The time for cutting and hauling trees out of the woods is winter, while the ground is frozen and covered in snow. Working in the winter protects the forest floor from the heavy scraping of logs and equipment. It also keeps dirt and mud off of the logs, which will preserve the sharpness of sawmill blades later on.

We finished our timber harvest a week ago, only about 6 hours before the ground thawed.

Earlier this winter we cleared trails through the forest so that our cut trees could be reached by tractor. For some spots, like the creek below, we constructed skidding bridges from dead trees. This would allow the tractor to pass over muddy areas without getting stuck, and without causing any issues with erosion or runoff.

The sticks on top are small, but there are big logs underneath that allow the creek to flow freely through the whole mess.

Our tractor is a Kioti DK4510. We set it up with pallet forks and an Igland logging winch for the work ahead. This equipment was expensive for us and felt extravagant to buy, but in the next year of work it will have saved us more than its cost in material and labor expenses (we’ll be using it for excavation, trenches, and snow plowing as well).

Because we’ll be building a timber frame, we have to be really intentional about the trees we’re cutting. Beams in the frame vary in size, and also species in order to meet strength requirements. This meant we had to identify and account for every timber out in the woods while it was still standing as a tree.

White pine is our first choice for timbers. This one is enormous, but only about 85 years old. It looks like it grew really quickly early in its life while the land was still open sheep pasture.

Some parts of our frame design call for spruce and hemlock, which are stronger, but tougher to work with hand tools.

This log will be the single largest timber in the frame— a 20’ 8x12 wood shop tie beam (overhead, holding two sides of the building together). The long span (18’), and its service in supporting both sides of a lofted floor determined its dimensions.

Every single log has a specific location in the frame. We label the ends with information that corresponds to our milling plan, so that when we drag a log onto the mill we’ll flip to its page in the binder and confirm its finished dimensions.

Three wood shop tie beams ready for the mill, and Herrie ready for the milling.

-Kyle