Why I Want A Sawmill (In My Watershed)
By David Haenke
From 1969 to 1980 I had about 40 jobs, mostly menial wage slavery, from General Motors factory slave to railroad slave to sawmill slave. But even during that time I was also completely immersed in the ecological vision that has been my reality all my conscious life, and before. From 1980 on I have by Earth's bountiful grace been able to work full time in that vision. I figure I have in these last 25 years helped start or worked with about 40 different ecological movements, hundreds of people and organizations. My vision says that every single thing that human beings need to do to survive and thrive can and must be done according to the ecological laws and design principles given freely, directly and almost eternally by Earth. Nothing new. This is how humans have seen and done things throughout the bulk of history, excepting the industrial imperial insanity of the last 500 years.
We moved to the Ozarks in 1971 and the first slave job I got -- for $1.60 and hour -- was in that sawmill I mentioned before. It was mean, dangerous, roaring cacophony. Boards of every kind of wood went sailing by -- bound for industrial pallets up north, to be used once or twice and then landfilled or burned -- black, white, and red oak, pine, sycamore, yellowood, gum, persimmon, hickory, black walnut, cherry. In fact this is still where most wood cut in the Ozarks ends up: pallets in burn piles and landfills. By 4 PM every afternoon every erg of energy in my being was squeezed out by the old hard-driving flinty seven-fingered boss man. Odus Randolph. I was a happy neo-hillbilly the day I walked off that job for good.
Now I can't wait to be sawmillin' again. Wha...Wha...Wha happened? Has he gone mad from years of Ozark cultural starvation? No cappuccino? This tree huggin' ecologist? (But never, never an "environmentalist".But that's another story) In fact, I now make most of my living wielding a chain saw, whacking down small trees day after day in my beloved forest. I'll explain why all this eco-work has become focussed on a sawmill.
Bioregionalism is where my vision of total ecology (as in the 40 movements mentioned earlier) gets applied, put into context. Further focussed, the watershed within the bioregion is the prime locus of real life work. In the watershed, in the bioregion, we can do everything ecologically that it takes to live well in cooperation with the other species and ecological entities that are the non-human members of our watershed community. In this time we depend upon them, and they depend upon us. In this way of living our life potentials together can stretch out into the far future, in honor and sanity. The knowledge and the means to actually do this actually exist right now.
All dimensions of the watershed puzzle -- economics, politics, technology, agriculture/ permaculture, spirituality, energy, etc. -- are hologrammatic. Each one can generate the totality of any other one and all the rest. At the same time, a real, deep, structural shift that actually works for a majority of people requires three elements working symbiotically. The shift must 1) be moral and ethical; 2) resonate spiritually/religiously; 3) be economically viable (deliver the goods, provide the necessities, put the food on the table, etc.). Even two of the three won't work. All three must be present, and integrated. The key holo-grammatic element is an ethical, spiritual, fully functional bioregional/watershed ecological economics. This is what we need to make it all work.
The forest land where I work and chainsaw is in the watershed of a beautiful Ozark stream called Bryant Creek. Back in 1977 I had a vision within the vision to create "The Bryant Creek Nation" where somehow caring people would get all the land in the 40 mile watershed into an ecological trust. A big dream, but one worth having.
More than 15 years later I find myself working with 4500 acres of forest land within the Bryant Creek Watershed. Right now our little crew of tree huggers is doing TSI -- timber stand improvement. In 1961 the previous landowner logged off every saleable tree 14" thick and larger on the entire 4500 acres. Take the best and leave the rest. Evolution and natural selection in reverse. High-grade, the preferred manner of logging -- along with the heinous clearcut -- in the Ozarks and most everywhere else. After all the big trees (except the hollow and defective ones) were taken, thousands of sprouts rushed in to fill the void and began to compete for growing room, crowding each other out.
Where nature would in about 200 years complete the job of thinning out the weakest competing trees to a widely spaced old growth stand, we are, through TSI, doing the same thing with chainsaws. No doubt nature could do a better job, with a lot less disturbance and air pollution, in 200 years. But TSI is a way to speed up the process, so that the forest can grow healthier trees and still be harvested -- logged -- selectively in a sustained way, to still make a living from the healing forest. The next step for me, if it works out, is to start doing some light logging as a part of the TSI.
With this land, I'm looking for the key to the puzzle of how to "garden the forest" in a way that is ecologically economically viable, here in the Bryant Creek Watershed. This is the heart of the bioregional/watershed work applied on the ground. If this key can be found, it is the open door to solving the dilemma of backwoods livelihood, how to protect and use the forest at the same time, how to find common ground between the locals and the environmentalists, as well as between the forces of economic exploitation and total preservation, how to restore the land to health, and a long list of other potent issues. I'm now nearly a year into this forest project. With the land and the total economic situation I face, I feel sometimes like I have a rune-stone in my hands, turning it this way and that, looking with all my might to find the key to economic viability without exploitation. So far the working, on-the-ground answer eludes me, swimming upstream against the global economy of GATT and NAFTA. But I know how it could work.
Only 30 years ago most of the wealth of the forest land was looted. It's coming back, but slowly. Meanwhile what is there, in terms of dollar value, is vastly underpriced. The value of trees and such products as firewood is swimming in the sea of the global economy, where commodity and labor prices are driven down to absurd amounts, liquidation prices to stuff the multinational feeding frenzy. The value of a log tree in the 4500 acres has to compete against land virtually given away for liquidation by near slave labor in the Amazon, Indonesia, Maylasia. It's a rigged and difficult game, but I believe the key is there somewhere in the turning rune if we can hold out and keep the land in forest long enough.
