A lot of you know Ken Gagnon – he’s a real nice guy. He’s got a family-owned mill in Pittsford, Vermont. When I called him recently about renewing his usual ad in the magazine for the upcoming year he replied, “Oh sure, we’ve been in the magazine for a long, long time, and actually I want to make the ad bigger – this is our fiftieth year!”
Fifty years of high and low markets, fifty years of major changes in the forest products industry, fifty years of building connections with customers and professionals like himself. That’s not to say that he’s been in charge all that time, but his family has been and will continue to into the future, attesting to their good business stewardship practices.
When I asked him how he keeps up in a down market, he said it’s based on his confidence in the quality of Northeastern timber and the strong affiliations Gagnon Lumber, Inc. has built. (They belong to the Vermont Woodlands Association, the Vermont Wood Manufacturers Association, the New England Lumberman’s Association, the Vermont Forest Products Association, the National Hardwood Lumber Association, and the Forest Stewardship Council.) He said, “What goes around, comes around. We’re all in this together!”
Northern Woodlands is a part of that “we”. As Steve Long writes in the current issue in From the Center, we insist that the magazine be printed at a local press on paper manufactured in the region. This keeps people employed and cuts down on trucking costs that are wasteful – both financially and environmentally. Strictly in terms of dollars, it might be less expensive to produce the magazine elsewhere, but we are committed to the health and well being of the largest continuous forest in the United States and to all of those whose lives are linked to it.
Gagnon Lumber and our other advertisers are being joined by NewPage, a new advertiser in Northern Woodlands, appearing for the first time in the autumn issue. Northern Woodlands is printed on paper made at NewPage’s Rumford, Maine, paper mill, and now their advertisement will be printed on paper they manufacture. They have what’s known as triple certification, through the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
Our advertisers help make our work happen. Our work helps them continue in these tough economic times. Together, we help keep this Northern Forest whole.