[Gabe Ayers]

It seems that an important development for our markets should be considering the fact that to practice restorative style forestry there are a lot of low grade trees harvested.

So coming up with a way to add value to low grade material is important. One of the products we process is fencing boards from low grade oak. Particularly white oak species that are straight enough to saw a few fencing boards out of and sound enough.

A low grade oak log is one with less than two clear faces. So if you have a market for tie logs which are oak with no clear faces or two or less in shorter lengths that is good. But for the smaller diameter but longer oak logs, say 12′ and longer may make good fencing boards. We keep the straight low grade oak with a small end diameter under 12 inches for fencing boards and saw them to order from the pile we keep around the landing or at our sort yard which is usually back at the farm where they are brought and dumped from the truck to await processing when the market shows up.

An important consideration is turning raw logs into a salable product with as little investment as possible. When we have an end use that doesn’t require kiln drying this makes the product cheaper for us to produce and easier to sell. This is the case with fencing boards, black locust decking and firewood.

Another factor very relevant to this winters weather, is the fact that folks down here have burnt much more firewood than they are used to so the demand for firewood is pretty steady these days. This is again a low grade material that can be processed with little outside cash expense and only gets better with time as it drys to make better fuel.

Another point is that slab wood makes good firewood, particularly if anyone is cooking with wood. It is understood that historically all the labor cost of operating a modern sawmill are paid for by the value of the by products of lumber production, i.e. bark mulch, sawdust, slabs/chips. This may not be the case for the more labor intensive smaller processing that we do, but the value of the by products is important and figures into the overall value of the services we provide.

Anybody else out there burning any firewood these days???

[Gabe Ayers]

It’s like an old timers said once, “the key to good fencing is to keep the horses on the side where the feed is”.

Culture keeps them in, but the mechanics are a consideration. We use barbed wire everywhere too, just as tradition, was already here, is available and most of our fence work is repair or in some cases – resurrection.

We will be doing some cross fencing and improved fencing on our woodlots this summer so we haven’t decided what to use yet either. I really like the higher quality barbed wire over the smaller sharper stuff, just for the bulk of it and the ease of handling, installing and maintaining the fence. When a deer runs through the small wire it coils back up and makes a good impromptu snare, the thicker wire is more malleable and when it breaks it just lays there and doesn’t coil back up.

Having forest products as a part of our business we do have some board fences in the barnyard area and all of them have an electric fence inside the top board to keep the horses off the boards.

We also use a single strand of electric to rotate in the grazing season, once they know it they don’t try it.

~

[Gabe Ayers]

Since this is all a new marketing initiative it would seem appropriate to do everything we can to market our products anyway possible.

A combination with existing CSA is proven to work for us for some products such as mushrooms and we have a market for botanicals (ginseng, etc.) with an international exporter, who could serve all areas of the country that have access to such products.

I think the core of the initiative should be a “green” certification process that assures the consumer that they are buying products that come from sustainable cultural practices. We certainly off our DRAFTWOOD program for that capacity.

Everything we are already doing is available on the HHFF site under DRAFTWOOD and is a work in progress, so any adaptations for local settings is possible.

For instance – I am certain that DW certified structural lumber would be a very marketable product, although the Canadian government subsidizes the production of FSC certified building materials from that country. They are very cheap compared to ours or the prices available for conventionally sourced material so that will be an important issue to keep in mind.

A combination of local regional and national marketing is possible here, maybe even international.

This presents very exciting possibilities from this work for all of us.

Thanks guys.

~

[Gabe Ayers]

Good story Kevin, no defense necessary – to quote the famous equne philosopher Mr. Ed, “a horse is a horse, of course, of course” and a stallion is a stallion.

Keep working with whatever you have. Thanks for posting.

~

Sincerely,

[Gabe Ayers]

Welcome Matthew,

Some of us are just well known because we have been around so long that you make it to the top of the mixing bowl because the stirring brought us there. I am honored by your comments and certainly by the association with such proven practitioners that this forum shares.

I would submit that if you keep your dedication to the culture and tell the stories in every setting possible, share your culture by learning from the elders and being open to the beginners, that you will gain/earn some recognition from mere participation also. It is like the famous philosopher Woody Allen said, 75% of success is just showing up….

We are just the big fish in a small pond. Nothing like Hollywood reality, mostly in that none of us are acting, just living within principles of our own choosing and a dedication fueled by a personal sense of freedom and independence.

