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If we realed this Naharin, Oh hey, it's the apple peels that your roommate was going to compost, but you ate them because refuge Ali Ward back with an anniversary episode of Ologies. We are officially two hundred and eighty three episodes in and as of late September, we are five. We're five years old, and I was thinking five is a big year. I should do something. I should make an anniversary clip episode. But then I googled customary anniversary gifts and I realized that five year gifts are wood.
So let's do a wood episode, shall we. Let's lumber up and celebrate with a fresh new app with my favorite sawmill in the world. I have one, and thank you to everyone who has supported the show via patreon dot com slash ologies, where you can join for about twenty five cents an episode and submit questions. Thank you to everyone who makes sure you're subscribed so you get
new episodes, and everyone who rates and leaves reviews. I read every single one, including this one from airbar Styles, who just wrote I've been a fan for so long but finally got myself to open this app and write a review. This podcast is one of life's simple pleasures. Thanks Internet Dad, You're welcome, kiddo. This week Silology would so Zilology is a branch of dendrology, and it deals
with the structure of wood. It comes from a Greek word zylon, which means wood cut and ready for use, or firewood or timber, or it means planks or beams. So Zilology lumber. Y'all, and I met this ologist in the summer of twenty nineteen. It was a dry, dusty July day, right after I moved to a house after
living in a studio apartment for a decade. But I needed a kitchen table and Jarret and I wanted to make some kind of like live edge table, and I heard about Angel City Lumber, which sources its wood from downed urban trees. And it's in the middle of this industrial district in downtown LA. It's a sawmill and lumber storage facility. It's this big, cavernous retail warehouse, just neatly stacked with these thick planks and stumps and slabs. Each one is labeled with a type of tree and the
neighborhood that it fell or was cut from. And so we ended up buying a live or natural edged three inch thick samil ash slab from Covina, and Jarrett standed and finished it as our dining room table. So I appreciate their mission every day, as do a bunch of local furniture builders and carpenters and designers and woodworkers. And I emailed the founder and I asked if he would answer a bunch of lumber questions. And I headed there last Saturday afternoon, just after they closed to the public
for the day. I was toting my little audio kit wherever it's good place, I just want to like sniff everything. It smells so good in here. We sat in the office and we talked about everything from sawdust to tree diseases. Two by four's salvaged lumber kiln drying, westward expansion, indigenous forest management, cedar with walnut burls, bog logs, grain patterns, and more. So, get ready to be acquainted with timber with co founder of Angel City lumber ziologist Jeff Perry.
Jeff Perry, he him got it. Yeah, Now I've known you for a couple of years. I came in to get a slab, a table slab, fell in love with right for a fifth anniversary for wood. I was like, ha ha, this is perfect.
I love it. I mean, anyone that wants to talk wood, they have my attention.
Would you call yourself a lumberjack? Who gets to call themselves a lumberjack?
I think someone who is in a forest of some kind, maybe an urban forest, felling trees is a lumberjack. And I don't know if we can classify ourselves as that because we're not felling trees. We're essentially hauling trees that have fallen or are being taken down, or are being taken down because of the disease, or they're being taken down because of development, parish the thought, or like whatever reason. But we're not out there with the chainsaw. As much
as I think it's romantic. I can't really call our operation lumberjacks.
You're not Paul bunyaning out there in a flannel. Yeah.
No. Not typically an angel city.
That's obviously Los Angeles. When people think of Los Angeles, I feel like they don't think of trees. Are you from here originally?
I'm not from here, originally from the Boston area. Hm. I'm from Reading, Massachusetts, which is north of Boston. I moved here twenty years ago. Actually, next two weeks, it'll be twenty years.
Hey.
The customary gift for a twentieth anniversary is porcelain dishware, which I did not come prepared with. But in the last two decades Jeff learned a lot about carpentry, furniture fabrication, and he built an appreciation for different types of would.
So as a maker, kind of self taught for the most part, not necessarily a great one, but a maker. I had a couple of kids. I was in business for myself. My son was a year and a half, no, two and a half, and we were on a hike in Altadena with our dog and I saw this tree come down in a storm. I didn't see the tree fall, but I saw it downed and we were walking by it, and as I tell the story, I thought I was
a genius. I was. I thought I was the only one to ever think like this was just like, I'm going to build a line of furniture from this oak. From this tree. It was a huge, co dominant live oak that kind of splayed, you know, in the storm. And I was like, this is it. So I went to the ranger and I asked, you know, can I take this tree that has fallen? And he was like, no, that's what you can't. It's a county park, Like, you can't do that. So he was very nice, and to
his credit, he was very patient with me. But I went back a week later and I saw that the tree had been To their credit, most of it was still left there to decompose, but there were still parts of it in the pathway that were bucked up.
Bucked up side note means cutting into logs, just chunking it up.
