As much specifics as you are willing to share. How many people are working there? Did you see active working going on? Were they putting on a show for you or did you see random people working at various activities? Which/how many farms did you see? What farms look bad/good? What percentage of trees look as good as you expected, or are they all scrubby? Did you buy new plantings or special older trees, and do the special older trees look like they were selling the worst ones off?
Basically, the contract seems to boil down to this: they are responsible to thin the trees in the best way to make them grow as well as possible, but TATF is the only entity that has the right to judge whether the trees need to be thinned or not, so in other words, they watch over themselves to see if they are doing a good job. So we have no independent way to hold their feet to the fire. No USDA to inspect the trees and give them a seal of approval for what they are doing.
I don't think everyone thinks it's a scam where they will take the money and run (but if even '93 owners haven't gotten any money at all? I'm pretty uncomfortable about that - hadn't read back that far). More that they aren't doing what they said, trees might not be growing as expected, wood might not be as valuable as expected. Like they sold it a lot bigger than it is, they are managing it very poorly and what we end up with may not be a whole lot.
To all: You are welcome to contact me for verification if you like. Not sure if my cheerful innate optimism makes me sound like a shill.
