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Horse Logging with Brad Johnson

Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson, ready for a day of work in the woods. Photo by Chip Allen. Photos below courtesy of Third Branch Horse Logging.

When he was about 6 years old, Brad Johnson drew a stick figure holding an axe and a saw and titled it “The Tree Cutter.” Still, it was a surprise – to Brad, his wife, and his parents – when he decided, a few years after graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine, to work with horses. Farming with horses eventually led to logging with horses, and four years ago he founded Third Branch Horse Logging. Along with partners Derek O’Toole and John Plowden, the Braintree, Vermont-based outfit uses draft horses and small machinery, and approaches forest management jobs in a way that promotes long-term sustainability. Johnson lives in Northfield, Vermont, with his wife Emily LeVan and their teenaged daughter Maddie.

I did not grow up working with my hands much, but my parents taught me how to work hard, no matter what the job. My parents really enjoyed travelling and seeing different places and living in different places. I grew up in Virginia, Montana, Maryland, and Pennsylvania and spent lots of time outside in all those places. My parents loved to camp and hike, and our summers were big adventures in the car with tents and camping equipment. We had a bright yellow Volvo station wagon, and we camped all over in that thing. My dad was also a member of the American Coaster Enthusiast Club, so we would go all over the country to the biggest, baddest, longest, steepest roller coasters we could find. They would open up a special time in the morning where the Coaster Enthusiasts could just ride without getting off. As kids it was just super fun.

Forests have always spoken to me. I spent all kinds of time running around in the woods as a kid. And when I was at Bowdoin, I was active in the outing club. I had tons of waters and woods to keep exploring at a formative time in my life. I got hooked on the outside stuff both for work and for fun.

After college, I went to work as a teacher for the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset, Maine. One fall I wanted to do something different, something real hands-on – rake blueberries or pull lobster traps or work on a farm. Chewonki has a small horse-powered farm, and I did an apprenticeship on the farm. After a couple of weeks, I never wanted to go back inside for work, and I haven’t since. My wife was pretty surprised, and my parents were even more surprised. I had told them for years that I thought teaching was fine, but I would never do it, because you couldn’t make enough money. Then I go off and pick the one thing where you make less money – farming and logging. They were supportive, but they thought it was hilarious. I worked my way up from apprentice to manager at the farm.

Brad Johnson
Brad and wife Emily LeVan prepare to run the length of Vermont's Route 100.

Emily and I wanted to put sweat equity into a piece of land that we owned. We couldn’t afford anything around the coast of Maine, so we knew we had to move away. At that time, our daughter was in treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, so we needed to be within driving distance of one of the four medical centers in New England that offered care for that condition. We liked this area, and it’s within an hour of Burlington and Hanover. We moved here in 2008 and started a small pasture-raised meat operation, powered by a single horse and a small tractor.

I began to realize there might be a market for commercial horse logging in Vermont, so I bought a second horse and a log arch and went after it. It took a few years and lots of missteps and learning, but eventually I stopped farming and headed for the woods full time. I have not looked back. Each logging day, I get to head to the forest with horses, which is a pretty powerful experience. I did the Game of Logging training way back when and also was a student and instructor with MOFGA’s (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association) Low Impact Forestry Program. I have more than 20 years working in the woods and on residential tree projects, including high risk felling and storm salvage work. We are also Master Logger Certified through the Northeast Master Logger Program out of Maine.

Horse logging
Horses Leaf and Ted at work in the woods.

Derek and I met about six years ago. He was running a horse-powered CSA. We were CSA customers, and Derek took an interest in the logging work I was doing. He is a far better horseman than I am. He grew up with horses, and he has that thing that you can’t teach people about the way to interact with a horse. He came and worked with me on some jobs over the winter and worked with my team. Then he started bringing his own team. We decided to pool resources, have combined equipment and combined horses, and our skills were complementary. So we started Third Branch Horse Logging.

John came on as a partner this year. He was one of my horse logging mentors in Maine when I started working with horses, and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s an outstanding teamster and metal fabricator. He custom designs and fabricates the log arches we use. All three of us can do any task on the job, but we do specialize a bit for efficiency’s sake. Derek heads up the horse care, purchasing, and training, as well as the business finances and record keeping. John runs the sawmill, does machinery maintenance and repair, and runs the excavator when needed. I do the marketing, as well as much of the saw work and high-risk felling on tree removal jobs. Beyond that, any of us can plug in wherever needed, which is a real business advantage. The name of our company comes from the third branch of the White River, a watershed close to our two home properties and one which defines a portion of the area in which we often work.

