Being a compendium of things to do with flooring in general, Douglas Fir in specific and a collection of thoughts on how things are and 'Ought to Be' in the world 'According-to-David'.

NOTES:
Finishes and Floors in general: "CLICK HERE"
Collaborative Forest Restoration Program Grant Proposal "Click Here"

VISIT US FREQUENTLY FOR MY "PEARLS OF WISDOM"

My Perspective on How Things Go:

Old Wood LLC: 

The view from here, 

4-7-08 FIRE!!!

Shiloh and I spent the last 48 hours at a small but dangerous fire on my sisters ranch in the Pecos Canyon near Santa Fe. Overall it burned only 70 acres but it was dangerous in that it had the potential to go upslope into rough, wild, completey untouched forests that could have really ‘blown up’. The land sits at a bottle neck in the Pecos Canyon and the potential was clear to go up-canyon creating a wider disaster as well.

We are looking like having a bad fire season if this very early fire is any indicator. My sister and Brother in Law should have done WUI but they were fortunate and it was done for them when the Santa Fe Hotshots backburned it for them. It was dramatic watching the flames flare mightily and swirl in the gusting winds.. at last they fire-front subsided and the house was no longer framed by 12 foot flames. Fire fighting technique: The USFS favors a method called fuel removal/reduction over using any water on fires. The local fire agencies (volunteer to a man) sat on their very expensive, recently purchased with Federal monies, fire trucks complete with a pop-up water reservoir in front of the house and shot ‘nary a drop’ of water the entire time the fire was scarily close to the back of the cabin. Technique. I congratulated the IC, (Incident Commander); “You’re a gambler, but a good one!”. The Pecos Canyon needs a micro forestry industry so folks can get a little value for the trees that need to ‘leave’ and good management can happen.
My son got a good dose of forest fire. We mostly helped by directing the crews to an old obscure road and leading them by a trail of our acquaintance to the head of the fire and late that night we helped scratch a line around the house.

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David Old’s quick take: March 2008 In August of 2007 we received a grant under the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program of the USDA in the amount of $360,000 over three years. 
This will go to build a new dry kiln (for which we poured five thousand square feet of concrete yesterday!) augment our processing line, develop new product such as end block floors and pre-finished flooring from small diameter timber. Our grant title is; Capacity building in flooring from small diameter timber.
I believe the most important part of this award is that it recognizes that our small industry has a viable plan to beneficially impact the woods, the environment, our community and our crew. I will make ongoing postings regarding our progress on this grant. We are going to give you the taxpayer something to show for your money by the grace of God! 
( Recession!!! Wow are we feeling this thing. It is clear to me that the flooring business must be one of the best economic indicators around because we knew this thing was coming last spring. 
We need your help so please, write me with your suggestions and comments to:  david@douglasfirfloors.com I promise to read and respond with some thought to all your replies.) 
The POV: I am a Globalist. I have been around the world more than once and lived overseas a total of over seven years of my life in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico and Europe. I like Japanese folks fine, I call two of them Mother and Father! My home stay family in Osaka still loves me and it is very mutual! That said: 
America First! Up the foreigners blinking you-know-whats! But: We don’t need protectionism, we need intelligence, hard work, perseverance and the help of our federal government. The Government should be lining up at small and medium business’s doors and asking ‘What can we do?”, “What would make you more productive?”, “You want to export! Why that’s great, let us arrange it for you!” That would create jobs, make tax revenues skyrocket and just watch the technology that would start to ‘happen’.
 We all need our fellow citizens to act like neighbors with their wallets as much as possible. The Internet has made the world flat but now we need to learn how to benefit and prosper by using it. Read the things written by the owners of websites. If they want to hide behind e-commerce and don’t even have a phone number listed, change sites! If the sites are about nothing but cheap foreign ‘lying green’ imports….change sites. I want to make floors overseas someday but I want to go to the village with a small sawmill, find five guys with a mule, one guy with a chainsaw, get the elders out and decide which trees need to get ‘thinned’ so we can make a buck for everyone in town…. take it from there kind of micro-forestry approach,. we invite government to have their say so they will leave us alone, get some environmental group to help us with the plan (if a reasonable group exists… The Nature Conservancy is a good one) and see what happens. Then sell the floor via a legitimate web-connected marketing plan.  Certified Real and Good. This plan is called The Forest Floor, by the way. www.forestfloor.biz
That will be green!
Meanwhile, buy a floor (or a vegetable, or a pair of pants if you can) from somebody local, real, human and decent. Buy from folks you’d like to know. At home: We need to grow our food locally whenever possible and while we are at it, use the finest Non-GMO seed available, local livestock never poisons anyone, it’s always the mega-producer from ‘over there’ that is pumping out botulism. 
Schools: we need trades. We need to continue to teach basic industrial arts coupled with strong modern arts such as computer skills (duh!) but if people can’t read coming out of high school…. we have a real problem. Don’t accept it. Be obnoxious. Ill educated kids with poorly healed facial piercing and bad tattoos are NOT the future of America. They walk in, I just smile and start the lecture if I have the time. Otherwise: bums rush. Government: (Read down to see one great US agency which doesn’t see know how good a job it is doing!). Who do I want for president? Somebody who will do something for crying out loud! The summer of ‘07 was a banner fire year all over the west again. The problem in the forests of the West is getting worse folks, not better and all the while, government talks and fails to act. The US Forest Service, well meaning as all get out, gets nothing accomplished. 
They are so full of their own significance and wisdom that like the Bible says “professing themselves wise, they become foolish”.  They’ve been talking about Stewardship Contracts which are large scale, long term ‘thinning’ jobs which we all need to happen so we can build stable businesses, educate a work force and create jobs, but then suddenly, they go ‘all quiet’. What has happened is a new WORD has come to town that the politicians are now using: Landscape Scale Treatment. Same blasted thing but because of the new Words, it’s like we had started all over and now need lots and lots of new studies and meetings and endless BS sessions. The Meetings:
I attended the Southwest Sustainable Forest Partnerships annual Small Diameter timber entrepreneurs conference again this year. God bless them but they do not get it. They have these things so that Government can ‘EXPLAIN’ to us poor dense ‘business types’ how this whole thing needs to work. Meine Gott in Himmel….. how obtuse can you get?? Bureaucrats, lecturing the businessmen. 150 people in attendance and at a guess fewer than ten actual ‘doers’ of business. The rest from other agencies, tribal gov’ts , education and other (almost said parasites!) agencies. Out in the lobby I did get thirty productive minutes with the Chemist and Sawmill Specialist for the Forest Products Lab and of course you have to go to these things to meet everyone… good in it’s way.
 