Glad you found this site, spread the word to anyone interested and let us know what you are doing or wanting to do.

Salute,

~

[Gabe Ayers]

We had a meeting with our NRCS folks yesterday for the homeplace here and some farmland that we rent. The aerial photos were amazing. We could count how many horses and cattle were in the pastures……vehicles in the parking lot and all sorts of information, soil types, topo,

If you have a good NRCS person it can be very supportive of fencing, water systems and planning for the farm and forest.

[Gabe Ayers]

~

The diversity of community members involved combined with a diversity of products makes the entire approach stronger and more like to yield consistently.

We do sell our special forest products through our local CSA. Same as George, I don’t want to go to the farmers market or to the back door of multiple restaurants, I especially since we know someone that is already doing that. We try to take what they can give me within reason of what it is work retail or at the end user, similar to the cheese numbers I guess.

All our value added products are made in the community by neighbors, all the kiln drying is done in the community, so much more of the money stays here, thereby building a larger constituency for the best care of the forest for every day people.

It is the collected production of all our BWM that constitute our inventory, makes us much more flexible to orders.

These are all principles of our group from the onset.

This is a good thread.

~

[Gabe Ayers]

I won’t put Sevin dust on my vegetables and I sure ain’t putting it on my horse or myself, which would be the same. That stuff is very toxic, probably carcinogenic. It is certainly not organic!

I recommend two products for treatment of this fungus.

First is a product called Micro Tek. It is available at good tack shops and farm supply places. It is expensive but is a non toxic effective treatment of rain rot. Just spray it on and work it into the scabs with your fingers and they will go away quickly. It comes in a black plastic bottle with a sprayer on it. It works.

The second homemade product is one of an solution of Comfrey that has been soaked in rubbing alcohol and then poured off and applied to the scabs the same as the Micro Tek stuff. We use a ration of 50/50 comfrey to rubbing alcohol.

There may be other store bought anti fungus products that will work on this too, but over the counter poison (vegetable pesticides) are not the safest or best choice available.

~

[Gabe Ayers]

Well I certainly don’t know all about how a CSA works, but bet there are all sorts of variations on the approach of marketing sustainable products to consumers. This is just a working group sort of setting for discussions. I originally made the CSF analogy because our custom orders of DRAFTWOOD forest products requires a 50% deposit to accept the order, which sort of seems like the CSA approach.

It would seem necessary that the members of a CSF would have a common need from the forests, which could be firewood. This would be the potatoes of the CSA analogy. There would be a certain amount of firewood available from the membership which would justify the purchase of a share.

From there the availability of other forest products would have to be within the capacity of the farmer, forester, logger, biological woodsman or whatever the producer is called. That capacity would have to be principled to be truly sustainable forestry from the onset.

I have to say that most of the successful CSA folks growing food also have markets for their produce other than their membership. This would surly be a need for a forestry equivalent. Since we are proposing to harvest what needs to be harvested while we are on a site, there has to be some way of turning that material into money and often that may be other than the markets defined by CSF membership. We will still have to sell into conventional markets to keep the day to day operations going if you are logging for a living full time. Maybe there is a case for combining the two interests and CSA folks offering a CSF product line?

An issue of CSF so accurately brought up by Carl is that of “owning the inventory”. I appreciate his perspective of having the inventory being a living system of a forest and standing timber, this is where we are. Creating an economic opportunity based on access and ability to produce on demand, “just in time” is exactly what we do all the time for custom orders. It is almost impossible for a ground level worker to be able to afford to add value to all the goods they can produce in raw log form. Although it is an investment in their own worth it is one hardly affordable for day to day hand to mouth operations like most of us are. I completely understand. This is what leads to the need to have up front money to pay for the cost of this value adding and it would be great if it came from the end user.

But people don’t need lumber and forest products daily like they do bread or food. So there are many gaps yet to be bridged in this analogy of CSA and CSF, but we have good thinkers and doers on this forum and it is a great place to discuss it.

The ability to value add or process the raw logs to lumber does have the advantage of putting a raw material into a condition of increasing value by drying while stacked, stickered and covered. As it drys it becomes more valuable with the only cost being that of owning the cost of getting it to that point and serving the debt (surviving) while it awaits a market.

Hard nut to crack, but a real goody inside if we can hit it square without mashing our fingers.

[Gabe Ayers]

Well, I guess our pennies for your thoughts portion should be shared. I say our because even through I write in this forum and elsewhere under my name, nothing I know or express is solely of my making, but a sum of many experiences, most being empowered by shared experiences with other farmers, foresters and ground level workers in this broad cultural community.

