Norfork pine has a lot of blue in it when it splats. Long needle line will turn blue with spalt if alliwed to dry to before milling. No market for it so they spray water on it to prevent the blue mood. Mills try to keep a couple weeks logs on hand but will increase that in the winter. They might not be able to cut timber for weeks due to weather so they build up a backlog to keep the mill going.
When I lived in Lexington, I rescued a large maple tree from a building site. Left it outside, under shade, with a wet tarp wet cover with heavy leaf compost. After three years I had it milled with a portable band saw mill. All but the cant was perfectly spalted with lots of black lines with great colors in the background. Not soft yet but very nice colors. I sold several hundred bowl blanks on EBay from this tree. It is as a big, big tree but it was a soft maple which was not going to work for stock blanks. It still was a money maker.