There are innovative methods now available to allow Ozark land -- and all land that was and still wants to be forested -- to be productive both as working forest and farm/ranch at the same time. What is even better is that these methods may even be able to improve the health of the land.
To supply the sawmill, and other product uses, where appropriate, as an ongoing process, the forest is thinned using the most up-to-date practices of ecological forestry. The intent is to more widely space the trees, leaving the most healthy and valuable ones where they would naturally grow best. Instead of high-grading and clearcutting, we selectively take the worst, and leave the best, sometimes called "retention forestry". The plan here would be to move the forest towards an "old growth condition". Also, on good sites, walnut, pecan, or other high value wood or nut trees could be planted with pasture in between the spaced trees. Along with sawlogs, the thinnings can be sold as firewood, fence post material, mushroom logs, and other such products, along with more that can be researched.
And here's the sawmill I want. A small, efficient lumber mill (band saw)could be set up (such as a "Wood Mizer"), along with an edger, planer, and solar kiln dryer. Trees from the land, as well as from other forests in the region could be processed and the lumber sold or used here. The "value-added" to the logs in this way is substantial, far above the value of "raw logs". "Value-added". This is the key to a local, watershed, ecological economy. Add value locally, sell locally whenever possible. Raw logs sell criminally cheap. Rough lumber sells for a lot more. Kiln dried, edged lumber sell for a lot more than that. Good products made from that kiln dried, edged lumber sell for much more than that, in dollars per thousand board feet. Now we're getting somewhere.
I want a sawmill. In a world where, for good or ill, it all comes down to economics, this is the best way I know how to save the forest. When local people anywhere in the world get economically desperate, neither all the legions of environmentalists, their lawyers, nor the governments, nor the monkeywrenchers, nor the tree sitters, nor the laying-down-in- the-road-in-front-of-the-log-truckers, nor the UN World Heritage Commission, nor the Sierra Club, nor anyone can save the forest. We have to find ways to use the land ecologically and economically.
Using our sawmill, we need to make and sell anything and everything we can that comes from a by-product of production. Recycle locally everything that you make and use up locally. Use every log for its highest possible use, and use all parts of the log. Not just pallets!
Looking more broadly at the land base that provided the logs for our sawmill, where appropriate, in the spaces between the trees, forage grasses could be established, re-established, or maintained: agroforestry. The most innovative possibility would be to re-establish native grasses. These grasses may have advantages over introduced forage. For instance they are more hardy, well-adapted, and nutritious for cattle, even though they may not make the production volumes of commercially available ones. The forest/pasture would be maintained by careful periodic burning.
The grazing pattern for cattle would be controlled through movable fencing in a "paddock-style" arrangement. Cattle would be allowed to graze intensively in a confined area, the paddock. During this time, they graze the grass down heavily, trampling and manuring the paddock. After a carefully-monitored period of time, they are moved to another paddock.
There is growing evidence that the Indians employed a pattern of land use just like that which I describe above, all over North America. Historical records of pre-white settlement times tell of the forests being "open and park-like", i.e., like Savannah. In the Ozarks, prairie grasses (such as big and little blue stem, described as often growing horse high, six to eight feet) grew in the wide spaces between great virgin oaks, where herbi-vores such as woodland bison and elk grazed. The Indians hunted the bison and elk as a source of food. They maintained this productive Savannah through periodic burnings. They were "raising" animals in a way similar to what I am proposing.
Considerable research has been done on the most ecological and productive ways to raise cattle. It has been observed that wild herbivores in nature have a particular grazing pattern, one that I described earlier. That is, they move in fairly tight herds (for safety), and graze one area intensively, trampling and manuring the area. Then they move on. The area they have grazed in this way regenerates exceptionally, with a heavy, thick growth. This is how nature maintains the tremendously productive grazing lands of the Earth. Both the health of the land and the animals it supports is maintained and increased. Movable paddock grazing imitates this pattern.
I'm not a fan of beef-raising or timber cutting, but the economic realities seem to ask that we address these things, since these are two of the major activities on the land now, and they are likely to continue by the present methods, unless we can come up with a credible alternative, until the land is exhausted. My hope is to provide the alternative that will allow timbering and critter-raising to be done sustainably, and even help the land back toward the healthy and abundant condition it was in before the whites came. If we are to live on the land we need to use it and what it wants to produce in the best way we can. Of course if we could gain all our needed revenue from eco-tourism or something like that I suppose that would be great.
More specific possibilities here:
"Organic", lean, grass-fed, sustainably raised beef has a large and growing premium market.
Shiitake and oyster mushrooms have another high-dollar premium market. (Although I have heard that the market is getting glutted in some places.)
Ecologically-produced, "certified sustainable" timber, as well as lumber and products made from it, has a growing specialized, and high-value market. This follows the trend of the organic food market.
Here where I am -- but I would generalize to most anywhere -- if we can maintain as much land as possible as islands of ecological integrity, I believe our local economic prospects will continue to increase. If a viable indigenous ecological watershed economy can be started on a substantial amount of trust lands, the first step towards a Bryant Creek Nation will have been taken, or towards your creek or river nation. Yes, it's a big dream. But it used to work and it could again. I think watershed ecological economics is the way things want to be here on Earth. And if I can find some way to power the sawmill of my dreams with the sun, wind, water, or methane gas from organic matter, I'll be in Ozark log heaven. Maybe you want a sawmill too.
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