#90 - Harvesting Lumber from Our Land

Our land is full of trees. Lots of trees. Since our land is on the edge of The Big Thicket Preserve, in the Piney Woods, we are fully forested and the trees grow like weeds, especially pine trees.

We had about three acres that we had partially cleared after we purchased this land ten years ago. To date, only about an acre remains free of dense forested land. The forest reclaims its territory very quickly and without much effort. It's always amazing to us how we find new pine trees sprouting in every direction, upon every visit to the acreage.

So, the last time we visited, we found that the pine trees growing in one area were towering already, so we decided to leave them be. Besides, we were devastated to find that the next door neighbor had clear cut their land.

The neighbors had clear cut their land and punched a few holes in our
dense wooded property line so they could obviously back up their
heavy equipment, which made destructive tracks around a large
portion of our land. These deep rivets make it impossible for our
own lawn tractor to mow, until we smooth out the land or the
tractor will fall into the rivets and the blades will be stuck. We did
have most of our land smoothed, by hired tractor workers and
these next door neighbors, in their effort to clear their own land,
made new tracks all along the backside of our property.
Along with the multiple holes punched in our property,
which meant they had to remove our forest line---trees belonging
to us, we find this to be very frustrating.

It looked like a bomb had gone off next door and nothing was there but dirt. We stood at the edge of our wooded zone and could not believe the vast difference between our forest and the cleared land next door.

This is looking from our property out over theirs toward the Farm to Market Road.

Then, we realized that run-off would be a problem because all of this land is on a slope. So, we decided to leave our newly grown trees as a buffer to help soil retention.

Lyla is checking it out with us. To the right is our property line.

To the left is our forested land and straight ahead is also our property
with our dense line of trees.

 Now, we are so glad that we left the trees there to grow because we'll harvest them for lumber to use on different building sites throughout our land. From decks to framing for our buildings to extra lumber for dis and dat...it will be very nice to have ample lumber available on our land, ready to be harvested.

The tracks you see below are the tracks left throughout our own
property as their equipment used our land to back up and turn around.
Irritating. Just because you own property and do not live there
full time does not mean you want people driving all over it
destroying your hard work to get it leveled.

 Of course, we need to start harvesting this Fall because we'll need to let the lumber dry for a long while before it can be used in any construction project.

Deputy Dave grew up in construction. In fact, for many years his father owned a commercial construction company in the Houston area that Deputy Dave and his two brothers worked in while growing up. Their dad had lots of free labor with his three sons, so all three of these young men grew up with great construction skills. Each of them have an "I can do attitude."

Today, if they have never tackled a specific kind of job, the unknown does not deter them because they all have confidence that they'll figure it out. Working in construction will do that to you.

His dad hit hard times, as many people do, and the construction company came to an end, but my husband had thankfully made the decision to pursue a different direction. So, while his brothers stayed in Houston area industries, Deputy Dave was sent overseas for military service. And I followed along.

Our land...we'd planted St. Augustine pallets of grass many years
ago and it has since spread out very nicely. It even survives drought
conditions and will give you a burst of green upon a good rain.

Even though Dave had only known construction his entire life, it didn't stop him from want to know something different...he had always wanted to join the Air Force, so he did. At 21 years of age he signed up. I drove him to the recruiters office and he joined the military. We had been childhood sweethearts and I trusted that everything would work out just fine and it did.

From the start, I fully supported his dream to be in the Air Force.

Ever since he made the decision to not work (professionally) in construction and to get away from the oil/chemical industry so popular in Houston, he began what would be a long career in law enforcement. Today, he's been with the Harris County Sheriff's Department for over twenty years and with his military service added into his retirement system points, he's eligible for retirement within two years.

Deputy Dave has always contended that once his baby, our Stefie, is able to walk across the stage for her graduation from university, then he will retire.

We look forward to that day. She probably has 1 1/2 years left to graduate. Then, we will be able to make the move...who knows, we might do it sooner. At least we'll start constructing a little cabin for our weekend use, as soon as possible.

Of course, life in the country will be less expensive because we will not have the high taxes that we have in the Greater Houston area, and we certainly won't have the very high home insurance costs that we have since we live near the bay, and we also won't have high car insurance payments because our primary residence will no longer be in Harris County, which is the county of the Greater Houston area. So many costs for daily living will automatically be reduced, drastically.

But, we are most excited right now about being able to harvest all of the trees growing on our land, a clustered grove of pine trees...in the area we'd previously cleared. So, we are checking out saw mill equipment. For now, I believe we'll be using a nice chain saw to get started. We've gone through a few chain saws on that acreage already, but it's time to get a nicer chain saw and possibly a band saw for milling the lumber harvested from our trees on our land. We've got to get started quickly because the drying time for the lumber needs to get going.

Within the next couple of weeks, I'll have an updated photo of this area.
Those trees are towering by now. They grow so very fast.

Plus, I'd like to harvest some wood from a massive white oak that fell some time back so I can do smaller wood-working projects of my own, using wood sculpting tools. I've done some sculpting, so I'm eager to experiment. If I could learn wood-turning, I definitely would. But, a few small hand-sculpturing projects will suit me just fine. However, I need to get the wood harvested off of our fallen tree so I can get started and so that I can have extra wood put back for me to use in future projects. I'll let you know how it goes.

So, today, Deputy Dave is pulling everything out of our garage here at the house in the Houston area and he's taking inventory of our equipment, working on our Cub Cadet lawn tractor for our next trip to the land coming soon, and will are looking at chain saws that would allow him to do some major cutting.

You can better see the St. Augustine grass in this area.
No, it's not green, but with a bit of rain, it is lush and gorgeously green.

These kinds of things are so exciting to both of us. For over twenty-five years, Deputy Dave has worked in the law enforcement profession, so he's ready to return to his carpentry roots. This time it will be for personal purposes, not for commercial construction that does not benefit him other than for the experience. He's not interested in commercial level construction, but he is wanting to do projects to construct his own buildings and to build a life for his family in the woods. We both will be delighted to see the land's trees be used in our own construction projects and in my small wood-working crafts. It's a dream-come-true for both of us.

And here we go again...

Backside of our property, near the lake. Howdy is checking
out an area that's been used by some people camping on our land.