And I just like had this moment of like I just I literally at that time, had just paid eleven dollars a board foot for oak from Illinois for this commission, and I see this oak come down and it is getting thrown away. Essentially it's being mulched. So then I just kind of went down this rabbit hole like what do you mean we just melted? What do you mean?
What do you mean? What do you mean? And then I started doing some research and talking to people and found out that a lot of like recycling coordinators around the county or like, yeah, we mulch it. And then I was like, no, this is unacceptable. So then it started figuring out ways to you know, I would call
tree services first and foremost. Now they love trees, you know, and they're they it just guts them when they have to like see a tree come down and then ship it and then buck it up into these enormous majestic tree So I would call them and say like, hey, look, if I had a truck and I could come by and take a tree that you guys are felling, They're like, yeah, when can you? Like can you when can you be here? Really Like well, I don't have a truck yet, and
they're like all right, well, just like let's go. And then I started calling some of the design community because I'd worked with some designers and stuff like that as a maker. I was like, you know, if you if we had locally sourced lumber, would would that be something that you'd be interested in? They're like, yes, we've been wanting to have this kind of supply chain like that.
So it's like, okay, he found an investor via a carpenter and woodworker lauras On, and that is how the afterlife for downed trees, the heaven that is Angel City Lumber came to be. But wait, let's buck up, because there is so mulch to cover. When something gets mulched, what happens to it? Like, is there any kind of argument, like, but we need the mulch, or does that mulch go into a landfill with dirty diapers and banana peels?
That's oh man, this is such a good question, so on so many levels. I'm also going to try and keep it brief. But so, mulch in and of itself is great. It does a lot of great things. It retains moisture, right, it suppresses weeds. The only thing is that there's a there's a couple of things when a tree dies. Right. First of all, we have we have, i think culturally an aversion to death period. So I'm going to put a pin in that.
Okay, But but what happens is is we just what we panic and it's a nuisance, and it's a liability, and it's cya, and we got to get rid of this tree that has fallen.
I thought cya was a municipal term, but I looked it up afterward and I think you just meant cover your ass.
So the knee jerk reaction is get it out, cut it up, melch it, get it, get it away, right, So things like twigs leaves, some element of branches and limbs, sure like melch, great, you know we can use that. We can use every more soliba tree. When you have a four inch diameter eighty five year olds, you know, American elm, please don't mulch the trunk or the larger branches. You know, it's just like it's to me, it's a
little sacrilege. It's not a little sacrilege. It's just kind of it just is indicative of the disconnect we have culturally as humans with trees, at least in the West. So mulch, let's talk about it. What happens now is every municipality I know in this area is required to not throw away trees. They're not allowed to dispose in a landfill, nor do they want to. These are all good people, so they're like great. I mean, they used to be able to bury trees, like like bucked up logs.
They used to excavate and bury them, and you know they would decompose, but obviously with carbon emitting and methane therefore it's just like no. So they put a stop to that. So they melch. They melch everything much much mulch. But now mulch it doesn't go in the landfill. Typically it gets utile lies back into the community, either on
the sides of freeways or public tree wells. Or they also have free malt drops for people in the community, like if you've ever been in like Griffith Park, or they have like a at the composting site, they have like a free mulch pile. I didn't know that your gardening and you're like, hey, oh, good to know I need mulch.
Yeah, I think I purchased mault recently. Figure out the hell I do that?
Who knew?
Yeah? Yeah, So free.
Motes much in general, because wood and lumber is something that's so needed and it's such a precious resource that if we have something that is potentially lumber. Better to use the thing that's got to get removed anyway, then go fell a healthy tree.
Right agreed. When people come here, I love to see their face when they go to the log deck and they see the logs come in, especially when it was their tree that was standing there a day or two before. And they come by the log deck and it's like, oh my god, look at all these trees. They're saying, look at these trees. Right yeah. Then they see the process of the logs coming from the log deck over
to the milling area. Then they see it from the milling area go into the kilns, and then from the kilns go to millworks, and then from millworks go to either the retail shop or to a project, and it paints. Obviously everyone knows who comes from trees, but they don't think about it. They think wood shows up on a flatbed. Yeah, you know. Yeah, And as I often say, it's like the no one looks at the chicken nugget and thinks
of a chicken, you know. So it's the disconnect is so real, and it's really cool to see people awake to it here. So I bring that up because we don't think of our trees as living beings. Typically, there's very little honor involved in the efficiency of mulching in my opinion. So again it's not to say the mulching is bad. Melting is great, but if it's a byproduct to a larger thing, then I think it's a lot.
More viable, which is why Angel City has a very hyper local model. Part of their mission statement says that the only way to shift an untenable way of harvesting commercial lumber is that every local community produces its own from its own local forest, which can be street trees that have been felled due to development or disease or
from storm damage. But what about the lumber that we are used to this stack at two by fours that we pick up on maybe an ambitious Saturday morning from the box store.