CFRP The Very Good One:
At the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program meeting this January, the opposite held true. A little bit of money (in Federal terms!) has gone a long ways. A really long ways towards creating real synthesis and union between Tribes, Loggers, Sawmills, Ecologists, Scientists, Environmentalists and Government. I told Walter Dunn, the head guy, that everyone the Gov’t needed to create an effective, wide-reaching, long term forest and watershed plan was there in that room. Radical enviros, Indian Chiefs (my new friend the Chief of Cochiti Pueblo was in attendance with Andrea Suina our part-time forester from that pueblo), loggers, academia, local fire agencies:  everybody was doing their job and getting along! Wow, was that encouraging. The sad thing is that still, there sat USFS mainstream types, watching us like a bunch of buzzards on a wire . The CFRP is a group within the USFS that I am proud to associate with. 
The USFS in general: Well, no one would really know because they live and work within their own cloistered power structure, seemingly accountable to no one; certainly not feeling called to communicate I with the likes of the ‘wood guy on the ground'. They still seem to think that somehow Government and or government combined with big business is the answer instead of the people.
Like the Harvard Economist fellow said, America looks great in the long term, it’s the next six months I am worried about!
Thanks for reading! Think good thoughts of America, do your job and the World will benefit! Work On! Do well by doing well! Buy my floors! Baby needs a new pair of shoes! Don’t forget to write.

David 

June 1, 2006

Green:  What is green?  Lots of folks say they and their products are green but are they?    Does joining some big industry, expensive certification program make you green at heart? I think not.   Often these are but ploys to garner business.  The fire that burned our home has forever changed the way we look at the woods I promise you.   My vision of good forestry includes totally wild, roadless areas,  multi-species, varied age, varied density timber stands,  agriculture (preferably micro and organic) and the kind of care that only people who actually live on the land are able to administer.  If we are bacteria on the back of Mother Earth, then let us be good bacteria like Acidophilus in yogurt!  We have work to do!

Old Wood LLC is eagerly looking for uses for smaller diameter timber which is fueling the raging wildfires in our nations western half.  Much of our wood comes from Watershed clean-up projects in our area including most recently the Cimarron Watershed Alliance project near Angel Fire NM.

This glue down product is part of a solution as well as being a step on the road to future technologies which we hope to develop and implement to further allow large scale, effective thinning of the woods on our ranch and in our world.