Lynn and I talked about this years ago when he sent out the first letter or actually he called me before that letter arrived and we had a couple of conference calls on the issue early on. I think he has HHFF on the advisory board and at least one individual in our group has contributed money to SFC to have HHFF included somehow.

The gist of our exchange, (given the agreement of needs for what Lynn proposes as benefits to this culture) was about structure of the effort as it relates to the experience we have had by being a 501c3 non profit Public Charity. I think I’ve written about this before, but not sure where…

First we referred Lynn and the members of the conference call to the lawyers we used to obtain this tax status. It is easy to get started with a wide description of how your organization will serve the public good. But it is a different matter to obtain this status on a long term basis given there is a five year review to be sure that you are doing exactly what you say you do. We have been through that and have an understanding of how the system works from that experience.

The 501c3 status is a way for the people to address public needs that are not being addressed by existing entities of the government. This makes sense
because that status allows the organization to compete with the government for revenue by having tax deductible status or paying less taxes for donating to the Public Charity. In other words the group is essentially competing with the government for revenue by being in a tax deductible status. So you must be serving the public good in a way that is not currently being served by the government.

I think this will be the crux of SFC lasting. Many of the proposals of SFC are currently being addressed by multiple agencies within government. The true challenge will be for SFC to define it’s place in the big picture as serving the public good in a way unique unto itself. If not, the status will be revoked upon the five year review and any gains prior may have to be repaid to the government which opens a real can of worms or what ever organism you want to replace worms with, i.e. maggots, parasites, malignancies, etc.

My hope in being on the advisory board is to help have SFC built upon a foundation that withstands that review and is constructed in a way that defines it as worthy of the status for the good and honest reasons we all agree upon. Things need to be different for small farmers everywhere and just like Carl and others – I have worked my entire adult life to figure that out. I continue that work every day in one way or another, just in the daily survival or our own personal farm and forestry “business”. It is a screaming understatement to say this is not easy. We are all bucking as system that devalues, reduces, marginalizes the human component in addressing the very needs of our own selves and our own communities.

I share in the Don Quiote (sp.) syndrome with Lynn, although neither of us has ridden a donkey regularly, but both (as well as many others) have battled dragons as windmills and are usually only given a stick to fight with.

This entire effort is extremely complex, particularly given the participants are folks that strive for a simple life. It’s a machine gun firefight shooting paradoxical bullets.

Just thought we would share what we have already shared. I support Lynn as he has always supported us. I hope for the best results from this effort and find the man to be a cultural icon for his persistence through a long time period of dismissal from the status quo. He has bucked off the system repeatedly and somehow landed on his feet over and over. It is the same for many of us.

There is always another windmill on the horizon and my hope is to supply him a stick of black locust to make his sword from. He is entirely capable of finding his own donkey and most of us here would loan him ours….

The entire experience has provided us another opportunity to try to explain what our organization is about. I am thankful for that. The greatest success we could achieve is to have others do similar work in their geographical communities and at least some of that is taking place.

Thanks for reading and participating, now we all have to go do our real work of husbandry to our surroundings. Unless you are in the SW US, you better bundle up…

Salute~

[Gabe Ayers]

Since we offered this approach from our experiences it would be appropriate that we elaborate a bit, although indeed some is yet theoretical and this is a great forum for such a development within this community of interest.

First, the approach should be inclusive of every product and many intangible values of being connected to a forest, the forests or forest resources in general.

Thanks to Erik for contributing, thoughts from someone successful are helpful.

The idea of a CSA includes connecting with the source of food as well as acquiring the food itself. There always seems to be a portion of CSA membership in fresh produce settings for people to have the option to come to the farm and be involved in some aspects of the food production. This could be the same for CSF.

Some people like being connected to the source – which is the earth and giving them that access is a value. Every major city has parks and they are just places where grass and trees grow and people like to go. The CSF could be an extension of that. That certainly wouldn’t mean every customer or shareholder, but would be of value to some.

I could see the CSF membership services including, lumber of all types available from the forest type, firewood, some finished products at a discounted cost to the member, Special Forest Products on a seasonal basis to include, edible gourmet mushrooms, nuts, herbs/botanicals, craft items and anything of value in an sustainable extractable form. Then the value of the eco-tourism aspect of folks just wanting to have a nice forest to walk in at their leisure and pleasure. This could be when work is occurring or at their will. It could include hunting rights with membership and of course education about the values of the forested resource and it’s ecosystem services provided for the public good.