So commercial lumber is typically for the most part, you know, especially for construction gay lumber. There are forests designated forests now in Western culture that are secession planted, so they are planted essentially usually for fifteen or twenty years, let to grow, and then after the fifteen twenty years they
are harvested. Those trees typically because of demand, and it's the same forests the world over, but because of demand, they are planted harvested secession planted, meaning like once that harvest is gone, they're going back and they're receding, they're turning the soil. They're totally new trees. They are typically for like free to grow. Secession planting means that you're getting rid of all the underbrush. They don't want those trees to compete for any resources. They want them to
grow fat and straight and just pump out boards. So that's kind of where we're at with lumber, and that's how that's why we think of boards showing up on a flatbed, but not as a tree. So then you live in an urban community or even a rural one and trees come down, and it's like, oh man, everyone's so gutted about this tree. That is that you know, this tree that was standing was such a vital part of their life, Like maybe it was there a tree
in their front yard. Maybe their kids climbed on it. Yeah, maybe they wept under it under sad times or whatever it is. There's a tie, right, I love that tree. But as soon as the tree comes down, it then becomes a nuisance. Not necessarily if it's a tree that you're tied to. But my point is when that tree comes down and it's your tree and you are tied
to it, you have a connection to it. So then when you are saying, look, we have a lot of people here that you know, have a tree come down there, like, we just want you to make something from it. Yeah, especially for me, like please make me something of my tree.
Yeah.
But there's a deep connection to that tree. So if people were connected to all trees like they are connected to that particular tree, then I think we would be in a much different headspace and heart space than we currently are. And not just trees, but it would be for food. You know, it's the same thing like farmer table or you know, ethically sourcing meat, right, I mean,
it's all different things. When you have an animal that you've grown and have a relationship with, and it's like a whole different Daniel Schmockenberger did this really cool talk essentially on how the plow was kind of the beginning of like when agriculture. The agriculture revolution was like Okay, now we have a plow that we need to have ox run to make sure that we're having enough grain planted for our civilization. But before that, there was an animism.
Everything had a spirit, everything was a soul and everything. But that switch from okay, but I really need you to like I really need you to make this this crop. So like, yeah, let's go start yoking the ox, start whipping the ox, start binding the horns of the ox. You know, it's just changes the relationship. And I think that the like where we're at now currently is like a holdover from that kind of mentality of yeah, it's true, we need some boards. Let's go. Let's go, let's go,
let's go. So anyway, I think by like our whole thing is like reconnecting to an animism, if you will. That is, you know, trying to really take a look at the trees in our community. In the urban forest. You walk by them all the time, you drive by them all the time, You get shade, You get your kids under them in the summer, in the la summer, under them, so they protect your kids. Get acquainted with a tree, you know, talk to a tree, be with a tree, touch a tree, think about a tree, look
in the canopy. And then when the process of garnering a gift such as wood from that tree, you think about it differently, and I think that's the big shift that needs to happen with lumber.
Did you read The Giving Tree as a child and saw your face off? Because that was like I was ready to walk into the ocean in like fourth grade. I was like, Oh, I mean, but it's not far off.
It's not it's not fair spot. And that's why it's a killer because we know, oh, it's right on the money.
Yeah. Just a side note. So this children's book was initially rejected by a bunch of publishers until it finally was released in nineteen sixty four, and it features the relationship between a boy and an apple tree, and as a kid, he climbs the branches and then later sells its apples, cuts limbs to build a house and a boat. Does he need a boat, and finally reduces this apple
tree to a stump. Reading it for me feels like your grandpa spent his last seven dollars on your birthday present and at the same moment you got kicked in the stomach by a donkey. This book hurts me so much. Trees, I'm so sorry. So what happens to neighborhood trees that have come down anyway, maybe taken in their prime by
condo development or a neighbor's fence or a weavil. Did you find it was difficult to get your hands on these trees that were going to be mulched, or did you find more and more there were people who were saying, well, I have to take down the sycamore. Part of it fell, so can you come take it?
Yeah, so, believe it or not, it was relatively easy to find people that were willing to give us tree logs. It was relatively hard to get them to understand, hey, we needed a certain length, we needed a certain diameter. We'd end up with a lot of brush or small diameter or tiny short lengths. We're like, awesome, thank you so much. I don't know how to make wood from this. But for the most part, people were super jazzed about giving tree logs to us as far as the process went.
Charles Durosum, my partner at the time, he researched and found this method of parbuckling, which is essentially pulling up next to a log with a trailer and on steel ramps and a winch, rolling a log up onto a trailer deck. So that's how we did it for the first few years. Now cranes are involved, which is a lot easier most of the time. But anyway, the sourcing was for the size we were starting out was actually relatively easy, luckily.
So I didn't know until I came here that you can't just take a big log and cut it into big pancakes and say we're good to go. Here. There's a drying that has to happen. You've got to store it for a while. How does something go from a timber crash to a table.
