A generation or two ago, buying locally was the only option. Before the interstate system and shopping malls, and way before 800 numbers and Amazon.com, the goods that people needed in their daily lives were available within their communities. The trip to the store brought people into regular contact with their neighbors, and commerce helped to knit the community together.
One necessity that’s still readily available from local producers but often overlooked is lumber. It’s a good bet that within 20 miles of your house, you can find a sawmill selling construction lumber that will not only fit your needs but also be reasonably priced. The wood comes from forests across town, not from across the continent, and the money you pay for it will stay in the community longer since it, in turn, will pay wages to the sawmill crew or buy logs from a local logger who in turn pays the landowner for his trees.
In contrast, any lumber you buy at the lumber yard at building-supply stores will likely be Douglas fir trucked in from the Pacific Northwest or British Columbia, or Southern yellow pine from the Southeast. In either case, much of the price you pay is for trucking it thousands of miles. The one exception for finished lumber is if you’re buying white pine boards for flooring or trim. Chances are good that white pine purchased anywhere in the region comes from northeastern forests.
Whether your project is a window box or a two-car garage, you can buy all the wood you need directly from the sawmill. The lumber direct from the mill will be rough; it will not have been planed smooth. It will be either air-dried or still green. On the other hand, when you go to the lumber yard, you’ll always find dressed lumber that’s been kiln-dried and surfaced on a planer. A dressed 2 x 4 measures 1 1/2 inches thick by 3 1/2 inches wide.
Most rough lumber goes for barns, sheds, and garages, non-dwelling spaces that aren’t going to be finished with drywall. But many builders wouldn’t hesitate to frame a house in rough lumber, as long as it’s uniformly dry.
Where do you find rough lumber? Most of these sawmills have been in business so long that word of mouth is all that’s necessary to keep a steady stream of customers driving into the yard. Ask around: any carpenter, logger, or anybody else who works or plays with wood will be able to direct you to the nearest sawmill.
You’re most likely to find hemlock or white pine, since that’s what grows locally. Hemlock is the heaviest and the most rugged of the softwoods, while white pine is the most versatile: perfectly acceptable as framing lumber, pine is beautiful when finished for trim, flooring, and even furniture.
At these mills, you’ll pay less for good-quality lumber, and you’ll get a firsthand look at how your neighbors make a living. You’ll see that, besides selling lumber, the owner has markets for the byproducts as well: sawdust goes to farmers for bedding, slabs go to maple syrup producers to fire the sugarmaking arch or are chipped for fuel, and bark is sold for landscaping mulch. These sawyers are truly a linchpin of the local economy.
Though many of the old-time rotary mills have closed their doors in recent years, springing up to replace them and filling the same niche is a new breed of sawmill, the portable bandsaw. Developed over the last 20 years, these mills have the advantage of a thinner saw kerf, so that more wood ends up as lumber and less as sawdust. And they are easier to maintain.
Many thousands of these mills have been sold in the last two decades. Some sawyers continue to operate them as portables, towing them onto a log landing and sawing the customer’s logs on-site to the specifications they require. Others set up a permanent home for the mill, selling lumber to drive-in customers the way the rotary mills do. You’ll locate these sawyers the same way: just ask around.
Buying local lumber helps accomplish the important ecological goal of keeping land forested and not developed. With high property taxes and higher prices for developable land, there is considerable pressure on landowners to sell or subdivide their forestland. Fragmentation of habitat is one of the biggest problems facing many wildlife species today. But when landowners are able to sell wood for lumber, they have an incentive to continue growing trees. Whether your primary pleasure in the woods is from bird watching, deer hunting, maple sugaring, snowmobiling, hiking, skiing, or simply watching the foliage, local lumber means local forests, and local forests are good news for everyone.