Specifically we have sold furniture that was custom designed and built for customers who placed value on seeing the source and methods of production as well as the quality of the end user product. This included visiting the site to see the actual trees their dining room suit was made from, learning why they were selected and literally hugging the selected trees prior to harvesting and following the process all the way to the finished product, which of course ends up in their home and daily life. A photo album was assembled to accompany the finished product to it’s destination.

This entire proposal includes the DRAFTWOOD community certification system of having third party individual audit the harvesting to vouch for the standards and guidelines being followed. The completed product includes a plaque with the DRAFTWOOD brand burnt onto it and on the back, a complete listing of the source (practitioner), date of harvest of raw logs, sawyer, forest landowner information, processing stream, volume of logs and lumber delivered and craftsman fabricator that built the furniture or processed the flooring, paneling, beams of whatever was made for their needs. It also includes the signature of the auditor who is always a third party, but also a community member that volunteers to audit the process as a support of good environmental work. The main point is that this doesn’t have to cost the consumer any extra money in the long run of the end use value, yet connects them with the source of their goods and services.

Services could be included in the CSF membership. Those services could be fire risk reduction, firewood production, timber stand improvement and all sorts of possibilities for a forest landowner, just the same as a private forest management agreement. Skid trail construction could mean walking trail development. These trails can be a way for landowners to connect with the ongoing collection of special forest products beyond active harvesting or practitioner presence. All these activities may be integrated with existing governmental support programs through Natural Resource Conservation Service and other agencies.

This really could put a higher value on forestry services that address the objectives of many small private forest landowners in the eastern Hardwood forest types.

There seem to be an infinite amount of possibilities though such an approach.

We look forward to sharing and growing this approach as a means of accomplishing our goals, objectives and mission statement at HHFF.

Thanks for reading this and for everyone’s interest.

Salute,

~

[Gabe Ayers]

I bet that was a great experience, they usually have a wonderful conference and some solid practitioners at the event. I was invited to speak once a few years back but had a previous engagement so Chad Vogel went in my place and enjoyed the event.

We have thought about the obstacle course as something to include in our Biological Woodsmen’s Week activities. We haven’t done it and this is pretty much why ~ We want this activity to be as far from a show atmosphere as possible.

The BWW event is more of a combination of a logging camp, Healing Harvest Forestry Coalition group harvesting activity than a conference or seminar or any kind of show for the week we work. We generally just divide the forest into somewhat similar units and put each crew on their own patch. Usually skidding to a haul road that is accessible throughout the site. One issue with some of our guys is keeping them from being so competitive. So we try to put guys that are competitive away from the other guys that are competitive so they will just work at a normal pace, with operator safety being the first principle, sensitive harvesting and surgical silviculture being next and production being what ever it turns out to be within those principles coming first.

The main point of BWW is to be a public educational event that allows the private landowners to see “restorative forestry” in action. So each unit is visited in guided tours as groups of visitors are assembled daily throughout the week. The purpose is for folks to know this can be done and see the results of a finished job and the process of getting it there.

We do have some competitive aspects of the weeks event, but they are reserved for the last day when we have what is called “Horselogger’s Play Day”. We have a timber felling contest where poles or small sized trees are set in holes and fell toward a tin can with each crew designating their timber feller and the winner is the one that hits the can. Not as easy as you think with just a straight stem about 40 feet out of the ground. We got this from the GOL competitions, it makes sense to promote enhanced felling skills and technique. Then we have a pulling contest where we use the Cornell rules developed years ago pulling 27’6″ on a flat bottom sled loading 500 pounds at a time.

Since this is a week long event or at least five days the public gets to see plenty of obstacle course driving in the process of skidding from each unit in a real world functional setting. Each team sees the knuckleboom that travels up and down the haul road moving logs to keep the landings clear and chainsaws are screaming everywhere. So we have lots of experiences for the visitors and the participants. It is a strictly invitational event with the participating members of the group being those that have gone through our training or are going through the Biological Woodsmen apprenticeship participating. We have held several and will do more, and would love to invite anyone interested to attend.

This kind of event is a good public educational tool to be used on a community by community basis anywhere. The result of the “restorative forestry” work being neat, minimum disturbance and non-competitive is the objective. The residual condition of the forest is the most important aspect, not how much wood anyone gets out. To keep the guys from being to competitive we usually split the proceeds on the end, so if any of them get in to big a hurry, I just remind them that they are working for all of us so just take their time and concentrate of the quality of their work not the quantity.

