Progress on Local Lumber

[Gabe Ayers]

This is just what every state needs to do and of course animal powered extraction and some source differentiated identity on the products…

This could be a major change and better market for any small scale forest management person.

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10765010

this is from Jim Birkenmier in Wisconsin.

Funny state, once liberal, now putting Amish in jail for not complying with premise registration, then back to realistic forest management approaches…

Lots of cool things on the DAP site these days….

[mstacy]

Jason,

From the article, it was not clear to me what benefits “certification” provides to the logger and/or sawyer. You take a class. Get certified. Then what?

Does the Wisconsin program provide some commercial advantage to certified individuals? I like the concept, but the details were not clear (to me at least) in the article.

Regards,

Matt Stacy
West Topsham, VT

[lancek]

all though I agree with the concept of useing local lumber to build local houses I see problems with coruption with in the system ! The origenal intention of the grade stamp system was set in place by lumber companys to keep the small mills from compeating for the houseing markets by making the smaller mills jump through hoops and incure a lot of expence in doing so. this was a way of stiffeling the competion and keeping the market share to the induviduals that had grandfathered into useing the grade stamp! And they did this all in the name of safety. This is like alot of other laws that have been set into effect with the general public in mind but have been corupted to keep people in line and the cash flow going to the few!
You wacth a lot of the big contractors that were buying lumber from canada will now be buying saws and going after as much timber as they can get taking the best and leaving the rest and useing this as a marketing tool to sell green, and a lot of the folks that have been trying to promote this idea since the 70s will be left out in the cold because they dont have the clout to stop some of the rules and regulations that will be funled through the state buy lobbyest for the big companys! And what you will see is the same thing as the gradeing stamp but under a differant law! And Jason this is why I agree with the fact that we need to form some sort of lobbying group with our new orginisation to hopefully give us a place at the table along side these lobbyest!

[Gabe Ayers]

Well this is just a law in Wisconsin. The ability to build with your own material is Va. just required a structural engineer to grade the material and sign off on it so the building inspector could be removed from taking any responsibility as to the quality of the material.

I don’t think it was a safety issue or scheme as much as making sure the building would last beyond the lifetime of the builder so it would stay on the tax roles longer and generate income for localities. I really don’t think the government cares if it falls down on the occupants, just that it stands long enough to contribute to the tax revenue stream. But it may be spun differently ways in different regions, with the same result of profit for the few… You are right there – in just about everything we look at closely.

A lobbying effort is very expensive, but it would be good to give a voice to our approach to every public official we can, they just all will balk at being called backwards by supporting anything animal powered. None of them have the vision to see it as green jobs creation and environmentally sensitive and therefore superior. The general attitude from the power structure is to dismiss animal powered techniques as being to labor intensive and not enough people available to do the work. They can’t have it both ways, but they do, despite our efforts to seek funding to train more “biological woodsmen” through our established network, organization and proven system.

The “green” story is about establishing a “source differentiated identity” on the product and that is where we have a serious advantage by the general public perception that animals are gentler on the land. We all know you can high grade with an animal and make it look good to an untrained or unaware observer, so we have a challenge to educate the public, specifically private forest landowners – about what we know good forestry to be. That will be our strength in an “ecological capitalism” way – not through the sold out/bought off government.

But that is just my opinion.

We should keep all doors open and skid trails clear so we can have lots of directions to grow this culture in any way we can.

You are wise to be suspicious….make good points. Thanks.

Matt, I think the point is a logger/sawyer/forest manager can be certified to produce structural material for home building on site. So it could lead to another way to make a living doing good forestry without selling to the mills. I did notice that the patch of woods behind the sawmill was even aged…. not what we work with or in….

We have also been doing this somewhat by harvesting and processing for the timber framers which are grandfathered in as not needing grade stamps in Va.

[Author]

Posts