Boy, that's a great question. How much time we get on syderm. I'll make this kind of I'll make this as like the most abridged version possible. But once you have a viable sawlog as they call them, if you're going to commoditize it, a tree that has produced a section of itself, and you put it on a mill, typically on its side, there's typically three cuts, kind of like if you were to think of it like a butcher. So there are planes on boards, there are are rift
so on boards, and there are quarters on boards. Okay, so essentially if you're looking at the end of a board, you're looking at the end grain. So the end grain of the board is going to basically show the rings of the tree, the growth rings of the tree. So as you're looking at it, terrible example, terrible example, as you're looking at it, this is better.
Excuse me, good thing that you got wood samples around.
Turns out this is one thing I got.
Okay, he grabbed some finished, perfectly angular planks and the first one was plane Song.
You can see the growthings traveling mark. This is a lepopine. It's a lot easier to see the growth rings on conifers typically, So these are traveling with the edge right. You can see they're almost lateral on the edge.
Yeah, they're almost like a horizontal.
Stripes sort of thank you exactly.
Again, that was plane Song, which is the most efficient use of the whole log, and it's the most affordable cut, and it has commonly what's called cathedral grain, So imagine zebra stripes kind of in the shape of pope hats that are nested in each other. That's cathedral grain. But a different cut of wood is rifts on planks cut from logs kind of an a radial pattern from the center.
Riftsan is this board here where the growth rings are almost at a forty five degree angle right to the face, and this one being quartersan. These are vertical and perpendicular to the face.
Hah.
Quartersan is typically everyone's like Cortison Cortison or rifts on. It's fancy the grain pattern, you get a little more figure, but as far as building goes, plans on is simply just as good. They're just different grain patterns. So in choosing how you're going to cut a board also plays into the next step, which is drying. So correct you cut boards and you're like, okay, I got ad off the mill, let's build something, and you're like, no, that's
actually not how it works. If you build with wet material, if you're joining boards and stuff like that, they are going to off gas water as they do over time slowly, and as they off gas, they're gonna warp. So a tree is typically, depending on the species, anywhere between sixty five to seventy percent water, just like some other creatures that we're familiar with, like me. And the cellular structure of wood, there's basically two kinds of water. There's free
water and there's bound water. Okay, then the cellular structure of the wood, so free water is the water that is within the cell.
Walls, so it's just nestled within the cell. Imagine free water kind of mingling around a room. But the bound water is trapped in the walls itself. So of course the water roaming the cell, not within the wall, is faster to depart.
That evaporates relatively quick. So if we cut these boards, we put them on little sticks, within a few months, all that free water is going to evaporate from the wood. Yeah, that's cool. Three months, not that long. However, the bound water, which is the water trapped in the cell walls, is way slower to come out, way slower. They say. Typically it takes a year per inch thickness of wood to air dry. Oh wow, So and that's the bound water.
M hmm. That's also typically like a northeast upper Midwest. That's kind of a trope out here. It's not that way. It's faster because it's drier and it's more arid. But anyway, that's the general rule. So if your air drying wood, you have to wait a long time before you can build with it. There is now kiln drying technology where you can put it into a dry kiln to speed up the process. Just because you speed up the process doesn't mean you can do it haphazardly. It is an
exact It's like baking. You can mess up would really easy in a kiln, But if you play your cards right, it speeds up the process, maintains the stability to the wood. Then you can build with it. But building with it, as a lot of people know, is also a thing you have to Then now you have a rough so.
On board, not like the picture perfect finished boards he's holding, which have had kind of a lumber yard glow up.
These have been surfaced and planed and straight and easy.
Those look on points.
On point, they come off the mill and out of the kiln, they look like ooh, like what what do I do? It's like rough and warped and all these things. So you have to make it into to surface it through various machines to dress it so you can make it buildable.
So it's plumb. Everything's plumb, as they say, right, Yeah. I love watching YouTube videos where people are doing renovations and they shit talk how nothing's plumbed. I'm like, probably if I built something, nothing would be plunged.
It's always the other person's work.
Somebody else.
Nothing's plumb. Nothing's plumbing this place.
Next I install stuff, it's every sixteen inches or so, making sure they're plumb or vertical.
And you know, when it comes to the different kinds of trees that are in urban environments, let's say versus rural, is it so different in let's say La or San Francisco or Boston as it would be in environs just outside of it. Like, I know, we've got a lot of live oak, We've got walnut, black walnut here in southern California. We have a lot of sycamore and eucalyptus. But I don't know if those are if those are native?
Yeah, no, it's these are. This is great. So, like as far as species go, yeah.
Like, what do you find that what you are using as a maker is different than what you're harvesting and building from.
That's a great question. Why?
Thank you?
So?
Yes?
So?
