BENT MOUNTAIN LOVING OR DOROTHY I DON'T THINK THIS IS KANSAS ANYMORE

I've traveled a bit in my life.  I was born in the mid-west, which may surprise some of you that automatically tag me Yankee because I didn't grow up in the South.  (Also, please notice how I've learned to capitalize South, but not any other region.  That should make you happy and excuse me for the fact that I'm a Yankee.  Or not.)

When I was about 9 years old my dad got a job in NYC and we moved to Westfield NJ until I was a freshman in high school.  Another job opportunity and an inbred wanderlust uprooted our family once again and this time we ended up in Bad Hamburg, Germany, a suburb of Frankfurt.  We stayed about a school year and then landed in La Celle St. Cloud, a suburb of Paris.  (Actually I'm seeing a trend in this musing already, I was a kid of the burbs.  Funny, cause I've spent most of my adult life on Bent Mountain, not a suburb at all.)  Well the journey continued and we landed back in NJ for a year or so, and then off it was to college for me.  I chose Roanoke College.  Reason number one being that when I first started looking at schools I realized that the Southern boys I had met in Germany and France were much nicer and more polite than the boys I met up north. Now I realize that was something that their mamas had instilled deep in their souls, teaching them to yes ma'am as they were lying through their teeth.  Reason number two was it was the prettiest place on God's green earth.  So much for going to college for an education.  That's kinda overrated anyway.

Well anyway, I spent four years in Salem and in the midst of all that fell for my northern next door neighbor who still shares my Southern abode.  When we married Larry bought an alternative energy store in town and we moved back to Virginia.  After marriage and before kids I took a job selling travel and got to see more of the world I so dearly loved to explore.  I went to London for the weekend and spent 10 days with a bunch of crazy travel agents in Singapore and Hong Kong.  Went to Bermuda a half dozen times.  Cruised through the Caribbean, jetsetted to Switzerland.

So the gist of this musing is thus.  I've spent a near lifetime flying in and out of the Roanoke airport.  And each time, EACH TIME, I am blown away by that descent.  Every season of every year.  What glory!  What beauty! I'm home!  

SW VA MOUNTAIN MAN LIVES UP TO HIS IMAGE

I started a new interim ministry job a couple of months ago which has proven very lucrative for my mental health aside from putting a little folding money in my pocket. Unfortunately said employ has cut down a bit on my unlimited time for introspective musings.  So I enlisted the gentleman of the house who will now duly impress you with his manly pursuits. 

Harvesting Trees:  a Floyd Virginia Tradition

One of the great benefits of owning your own forested mountain land is the ability to harvest and mill lumber for various projects from woodworking to home construction. Recently, I found myself in need of a little more storage space around our farm so I decided to enclose one of the existing sheds attached to our barn.  A simple enough project in itself, however, finding rough sawn lumber to match the existing barn siding proved to be difficult.  While studying my shed project I noticed a tall straight white pine about 28. inches in diameter.  The tree had very few limbs, was easily accessible, not more than a hundred feet away from where I was standing.  A number of larger trees surrounded it; in fact the white pine seemed to be crowding out the more valuable hardwoods. 

How do you get from a standing tree to a pile of lumber ready to be used for your project?  I called the local Floyd County Forestry Department who gave me a number of saw mill operators that might be willing to take on the task.  I found a great sawyer by the name of David Slusher who lives on Black Ridge Road on the way to Chateau Morrisette Winery.  David operates a portable band saw mill and is highly experienced. All he needed was a list of lumber sizes and some logs and he’d “get started right away”.  

So, out the door I went, cut down the tree, sawed it into lengths 6 inches longer than the finished boards I would need, loaded the logs onto a one ton dump truck and it was off to Black Ridge.  A few days later David called to tell me my order was ready.  Within an hour, I was back at the barn with a load of freshly sawn lumber ready for my board and batten project. 

This was really the first time I had ever harvested my own timber for my own lumber demands. It dawned on me that people have been doing this in one form or another since the earliest days of colonization.  Of course with time and progress, techniques may have changed, but the end results remain the same.  If you own a timber rich tract of land, no matter what the size, with a little knowledge and careful consideration you can harvest enough lumber for your own needs, save money, support local tradesmen, steward resources and carry on a sustainable lifestyle richly steeped in SW Virginia tradition.