My friend Pete Bates, a forestry professor at our university, referred me to a logger for the pines, Mr. Cecil Brooks, a soft-spoken family man from the neighboring county, almost old enough to be my father and smaller in stature but spry on his feet and able to get more done in one week with a chainsaw, a knuckle boom logging truck, a bulldozer, an occasional helper, and an extra driver than most of us accomplish with our hands in a whole year. He was very honest and very conscientious, to a fault, and willing to take on my small job between 1000-acre contracts. I got paid 1/3 of his take for the poplar, and $10/ton on the pine, most of which is going toward rock for the drives and goat fencing.
Much of the pine, he sold to Ralph Morgan (http://coldholler.blogspot.com/2010/09/cabin-chapter-40-got-wood.html) right down the road. That's a full-circle kind of occurrence for me - Ralph sold me the planks for my roof rafters and floor on the log cabin. Now, he'll take trees from my land and sell them to mostly area carpenters as framing material for houses that might shelter some neighbor. That's "keeping it local" if the term means anything at all!
Here are some of the logs harvested from my land, with Ralph standing there for perspective:
No comments:
Post a Comment