Okay, So I'll answer this in two parts. The first part is what species, Like, are there any species that span kind of any urban community in our country? Let's say, yeah, there are real, tried and true urban trees that are resilient that you know, typically cities don't put a lot of money into I'm not a judgment, it's just there's no money, so they're not putting it toward the urban forestry division. So they plant trees that are resilient, they
don't need much care. So London plane is like the you know that London plane is like the stereotypical urban tree that is like, man, they're beautiful, they grow, they're resilient, they have a good shade, canopy, et cetera. So whether you're in New York, San Francisco, wherever la you'll you'll find a London plane. So there are species like that.
But I will say it is very easy to see by the age of the trees of an area, which trees were given twenty or ten or twenty years like the go to urban trees.
They're like it was like Carab, very like totally see the Carabology episode, which is, yes, a whole episode dedicated to Carab trees and the not chocolate that they produce, and I'll link that in the show notes. But yes, you probably haven't seen a lot of this really beautiful russet hearted Carab wood around, which sucks because it's beautiful and there are thirty year old carab trees getting cut down all the time on suburban streets.
We're using a lot of species that aren't typically on the commercial market because they have been deemed culturally as those aren't wood trees. Ah, those are canopy trees. Those are ornamental trees, they're resilient whatever, but they're not wood trees. Right. It's interesting because most of those resilient trees that are getting planted deservant trees were somewhere, somehow, at some time,
a tree that civilizations built themselves on. You know. Yeah, so no, it's not a cherry log from New York State, but a Canary Island pine. Everyone's like, what is it? I don't know what that is. And then you go on the street and you're like, that's a Canary alan pine. That's a Canary Island pine, and that's a canar Aalian pine. They're like, oh yeah, oh those yes, those, So I'll give you example. So this tree is so resinous, it's just a natural resin. People call it sap, but it's
not actually sap. That's more of a deciduous thing. But these conifers have this pitch, like a really thick, gooey pitch and it just it just oozes out of this wood. So everyone's like, oh God, and like I'm not building furniture and this I'm doing things. Well, that's fine. You don't have to build a windsor chair out of canary and pine. However, the tree is incredible and that natural
resin in it. Why use pressure treated wood? Why pump all these chemicals into a piece of lumber so that when you're building your deck it's ground contact and doesn't deteriorate when nature has already made a species of wood that is pumped full of resin, natural resin that it stands up to years of like earth contact and moisture, you know what I mean. It's like we're not thinking outside the box. And now we're like, no, guys use
this for groundtack, lumber, ground contact. So usually especially designers, they come here and they're like, you gotta tell me about these species. I don't know anything about these species. And then we say, okay, So here's some best use cases for eucalyptus, or here's some best case uses for California sycamore or coast live oak, real fast coast live oak. There's an elle based native California sycamore is also a elle based in Native the right Perian tree, so it's along river beds.
Ah. I didn't realize sycamore was Native.
Yeah.
I was in Griffith Park as it trails once oh yeah, and all of a sudden heard a crack, it a boom and a sycamore. Have a sycamore just split intwo out of nowhere on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was quite a thing to see. Everyone was fine, but I was like, oh, wow, that was I've never seen a tree fall in the park.
Wow.
But it did make us sound. But I was like, I wondered, I wonder what they're going to do with that now, Like who comes and you know they put some caution tape up, but I don't know. I wonder if that one ended up here.
It could have.
But when it comes to the model that you've done here, does this happen in other places in the country?
Oh yeah, for sure, we are. We are definitely not the only like people doing this at all. They're all great people. But there's like New York City slab, there's wood from the Hood in Minneapolis, Epilogue, LLC. And Oregon Bay Area or Redwood and in the Bay Area there's harvest lumber. I got the shirt on right here in Austin, Texas. Gosh, there's a lot. There's a lot.
Jeff emailed me later with a list of folks that he wished she mentioned, writing, there are a slew of people across the country and continent in world who utilize urban trees as lumber currently. And there are a few others right here in southern California that he says he would be remiss not to mention, like San Diego Urban Timber, Lumber Cycle in San Diego, saw in Los Angeles, and
Straight Tree Revival in Anaheim. And I'll list all of those on my website so you can just gouck it all of their pretty planks, knowing that such gorgeous timber was saved from maybe just decomposing in a forgotten mulch mountain. What about different woods for different applications? I am not a carpentryst by any manner of speaking. What kind of wood is good for floors? People are making a lot of things out of palettes from behind dumpsters. What are different types of wood best suited for?
So good? Okay, boy, that's it. It's kind of a rap sheet. I'll speak as generally as I can. Basically for flooring, since you brought up flooring, we use typically various species of eucalyptus and coast live oak. Those are our two kind of go tos. Why because they're very hard and dense. Eucalyptus is also very close grain. It can hold up to high foot traffic. They're also not
necessarily the most stable woods as boards. Solid wood is going to be roughly five eighths to three quarter in thickness, no problem. Or even if you're making an engineered like a ware layer, which is roughly four millimeters thick, no problem. So they're perfect for that. And again the durability is great. So those two, those are species that typically on the commercial market people are like what am I gonna do
with this? But like they are perfect. I mean these these are pointing to the floor because these are gorgeous.
