This Year in the Woods

Hello friends! Life is fun, isn’t it? One day you have a baby, and then next thing you know 12 years go by. One day you’re on your internet presence game and then a year of radio silence goes by! I’m feeling snazzy, so I thought I’d brief you on a year in the life of the woodsmen in my life.

I think I mostly quit writing because I just got sick of saying that its hard to be a logger. Who gives a crap really? I mean, no one likes a whiner. All jobs are hard, all industries have their ebbs and flows and you gotta work with it. We’ve been busy minding our own business I guess you could say, but it occurred to me that we now are feeling a little less connected to our community of loggers, landowners, foresters, and all the people that the Maine timber industry touches.

Post covid times definitely shook things up for the forest products industry, and a lot of companies threw in the towel. Early on in the pandemic, we took advantage of those super low interest rates and decided to grow our business with a second crew. It didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t the right fit for us. It felt we took our fingers off the pulse of what made us us. Managing a second crew didn’t align with our life and personalities. We were fortunate to be able to sell off our whole tree equipment and scale back to a single crew. Randy’s back in the woods, where he truly loves to be, and we’ve got a much better handle on managing things. When you love the woods, you love the woods. Now, we operate cut to length equipment with the ability to still chip biomass if needed. Randy’s on the job every day- either trucking or felling - and we feel like we’re back in control.

It feels a lot like that Allen Jackson song, Little Bitty where he sings “A good ole’ boy and a pretty little girl, start all over in a little bitty world. Little bitty plan and a little bitty dream, its all part of an little bitty scheme. It’s alright to be little bitty.”

And you know what? Little Bitty is great!! In the woods we feel less rushed and more confident because we are able to control more factors. Most importantly, in life, we can take the time to nurture our kids. We can make time to teach them what we know and research things when we don’t. Our oldest son is still totally obsessed with the logging industry. He spends hours making YouTube videos about it, and since I homeschool him, he’s got plenty of time to deep dive into what interests him. He’s even starting to ask the financial questions: “How banks work? How much do you need to cut in order to pay for everything? And what to do with the money once you’ve got it?” We have freedom to go to our middle son’s ball games and truly savor the innocence of our youngest. Little bitty life is good.

We’ve been super fortunate to work close to home this past year, harvesting a lot of beautiful pine logs. Our SINGLE crew was the third largest supplier at Hancock Lumber last year — and the largest single crew supplier. We’re super proud of that because it shows that we’ve got the time and attention to source the best lots, those that are truly at their prime and ready to harvest. We are also blessed to still have our main processor guy. We couldn’t do this without him! He’s become like family, and that’s priceless

We will continue ride the ebbs and flows of the industry while also maintaining some of our other little ventures. After all, you know what they say— don’t put all your eggs in one basket!