Wild Fire:   Slim Hope and I sat at his sawmill on the north side of Las Vegas and watched the most recent wildfire to hit our area.  A 20,000 acre blaze ran through timber and grass driven by high winds and record dry conditions.

“Yeeep”, said Slim.  “Guess old (name withheld to protect the guilty),  will be wishing he’d sold me some of that timber that’s burning”.

That is it:   when the fire comes, if you haven’t used it, you will lose it.

Burned forests DO NOT come right back as well meaning folks so often say to me.  No, my ranch will not look anything like it did for at least a hundred years and really, probably never. A hot fire gets the rocks so hot they explode!

We have lots of gravel where we used to have trees.   Folks, get active.

Encourage your lawmakers to DO SOMETHING. 

We cannot ‘grant’ our way to healthy woods.  In America, if you let a person make a living, the job will get done.  There are hundreds of communities in the West where forestry jobs are gone.  We don’t need more mega-corporations to help us; we need to build up the infrastructure and talents of our citizens who can then go to work, less than a hundred miles from home preferably, and we can all make a living out of this problem.  Electricity,  building materials,  healthy watersheds…..   Why aren’t we doing this yet?

Good government should be real busy equipping the men and women of this nation to tackle this problem NOW! The world is going to burn down if we don’t do something and do it on a big scale.

Workmen’s Comp:

In NM we have recently participated in an effort to reduce Workmen’s Comp insurance from 78% down to a more reasonable 30%.  I have been honored to sit on the board of this effort and in cooperation with our State’s insurance carriers (really good folks….), the Forest Guild ( I was amazed to find I actually quite like these guys!),  local universities and others,  we have actually done something for the folks who work in the woods.  Insurance is a good thing when you get hurt and, forestry can be rough work.  More safe workers will mean a healthier industry which I hope will in turn allow more small operators to prosper and work in their own spheres of influence to create healthier woods.

New Mexico Forest Industry Association;  NMFIA  has just formed. For more info, write me at: djold@earthlink.net

The view from here, August 2005

OFF THE MOUNTAIN!  Las Vegas NM

The huge Viveash Fire of 2000 continues to impact our lives.

We got sick and tired of cutting burned trees, kept after it to clean up, then cut all the trees that were dying post-fire from bugs and drought.

One day I looked around and realized that if I didn’t want to clear-cut my property,  I needed to look elsewhere for a livelihood. 

This flooring business is it.

Whatever relations you and I wind up having,  I want you to know that I and my family of six people appreciate your business very much.

We continue to be dedicated and committed to doing a good job for you, our employees and the forests around us.  Our desire to see good things happen

‘in the woods’ will be a central and driving force for us or I will sell the ranch and go live on a boat somewhere!  You are still welcome to visit the 2550 acre Viveash Ranch anytime as our friend and customer.  Only one side burned and even that is looking pretty good now.  It teems with wildlife to the point where, sadly, I had to shoot a young black bear on my front porch some weeks ago that actually chased my whole family indoors. When I stuck my nose out the door to see where he was, he reared up on his hind legs and swung at me, missing by about two inches!  Honest.  It is still a wild and beautiful place and we’d be honored to have you visit.

The Viveash Ranch House: 9500 feet up in the Pecos, looking east towards Santa Fe

THE FLOORING MARKET:

If you want a wood floor, buy it now!  If we aren’t at the bottom of the market price-wise, we are close.

I have read lots of business books, have ¾’s of a business degree (six years of college/ took too many languages and started flying for a living!) but NOTHING really has prepared me for this challenge. 

The American System is fantastic.  Really.  There is so much opportunity, so many fine people willing to work for you, work with you, sell you anything you need, but most importantly and who I appreciate most of all are my CUSTOMERS.

Here we are selling just about nothing but Douglas Fir flooring and making a living at it…..  who would think?  The internet is like being on a street filled with customers shopping for what you have.   My webmaster Bill Collins has done a brilliant job and I am at #2 today on a Google search for Douglas fir floors.

If you want a website done right and really reasonably (I think he works too cheaply but don’t tell him…), Bill is the Man.

Our new Distributors, Atlantic West out of Denver, are just plain brilliant.

Professional, pleasant, cooperative and encouraging.  If the whole country was covered for us by folks like these, we’d be an honest to goodness industry!