A eucalyptus floor. Who knew, Jeff.
Takes a lot of foot traffic in here. But anyway, so that's one. We have a lot of makers and furniture makers that come in here. There are certain species that are really great for joinery and making furniture. Shamel ash like your table yep is a perfect one. Are California sycamore. The native is also a really big fan favorite for that. We have a lot of American elm, Chinese elm, Siberian elm. Those are fantastic. The native. There's
a native black walnut that is also great. So there's that's a whole other like a it's like basically like a deciduous, machineable stable species. Those are great for making. We use a ton of pine, which you know, everyone has this preconceived notion about pine. They're usually thinking about softer like Eastern white pines. Again, this is like a cultural holdover, by the way, I love Eastern white pine.
But anyway, the pines that we get here are again are really robust trees from other parts of the world. So a Leppo pine is a Syrian and Lemonese you know, syndemic to those areas super dense, especially for a pine, like it's a hard wood. It's not a hardwood, but it is a hard wood. The same with Italian stone pine. On final, as I said earlier, we use those for
a lot of big, chunky landscape timbers. Okay, so we have a lot of Terramotal Landscape represent They love calling those fixtures chunks as deemed by a Tarramoto.
Tarramoto Landscape And my friend David Newsom at wild Yards Project dot org also do a lot of beautiful native landscapes and they use a lot of reclaimed materials, And I'll link them on my site because their handiwork has personally transformed my hill in my backyard of invasive weeds into what's now a pollinator habitat and a hub for critters. But back to inside and what was under our feet? What is hardwood by the way, because you said they're hardwood, but not hardwood, that's.
A great question. So hardwoods hardwood as in one word, hardwood is typically a designation for a wood from a deciduous tree. Oh okay, and softwood is typically a denomination for a conifer.
I had no idea.
Typically I had no idea.
So when someone says that they have hardwood floors, let's say, yep, my apartment is hardwood floors. Does that mean it's going to be a walnut and not a pine or is that just totally different?
Oh okay, yeah, it could be you know, like obviously like the yeah, a walnut, like the commercial, the white oaks and the red oaks, beach maple, you know all those those are hardwoods.
Haha. Does it ever pain you to see certain woods trend one year and then be like, ugh, everyone rip out your white oak floors. They're so last year? Like, does that ever just kill you?
I love all wood, I love all trees, so but I get less. I get less miffed about the trending from a tree standpoint, and way more from a from a human standpoint. Yeah, like the walnut, Like every woodworker and everyone at a mill in the country is like, I know you love walnut. Yeah, it's not walnut's fault. That is beautiful and all the things, but it's just like, guys, come on, we gotta branch out. I gotta branch out. Yeah, hey, guys,
it's so ingredined. Jeez, I'm gonna stop. You gonna leave it alone.
But would you say that was there? Has there ever been a wood that's really surprised you that you're like, who knew this was such a good one?
Can I can? I? Yes, I'm gonna go and go off.
Yeah, so eucalyptus, Okay, buckle up, boy, howdy?
This ties in for culturally Again, you asked what eucalyptus earlier, So eucalyptus is endemic to Australia. I'm gonna I'm gonna backtrack for a second. People woodworkers, woodworker people are like, eucalyptus is crap. Oh that wrap, yeah, crap, crap, wood can't do anything with It's crap, unstable, scrap, cell collapse, crappy.
So that has just been anyone you talk to like eucalypts, alright, well you can't you like, you know, you see people around town and that a tree comes down or eucalyptus comes down, and they know what we do and they're like, ah, well two bag is usually just right, like yeah, well actually wrong because what we have kind of really gone down the rabbit hole with is making people see that
eucalyptus is fantastic. And while I know from an ecological standpoint, there's and I don't claim to be an ecologist, and I don't claim to know like all the all the ends in the outs from a flora and fauna standpoint, locally and all that it's allelopathic, meaning like there's not always opportunity for other plants to grow under its canopy
and stuff like this. Everyone hates this tree, okay, except except for Koalis, except for Australians of any kind human in the more than human world in Australia love eucalypse. It's in the West we hate them and they're invasive and they're all these things. So quick, very quick, little a bridge version of how it got here.
Bring it on, dude.
