Economics of Horse Logging

[Gabe Ayers]

Matt,

I have known Birky for years. I wrote a response to this yesterday and went to a web site link to be sure it worked and lost my reply to you in the process. I didn’t know that I could right click the mouse and it would give me the “back” option. I ain’t as well broke as my horses.

So I visited Jim’s site and dropped him an email and he wrote back which I quote below:

“I remember our meeting in GA many years ago – have held a great respect for
you and your work since.
It has been a few years since working with our local Amish farmers and their
Belgian Horses, but I talk about them all the time. All forest managers
should have horse logging in their toolbox!”

I recall that he was working with animal powered logging in the past but it seems he may not be doing it personally now.

Value adding the products of restorative forestry is about the only way one can squeeze enough money out of it to make a living doing it. We have been doing this for years with every end user customer we could find. This approach gives some lead time for delivery of the product in a “just in time” style. In our case it is just in time for the ecosystem to survive….

The best thing about this approach for us is that we get a deposit up front that helps us pay all the folks involved along the process to get the work done and leaves the profit for the end. This means we only have to invest our labor, since most people doing this work in Appalachia don’t have capital or investment cash. Our approach develops social capital, which to us means making “People worth money”.

So there is a combination of efforts required to generate income from the practice of sustainable forestry. Combinations will be regionally appropriate to what one can do in their area and with their resources and customers.

Thanks for this post. We can all learn from each other. I particularly like
Birky’s editorials about the green movement and industry mostly being self serving. We call the greenies that run the environmental groups “envirocrats”
because they really don’t want to support animal power or bottom up change, example – Vermont Family Forest doesn’t support animal powered forestry.
And of course industry just wants to grind the source in to dust….while they
confuse the consumers with green wash…. example – SFI is a green wash.

So we have to do it our selves and educate the public as best as we can.
It is one “worst first” tree at a time and one wise landowner at a time.

http://www.draftwood.com

[Tayook]

Wow! I just spent an hour and a half reading this entire post. My head is spinning, I love it. I think I will need to read through it at least one more time to truly appreciate it.

My initial conclusion is that charging by the hour/day is the model that will provide the most stability. But I am drawn to the sliding scale because of the interdependence it will create between me and the land owner.

Charging by the hour/day leaves to door open for the land owner to treat me as an employee and dictate how I do my work, where as the sliding scale means that the land owner will need to trust and respect me enough to effectively do the job and eventually create a profit for all involved.

A major reason Toby and I want to make this a reality is that we are tired of working FOR someone. I hate going to my office, making someone else money, and at the end of the day feeling like I have accomplished nothing. Instead we want to work WITH people to actually accomplish something and make and impact.

At the end of the day I want to be able to say—look! I did that, and the work I did today will have an impact on the future…………and actually making a living doing it would be nice!

One can always dream: )

[Gabe Ayers]

One of the most rewarding aspects of doing this kind of work is what we call the “human dignity dividend” or feeling good about what you are doing. For some that alone is priceless…. However making a living and generating some income is reality and everyone has there own way of doing that as it reflects their level of income needed. There are just about as many ways to do it as there are folks doing it.

You may read the thread about “Log Delivered Markets Disappearing”. This conversation tends to address the current economic reality most folks face in the forest products industry nation wide today. Finding your place within this current economic situation will be harder than it was even six months ago.

A common observation at this moment is many conventional mills closing and conventional loggers parking or selling their equipment and looking for wage jobs.

So far we haven’t had to do that and again many here (DAP) are determined to not quit working their horses despite the lower returns for goods produced or services provided.

What part of the country are you working in? Do you have your own work horses yet? I may have missed this information in earlier posts?

There is no doubt that being familiar with the markets for forest products in important and localized or regionally specific.

One may be able to work by the hour and still have some autonomy over what you actually do when providing services. Most long term successful folks employ what is called a “flexible adaptive management style”, meaning they will do all sorts of different things besides selling logs into the commodity defined markets. There is information about those different services on this site too.

Glad you are still interested despite the less than optimistic forecast and reality of working in natural resource management today. Another commonality of this group is that most like hard work….which is not suitable for everyone…

This group will help you if they can and seem to be very honest in sharing their experiences.

I don’t think anyone on here pretends to have “the answer” but many seem to have “an answer” for their own choice of how to work their animals and make a living from their efforts. Many folks have a diversified household income picture with one of the family members working a regular job to keep the insurance and steady income as part of keeping the family living expenses going.

Good that you are doing this research prior to jumping into it blindly.

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