By Becky Mills
Contributing Editor

Andy Andreasen already had planned to graze cattle under his pine trees after the trees were thinned in 2004. When a tornado from Hurricane Ivan thinned them again six months later, the plan became a necessity.

"We lost $30,000 worth of timber in one night," says the Marianna, Fla., cattleman. "It opened up the stand considerably more than we planned."

As it turned out, the cattle and pines benefited each other, starting with the cows' role in weed control. "Thinning left the ground open for weeds," explains Andreasen. "But the cattle grazed the weeds along ...