So I don’t have any suggestions for an obstacle course, other than go out in the woods and deal with the real ones therer and then go back and see how many trees were rubbed, how many good residuals were damaged in the felling process and if there is any need for remedial work because the trail system wasn’t diverse enough. That is where the real competition comes in and it is mighty hard to make being sensitive as exciting as being just productive. But that is our intention.

We seldom have any money or prizes for the participants and the entire event is usually paid for by the proceeds from our log sales. In some cases we have harvested as much as 85,000 board feet in a four day period and that makes enough money for everyone to get a fair share. The hard part is finding just the right site to put it on. We hope to do another BWW this year and will let the DAP forum know. This and SDAD are about our only planned events for 2010 and they are still just plans, nothing solid yet.

Whatever works to get practitioners together, educate landowners and inspire new folks to become practitioners is a good thing. This is what we have done and will keep doing as a location is found.

We have gone to log skidding competitions before where the cones are twenty feet apart and the lane is twenty feet wide and you have to skid a sixteen foot pole around the course without touching the cones or stepping out of bounds and stop your horses walk around them and pick the lines up again to win.

That is cool, especially for public folks in that kind of setting. But it is a show and not what we are about. That shows people what skills the teamster has for sure, but if anyone laid out a skid trail that crooked for me more than once I would send them down the road. It there was a piece of black plastic laying it the skid trail where I was working I would pick it up and cover something with it, not make my team drive over it, might poke holes in it…

I suggest putting a more complex and appropriate face on the efforts that reflect well on the results of the work. But, if that is not possible an obstacle course would suffice and certainly allows more folks to see it at one time. But it is somewhat of a sound bite on the encyclopedia of skills the really good horse loggers have. But it may be the best we can do to educate the public. It is hard to keep folks attention for very long these days….

Maybe someone else will chime in with a better idea for an actual course.

~

[Gabe Ayers]

I just use leather lines, and know how to grab a loop like Carl if needed. The worst part about that is if a horse falls it could jerk you forward, if you didn’t let go just right. That would be a good measure of light touch, that your grip be sensitive enough that you don’t get pulled forward if one falls down. Sometimes the weather just multiples the difficulty of our already hard work.

I like good quality insulated leather driving gloves and get a pair when winter starts and by spring they are shot, if I’m lucky.

This year the weather has been terrible in the Appalachians, snow cover for about a month now, deep ice everywhere, not much work going on in the woods for the stove tending southerners these days. Wind chill 15 below, not a good time to work outdoors. I don’t know how you tough hided Yankees or far north westerner’s do it…???

We’ve been hauling lumber to the kiln, planing some, dimensioning locust decking, anything to stay at least behind a wall somewhere. Even shipped a horse to another biological woodsman today, this means caught it and lead it to the end of the driveway and handed the lead line to the woodsman in his trailer. Ain’t know getting in and out of our place with a truck and trailer at the moment.

It seems the weather has been kicking NE the last few days too… but you guys must be used to it..

I also have had a gut bug for a few days and are just now seeing normal feeling in the future. Glad to finally be feeling a little better.

Been reading Wendell’s new “Bringing it to the Table” collection of essays.
Good stuff!

This book is less than 5 pounds George.

~

[Gabe Ayers]

Great site Scott. I have requested a link from HHFF through our far distant web master.

It is quiet here for sure, but it is also probably that the few who the core group are busy.

For me it is quiet like the duck paddling across an eddy, I don’t look to busy, but I am paddling hard as I can under the surface….

I suppose I could post some stuff about how we value add and market through the DRAFTWOOD program. This aspect of our efforts to make a living practicing the best forestry we know, has been developing for decades.

It is sometimes hard to remember what I have already written about what we do.

Hopefully this New Year will give us some new energy to move forward on down the skid trail to meet with our peers anywhere we can find them.

I am glad the decade is over and we can head toward a new better time for everyone.

May we all know our real friends in the 10’s

Happy ~ NEW YEAR

~*

[Gabe Ayers]

I recommend:

E and R Seed LLC
1356 E. 200 S.
Monroe, Indiana 46772

866-510-3337

email: eandrseed@yahoo.com

Write them and ask for a catalog. They have many products for organic production and some open pollinating heirloom varieties. They are an Amish company. I have been very satisfied with there customer service and prices.

~

[Author]

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