Celebrating Vermont's Working Forests and Foresters During National Forest Products Week

Take a look around you - how many forest products can you count? From the studs in the walls to the desk under your computer or the maple syrup in your coffee, forest products suffuse our everyday lives. In Vermont, the forest products industry contributes $1.4 billion in annual sales, and supports thousands of jobs, making it a critical part of our state's economy- and well worth celebrating!

October 18-25 was National Forest Products Week. To celebrate and highlight Vermont's forests and foresters, we visited an active logging site and 2 sawmills, to celebrate our forestry community at work and meet some of the people who make it all happen.

For a full recap of the week on our social media, Watch Here

Vermont-grown forest products start on the woodlot, so we spent some time with forester Ryan Killborn to learn about active logging. 

Next stop in the life of a log is the sawmill. Gagnon sawmill has been in operation since 1959, with it's current iteration since 1992.  Milling hard and softwood from Vermont-grown trees.

Continuing our series highlighting Vermont forest products, we met up with Colleen Goodridge in the yard at Goodridge Lumber to learn about her family’s story and the role they play in the Vermont forest products industry.

Goodridge Lumber is a family owned-and-operated, specialty lumber mill in Albany, Vermont. Since 1974 they’ve been processing white cedar harvested within about 75 miles of the mill, adding value by finding the best and highest use for each log that comes in. Goodridge is a key member of the Vermont forest products industry, working with 60 to 70 different foresters, loggers, and truckers to keep Vermont forest products on the shelf.

Forest to Floorboards:

White cedar is fairly abundant here in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to harvest and process. Because this species tends to grow in wet or soft soils, harvesting is limited to good cold winters when the ground is well-frozen, or during especially dry summers. This means that the supply coming to the mill can fluctuate; fortunately, white cedar can be held in the log yard with the bark on for up to two years before it’s processed, allowing Goodridge to plan for lean years by buying extra logs when the harvests are abundant, and processing the stored logs during years of lean harvests. They have also added some red pine products to their offerings, to diversify their supply and help balance white cedar availability. White cedar can also be a little less uniform than other species used for lumber, and the team at Goodridge is adept at assessing each log and deciding if it will be best processed as decking, rough sawn boards, lumber, posts, or as T&V Groove or Shiplap. During our visit, the Goodridge team was hard at work planing white cedar boards for T&V Groove paneling, you can hear the planer in the background of the interview.

The Forest Products Community:

As Colleen puts it, the Vermont forest products industry is a community; each forester, logger, trucker, and mill fills a niche that together bridge the process from the tree to the forest products that form the fabric of our lives.

Colleen: “A great thing about the forest industry is the relationships we have with each other. It's like a family. And you know, if someone needs something, there's someone there to help. I think [here in Vermont] we enjoy a relationship that doesn't always exist in this industry, so we work quite closely together. We're all shapes and sizes, and we're an interesting bunch. And we need to be as we navigate a world where there's so many moving parts and so many challenges. But you gotta, I guess, have a strong feeling in your heart that this is what you want to do because there are a lot of good days, but there's some days that might not be so good. But then, you know, [you have your] family.

Sustainability:

Colleen: “The fact is, we have 76 percent of the state of Vermont covered with forests, most of which are privately owned. We do have some state-owned property and federal. But most of it is privately owned and the good news is that if we manage them properly, we will have them for generations to come for the many benefits that we get. Whether it's clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, timber products, carbon storage, Christmas trees, wood for heating, whether it's residential or the many schools and hospitals that heat with wood chips, also recreation. So all the benefits that we enjoy depend on healthy managed forests. So, if we do it properly, the good news is when these logs come into the yard and we use them for their highest and best use, we know that there'll be another crop coming. And I think that's what’s satisfying to us, that in our family and our business we're using a renewable natural resource.

Forest Products in our Lives:

Vermont-grown wood is woven into our everyday lives, from the lumber in our homes, to the heat in our stoves, to the maple syrup on our pancakes and the tables we gather around. Where do Vermont forest products show up in your life? Comment below to share your favorite Vermont forest products!

These are challenging times for Vermont’s forest products industry; to everyone who stewards, harvests, trucks, mills, builds, and crafts with Vermont wood: thank you!