So American settlers, mostly of the European setlar ancestry variety in their DNA wooded areas, woods right woods for energy via fire, woods for building materials as wood, wood is wood, wod wood, wood, wood right post you know, thirteen colonies or a country now and it's just harvest your pants off with wood and manifest destiny up through Iowa, which is the forest has been so decimated because of you
know again moving westward. Now, this is where the US for service is emerging, and there's like talks like, hey, what are we going to do here? And there's this talk of like a like a timber famine potentially so around this time as well. Now the trans Transcontinental Railroad has got by the way. I'm just a quick little plug here. There's an author named Jared Farmer, who wrote a book called Trees and Paradise that is incredible. But again I'm giving you the very nuts and bolts version.
But trans continental railroad at this point goes from east coast to Iowa, stops in Iowa, and everyone's like, we got to get it from Iowa to Frisco. Okay, because it's not transcontinental until it gets to the transit So great, but there's a looming timber famine, and train tracks need ties, and they need split rail fencing, and we don't have any trees to do it with and supply for everything else. Right, just so happens that this is around the time of
the gold rush. So not only that, but now you've got all these people from the East coast through the Midwest going like get some gold. So they're going hell fire out to the west coast, right. Well, not everyone settles in the you know, by the plasters. They all kind of you know, to come down on the central coast and southern California, and there's not any trees. The native landscape is brown hills and chaparral and occasional live
oaks and ryparian sycamores or white alders. In the elevations sidebar. People have been living here for millennia with no trees. Just fine. Yeah.
Yes, in the Southwest there are many river valleys that have cottonwood and sycamore and willow and mesquite, and there are varied biomes and forests, but the climate and the ecosystem is less densely forested out west than buck East.
But on my website all link a short documentary about indigenous ecology called Spirit of the Trees Continuing Traditions of Southwest tribes, and there's much more on land management and forests in the Indigenous Fire Ecology episode with doctor Amy Christiansen, which I'll link in the show notes too.
But I digress. So the European settler mindset is like trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, How can people survive out here? So they're thinking about the Timmer famine and they're thinking, we have to settle down here, and we can't do that without trees. We don't have any firewood, we don't have any building material, we don't have any anything. So we got to get some trees planted and they not only that, but they have to grow fast, and we have to harvest fast.
Oh man, right, it's a tree. Trees don't grow fast. It's the one thing they don't do, right, we need some faster snails around here. It's a snail. Let the thing grow.
Let the thing grow.
So they're like, what's the what's the microwave version of a tree?
Pretty much now this is you know, and to be fair, this is after they've also decimated all the redwoods and cedars in the Pacific northwest. Right, it's chewing north California. It's chewing through them lumber locusts, lumber locust like just I can't even my heart. So anyway, they don't know exactly who and you know, brought them in. But basically Americans started visiting seed banks in Australia. They had learned they had already done some plantings in Europe with rave reviews,
et cetera. So they're like, we got to get our hands on some of these eucalyptus seeds. We're going They got some now. Also, seed banks weren't a sophisticated so they didn't have a great crasp on which species. There's over seven hundred plus species of eucalyptus. Oh in Australia, so you know, it's hard to keep track. In the US, there's roughly two hundred plus still a lot, so it's confusing.
But anyway, the point is is they they brought them in through San Francisco Bay started planting these eucalypse Okay, Now, there were like a lot of people that were fervent about growing these. There was like flyers everywhere there were. People were taking investment opportunities, like, look, you want to make some money. This is a surefire tree. These trees grow sixty feet in six years. And by the way, this blue gum Eucalyptus Eucalyptus globulus grows the fastest, like
it's a rocket tree. So we are in luck. We got it all figured out. They started, they started planting eucalyptus the entire West coast, getting investment money. We're gonna make that timber, We're gonna make that money. We're gonna get that railroad gone. And what happens. They harvest them after fifteen twenty years, which is typical for deciduous trees.
Eucalyptus is a myrtle, a little different ballgame, and it's also it grows interlocking grain, so it doesn't grow quite the same way, which is also like these variables that no one was really thinking about. So they're harvesting them young, and they're they're milling them up sawmills and they're letting them dry air dry, and they're warping and they're checking and they're splitting and they're like oh what. And people have like put all this money into it. Right now,
this tree that was going to be a savior. People were using the oils and they were fixing their fevers and they were like this magic tree. Look at this tree. We have trees now went from that to this tree. It's invasive, it grows everywhere. Now it's shit ass wood. It ruined everything. We can't harvest any So now there's like forests up the coasts right and now they're just like, well, I can't use that. So that's the holdover mentality.
People still have a grudge still, they're like, yeah, that one did me dirty right undred years.
Ago, two hundred years ago or something, and it and it really makes you think about like culturally, like we pass on these like perspectives and these perceptions.
I always wondered how we got so many of them. I've got one of my my neighbors got one over in my backyard. One day might fall on my head. I don't know, Loo. It's nice in good shade. The crows love it, and I love the crows. We have a good relationship. But when you are building with it, even though it did that warping and buckling and the cross grain, how do you manage that wood and make cool stuff out of it?
