From Tree to Lumber

This year for a birthday celebration 15 members of my family went on a tour of Hull-Oakes Lumber Mill (we like to think outside the box with birthday parties – just go with it) located in a small valley’s end outside of Monroe near Bellfountain. Hull-Oakes was, until very recently when it switched to electrical operations, one of the last steam-powered mills in the country, and going on a tour there is like stepping back in time: think Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. Our boisterous bunch was led through the Mill, watching as a hefty log, fresh off of the truck, was plopped into the mill pond and loaded onto the debarker tracks. We walked alongside this giant log as it rolled through the mill, expertly manipulated and processed by the crew. From timber to finished lumber, marked and ready for transport to San Francisco where it was being used in the framing of a new bridge. This is routine, day-in and day-out operations for the Hull-Oakes crew, but for us it was eye-opening to see the backstory behind the lumber that we use in our daily lives. Now, Hull-Oakes is certainly a different experience than going on a Weyerhauser tour, but the mechanics behind the processing of lumber produces the same ‘aha’ moment. My family is not naive to this world – we all grew up in a rural environment where logging is a part of everyone’s daily life. With most of the hillsides of the Mohawk Valley owned by Weyerhauser, BLM, or private woodland owners, the landscape is constantly in flux, and you mark years of your life by harvest rotations. However, most of us hadn’t witnessed first-hand what happens next after the log truck disappears down the road, and let me tell you: it was fascinating.

At Bald Hill Farm with our restoration project underway to enhance forest health, we are sending off our own logs to local mills, and thought it might be fun to give you a glimpse into the future that awaits these logs. Heck, you might even buy one to use as flooring in your kitchen one of these days!

1. First off, the loggers contracting on this project are A1 Logging out of Yamhill County. With a history of working on forest restoration projects on protected lands, including Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge, A1 also has the unique experience of working with oak, as well as specialized equipment to help minimize erosion and nimbly select smaller trees for removal.
2. Trout Mountain Forestry is our forestry consultant, working directly with the loggers and on-site nearly every day to ensure that our restoration vision is realized.
3. Larger oaks felled on the property will be heading to Zena Forest Products, a one-of-a-kind lumber mill located on protected land in the Eola Hills near Salem. Here the oak will be milled for specialty hardwood flooring and lumber for furniture and cabinet makers.
4. The larger conifer will be trucked a few short miles to Georgia Pacific in Philomath, and the smaller conifer logs to Weyerhauser in Sweet Home.
5. For those larger knotty logs, we’ll be setting them aside to assess their viability as stream improvement logs among streams and side channels at places like Harkens Lake near Monroe.
6. Several snags dot the restoration area, their grey trucks providing habitat and nesting sites for countless wildlife, and numerous downed logs lie on their sides, providing woody debris on the forest floor.
7. As we move into a clean-up phase on the forest we will also be chipping all of the remaining logs and branches – all of which will be re-distributed at the Farm for a wide variety of projects.

While it might not be as fun as seeing the logs actually travel from tree to lumber, I hope this gives you a glimpse into the cycle of life of the logs coming off of Bald Hill Farm through our woodland restoration efforts. It is also important to note that every $1 that we earn from log sales goes directly back into a Stewardship Fund for the property, helping us to continue to steward this community landscape for generations to come.

As the tour drew to a close, my uncles, cousins, aunt, sister, and parents all stood among the sunny gravel parking lot and looked back at the mill like it was a piece of fine art. “Better get out of here before the whistle blows“, yelled our guide, warning us of the elusive 4pm Bellfountain traffic jam as the workers rush homeward on the single road out of the mill. We snapped to and departed, carrying with us a deeper respect and appreciation for the journey these logs travel, from tree to lumber.

McDonald family on a tour of Hull-Oakes Mill, 2015

Jeff Baker (Stewardship Manager) and Claire Fiegener (Conservation Director) at Bald Hill Farm, looking at oak logs ready for shipping to Zena Forest Products. 2015