Mill Relationships
One of the most important historical and current relationship concepts is that of the sawmill and how it relates to the land base. This is a huge topic, and one I admit I do not know a lot about. But I will tell you what I do know, because you need to know something, at least a minimal foundation upon which to add knowledge and therefore make some sort of decision.
Sawmills are somewhat a boom and bust industry. A sawmill is referred to as a mill for short, whether it’s an enormous operation or a small one-room shack. The trees/timbers which supply the raw material for the mill is referred to as the land. The key word here is “supply”-- a verb that establishes the relationship between the mill and the land. One must ask what is meant by “supply.” Supply, supply, supply, What am I saying?
Supply: What if you own a huge mill, and need thousands of acres of woods to keep it running, and you employ many people--- hundreds of people. What if you run out of wood, your “supply” runs out? Then what do you do with these employees? Do they sit around twiddling their thumbs?
Supply: What if you own a small portable mill, like what is sometimes used for hobby and small business jobs, a portable sawmill which has become popular today? It’s a one or two person operation. Personally, I own one. How much supply does this small mill require, how much wood does it use? It depends on how hard you work. When you stop running this, do you also twiddle your thumbs?
Supply: What if you have an average, traditional stationary mill? Maybe you employ 4 or 5 people. How many logs or how much supply do you use, and what happens when you cannot get wood for it? More thumb-twiddling perhaps by another group of men?
All three of these supply situations require a use of land in such a way that this timber harvest can be sustained over time. One way to imagine a sustainable set-up is to picture a big circle, with forty dots positioned like numbers on a clock face, all the dots equidistant from each other, making 40 equal spaces on that circle..
Let’s now call the first space Year 1, and move around the circle until we reach the fortieth space, or Year 40. Now let’s identify each of the 40 spots as a section or block of land that you plan to harvest timber. You will start at Year 1 and end at Year 40 (40 years later), when you move onto the first space again, having come full circle. It has been long enough in time for the trees to have grown up to be mature again, so that as you start the circle all over again, the trees are big and ready to harvest. This is called a sustainable harvesting cycle. I call it the land base. It is an ideal to strive for, certainly.
In my mind, the land base owned by a mill is continually, I repeat, continually misjudged: here I suspect it cannot sustain the mill, it cannot supply the required wood. Something goes wrong in some way or the other, and the mill goes under or bankrupt or is sold.. This land base concept is only part of the supply issue, of course. One can buy wood from someone else if you can get it. Although it can get expensive. Or, is it inexpensive cause you got it from the State of Michigan, or public agencies! Lets leave this along and continue.
So, the big timber companies harvest public lands which in turn helps support their mills. After all, if their mill shuts down, then people are put out of work, and we must have our work it is said. These working people create the economic base of certain cities here in the UP. And do we all know the importance of the economic base. Could this then be interpreted as the State of Michigan providing sawmill jobs vie its timber? OK, let’s recognize it as such, be honest about it. Then we can determine if it’s fair. Can it be sustaining? Is this a fair Question.
A fair question is: are there competing interests for the wood? What if International Paper wanted the wood, and Mead was hardly getting any. Later, when Mead’s turn came, would they be upset cause they did not get as much state wood? Would the people of the state of Michigan be upset if too much wood was harvested from state property? Would the Yoopers be upset if Four Park lands could not be created all because the state had sold its timber prematurely to timber interests? Special interests.
The Pete (real name kept confidential) Story
Pete’s father died, bequeathing him an incomplete mill with around 50,000 acres of timbered land. Pete ended up losing nearly all these acres, trying to keep his mills running. First he had to borrow to finish his first mill. He had problems keeping a blade sharp, he told me. When he was shut down, he had all these employee standing around (8 to 18), twiddling their thumbs. But mostly he was not fulfilling the quotas required by some of his contracts. Eventually, he could not make a bank payment, so he borrowed against more of his land. After awhile, property taxes got to him, so he told me. But mostly, very high interest rates are what ultimately broke him. Some people say, he just was a poor manager.
Pete, an old logger, did not talk with me about supply. The concept is inferred. Yet it was his supply and mill itself that he lost in the end.
The Cliff story with reference to the Shingleton Mill is pertinent when thinking of a mill’s relationship to and effect upon its land base. Contrast Cliff’s saga with the US Steel story–US Steel didn’t have a mill to feed, and came out smelling like a rose with its forests. Consider too, the state of Michigan, whose forest lands are properly looked after by the DNR. Here too, there is freedom from mill obligations (sounds like obligations are coming, however).
These are my only actual experiences with mills and land base.
Personally, I would appreciate hearing from old-timers about how forests were cut repeatedly, because I have not seen it or heard it enough. My old teacher Spike is not alive today so he cannot talk with me. So, if old timers could tell me of how they went into a woods and cut it over maybe 3 times, I’d find that reassuring.
Now, the next question is important. What did those old-timers do in-between each time when they went back? Did they cut on other owners’ lands? How much? Did they high grade? Do they know what high grading is? Are they defensive? I nearly always like them, and respect them, although I wonder in amazement how different the world is today.
Why tell my readers all of this? What do mills have to do with Four Parks? My answer is that this historical perspective explains how sawmills affect the land base, and how the ideal of sustainable harvesting is quite difficult for them to achieve. Therefore: these mills and their continuous insatiable endless (being dramatic)demand for supply explain in part why the timber companies want more wood from state lands --a desire that hopefully will directly benefit Four Parks.