Horse logging
Third Branch Horse Logging partners Derek O'Toole and John Plowden work with horses Ned and Leaf (and a tractor with a winch) on a residential tree removal job.

We have five Belgian horses, four geldings and a young mare – Ned, Bud, Leaf, Bob, and Ruth. They weigh around a ton each. All of them work in teams and single, in the woods and also on sleighs during the winter sleigh ride season. Much like the teamsters, the horses each have their own personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. We try to produce versatility in each animal, so they can log in the woods, do residential tree work in a neighborhood, pull the sleigh in the winter, or do any other task we apply them to.

Horses do almost all the work off the stump. Marked trees are felled, limbed, and cut to length. Then a single horse or team skids the logs or topwood to a main road where the forwarder can pick it up and deliver it to the landing where a truck can pick it up. The horses work on the ground in loose rigging and often in a team on a log arch, a specialized wheeled tool that allows one end of the logs to be lifted up off the ground like a cable skidder does. All wood is pulled log length, 8-16 feet, or two or more log lengths attached in one stick. This means our loads are small and short, rather than tree length or whole tree operations that can pull 50- to 75-foot-long loads or more behind the skidders.

Horse logging
The Third Branch Horse Logging crew uses this forwarder and tractor, along with their horses.

We want to promote and offer true sustainability. Our philosophy is that we want the woods we leave when we’re done working to be a fundamentally different product than what other operators are leaving behind when they’re finished with a cut. Lots of people talk about sustainable this and sustainable that, but a lot of that language is just marketing. You can ask someone where their wood comes from, and they go down to the local lumber yard and buy it, but they don’t have any idea where it comes from or what the stand that it came from looks like.

Horses can move in very small spaces and narrow skid trails and roadways. Used properly, they produce very little residual stand and soil damage, and produce logs with an ultra-low carbon footprint, which is all the carbon it takes to get a log from standing tree to log landing pile. Our tools are light on the ground, they’re surgical. There are no tools anywhere that can leave as good a final result as we can. But that sustainability comes at a cost, like most forms of sustainability. It’s slower. It’s more expensive. We cannot move nearly as much wood per day as skidders or larger machinery. The landowner doesn’t make as much money. As a business, we are not interested in competing with all the other mechanized operators out there. We’re interested in offering something that is different and better from an ecological point of view.

Horse logging
Brad harnesses Cole during a winter job.

In the commercial marketplace all the management and harvesting are structured with larger machinery in mind. Many foresters do not know much about how a horse powered logging operation might work, and they are not that interested in considering that as a viable alternative. In general, the conventional market seeks to maximize short term profitability for the logger, landowner, and forester, and horses and small machinery do not fit well within that framework. But we produce a fundamentally different end product in the residual stand that tends to maximize longer term ecological and financial goals. When you look at the woodlots we’ve been in, the difference is startling. It’s just a different product. At some point I think the marketplace is going to recognize that and trend towards those kinds of results.

I have friends who are excellent mechanical operators, who do beautiful work. The problem is how little they are paid for their work, and how little economic and cultural value we place on sustainable work in the woods. If we paid loggers a decent living wage, we would end up with better results all the way around. If you paid those mechanical operators in a way that allowed them to take their time, you have places where those tools could be used in a much more sustainable way.

Horses are living tools, and there are numerous reasons why not many loggers or farmers use them anymore. They are less productive per unit of time, much harder to operate, costly to keep and train, and require the operator to be in the present in a way that no machine does; your mind cannot be elsewhere when you have the lines in your hands. You’ve got to love what you’re doing. You have to love the tool, and you have to be wicked skilled. Our equipment is not the answer to every job. There’s still going to be clearing for houses, or large volume cuts of low value wood where you have to have some tool that can pull more out in a day than we can.  

I love spending time outside any way I can get it. When I’m not working, I like to ski tour, trail run, mountain bike, and read. Emily and I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2001. We ran the whole Long Trail in about nine days. This summer, Emily wanted to run Route 100, which runs the length of Vermont. It’s something like 220 miles. I decided I’d go with her. I’m a Type 1 diabetic, so we did a fundraiser for the place where I get my diabetes treatment. We ran 40 miles a day for multiple days in a row. I had knee and foot problems, so stopped at Stowe. Emily ran the last 60 miles in one day, and I met her at the border. I also spend lots of time at home with Emily, Maddie, and our Australian shepherd, Finn.

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