Our wood supply looks good for the future as we continue to develop a network of small and large land-owners who want to harvest their lands well and responsibly.  We offer an outlet for the big old logs that are near the end of their lifespan, which makes more money for the owner and operator so that they can in turn afford to do a better job of thinning the less profitable smaller trees which are the cause of so many of the West’s wildfires.  We pay top dollar, really we do, for the best logs we can buy.  Your floor comes from the best the region has to offer, including most of Colorado.  I have driven all over this vast area visiting loggers, mills and landowners to let it be known that I pay top dollar for good product.

THE PLANT (and the town!): We have nearly outgrown 10,000 sq.ft. of really nice new space which has been leased to purchase to us by the City of Las Vegas.  I thank Mayor Sanchez, Elmer Martinez, the City Council, the EDC, Dr. Ortiz and all the folks who encouraged me that Vegas wasn’t such a bad little town.

It isn’t a bad little town, it is a fantastic little town.  Everywhere you look is another 1800’s or early 1900’s building.  The food is great and the people are better! Move here, you’ll love it and I will introduce you around.

Our dry kilns are working great,  being another ‘adaptation to the tyranny of the urgent’ as I like to call it.  We built them ourselves saving probably $45,000 in the process and they dry our wood to 6% or lower in a matter of days. Safe, sane and efficient!

Our sawing is, as always, slow but excellent!

Our moulding is about the same, well done,  but the process is much faster due to the new layout indoors.

Sorting and bundling is much better than ever before with a new cut-up saw that has made Victoria’s life much easier!

Packaging; we continue to improve and to come up to top-flight industry standards of  quality control, bundle size and packaging.

Overall the place is great and as finances allow there are obvious places to make great advances in speed and profitability which we really need.

THE WOOD CLUSTER:

I  am currently the President of the Northeast Regional Wood Cluster and have just been asked to sit on the board of the Forest Guild’s Workmen's Comp group.

The Wood Cluster is  intently focused on acquiring a large, vacant site near Las Vegas (NM) where we hope to develop a wood sort yard.  This is a Co-Op type of ‘deal’ where small and large operators can work together to better utilize expensive machinery and techniques and to develop volume markets for products such as mulch, saw-shavings, dust and wood-chips or ‘bio-fuel’ as it is being called.

We believe that our region has a vast and untapped work-force of folks who own pick-up’s and chainsaws and many of whom also own or have private access to some quantity of trees.   The small diameter timber problem is what plagues the region with fires.  The problem is that small trees make small piles and we all get paid based on the size of the pile.  What we need  is a group approach to markets, marketing and maybe more importantly is for small operators to have access to large and expensive machines such as tub-grinders and large loaders, hoppers and such that can make small trees viable sources of income for many folks currently living below the poverty level.

Old Wood LLC hopes to benefit from a renewed and invigorated regional forest industry.  The Government has killed us ladies and gentlemen….

There is no forest industry to speak of anymore in the Rocky Mountains! 

The environmentalocos and their cooperative friends at the USFS have done this to the Country!    No Wood, No Gas; what is next!!! Food?  Shall we buy all our food from Mexico, China???  It is not beyond the pail of believability.

In the Woods:  What you have now are a few determined individuals (some would say crazy or stupid) who are determined to stay in the woods for a living.

My own ranch, which burned five years ago in the Viveash Fire, was aggressively clear-cut post fire and this summer we are starting to see some really decent growth of Aspen, Oak and a few tiny conifer seedlings here and there.  Come and compare for yourself:  My place looks a lot better than your place, the public land I adjoin where nothing was done and the stinking (literally: five years later the woods still smell badly),  burned up woods just stand there rotting and being dangerous and impossible for man or beast to walk through. Remember the song, “this land is your land, this land is my land”?  Well my land is better than your land and you need to know it because lousy management has killed an industry, burned the forest and actively prevented a lot of folks from benefiting or even “making lemonade” when handed lemons…. I know and respect many Forest Service folks but the doctrine of gross environmentalism has entered the agency through the public domain and I believe through the Universities so that the agency charged with taking care of your forests acts like a disabled and foolish CRIPPLE.  Oops, guess you know how I feel on that subject!

I still fear the fire that we thought was going to come from the Pecos River straight down the mountain from us…this area of our ranch is steep and overgrown with small Douglas fir trees.  What we need, to be able to harvest these millions of board feet of little trees, is skilled people,  machinery, technique and a market for the wood.  None of these currently exists in our region so that is what I hope to see come out of our Wood Cluster. 

Well, enough of my ramblings for this part of the year….

God has blessed me and mine through fire and sickness, in extreme fiscal duress and in excess… I pray He will do the same for you!

Stay tuned for more news or call me if you have comments or interest in this type of thing.

Your Friend,

David J. Old

(888) 545-9663