Great question? And this is my one of my business partners. Todd is in charge of drying it has been up until now, and he has done some amazing work and I want to give him a shout out because he's kind of changed the way people think about eucalyptus in this area because you know the way he's dried it. So Todd Cooper shout out. But basically, when you harvest early like that twenty years you glt this and I was saying, it grows seasonally like every growth season, it
switches the direction of the fibers growing upward. Wow, which until it's a really really mature tree is really squirrely for wood grain. Turns out if they did a little more research, and I know, hindsight sway twenty I'm not trying to be like, I know they were just doing their best. No internet, no internet did no internet, right.
But there's people in Australia, whether it be they indigenous or settlers or whatever, they know they're like, look, you gotta let a eucalyptus tree grow a hundred years and then you can harvest it and it's great wood. And by the way, there's all these different kinds of species
and they all have different purposes and whatever. So anyway, the way we do it here is instead of air drying, we can our air dry some species like Carimbia stato or lemon scented gum is like one where you're like, you know what, Actually you could air dry this one. It's not a big deal. It comes out nice. Blue gum, which is there's a ton of blue gum in California is one of those ones that's it's tough to air dry.
But what we can do they didn't have then is killing drying technology, so we have dry kelnts nice so we can control. Basically, what was happening is the off gassing of water was happening too rapidly and so it just everything buckles. Typically, what you do is when you saw lumber. You let it air drive for a while until all the free water's gone. Yeah, they shout out to free water, and then you put it in the kiln to finish it off.
And yeah, I know what that means. Yeah, I listened to a podcast about it, this one.
So now with kiln drying technology, that's typically what you do with this particular wood. What we did again. Shout out to Todd. He was like, you know what, I think. We need to get this off the mill, like right off the mill. Like literally a board comes off the mill and you run it to you sprint to the kiln and get it in the kilt and you maintain
that moisture so that it off gases more slowly. And in the kiln you start off very low and slow low temperature, low and slow time and let it off gas slowly, so you're controlling that off gassing and then you can dry it way more stably. So we have that advantage of killing joint technology. But when it's done that way, it's still tricky. But if you get it right, boy is it awesome. And blue gum we use for decking, we use for chunks as well, but we can get
decking boards, perfect pristine decking boards out of bluegum. Eucalyptus. Now the flooring we use blue gum as well. We use lemon scented gum, we use red gum, we use sugar gum, even sugar sugar gum. So yeah, so it's great. So that's my that's my species.
I love eucalyptus. Now, yes, I will hug one. Can I ask you some questions from listeners?
Please?
Okay? Yeah, but before we do, let's give away some cash because money does not grow on trees. Technically, United States paper bills are printed on linen and cotton. Now you know that. But each week we donate to a cause of anologist choosing because we like to try to
make a difference. And this week Jeff chose the Mother Tree Project, which is a nonprofit that funds long term research to identify future forest management practices that will help our forests remain productive and diverse and resilient as the climate changes. And it's led by world renowned forest ecologist doctor Simard, who wrote Finding the Mother Tree, and doctor Simmard, Jeff says is an idol of his. You can learn more at mothertreeproject dot org. That's linked in the show notes,
and thank you to sponsors for making that donation possible. Okay, I saw your questions. Let's answer them. Trevor Doughty had a great question. Everyone asks you this. I'm sure, why do we call them two by fourth when they aren't two by four?
This is a great question, wowser's okay, So they were once upon a time two inch by four inch.
Okay.
As framing shifted from balloon frame to balloon framing was a type of framing where you still had studs, okay, traveling vertically on a wall, but the floor system was a little different. It basically were cavities on the exterior walls that again hindsight being twenty twenty, fires would once they started, they would come up through those bays, so they spread way too fast. So that's why balloon framing kind of like, Okay, the one and a half by three and a half, which is a nominal two by four.
That means we call it something that it's not, like how pon nouff means new bridge but it's the oldest bridge in Paris. Or a friend whose phone contact is still their maiden name because you've known them since like two thousand and six. Anyway, two by.
Fours came about, I believe because of industry, a switch to stick framing, which is the current standard for framing houses, because of the plantings, because of the succession plantings. And I think the fish and see it's they're easier to carry. They're just smaller and if done sixteen inch on center, you still have the stability. They were like, why are we We're wasting lumber. We're you know, we're making it
harder on carpenters and all the things framers. Yeah, so, as far as I know, my knowledge is that it was a combination between framing technique and also industry just wanting to be more efficient.
But you can get more out of a tree, so that's good, right, Okay, Okay, I like them. Now Elijah wants to know. Elijah's six year old. Not a lot of six year olds listening to the podcast, given how much is a six year old? I know, I'm like, I'm sorry for the swearing, but my six year old wants to know why wood is hard when other plants are soft and bendy.
Oh wow, so the wood is essentially you got cellulose. I want to say roughly half of wood is cellulose. Then there's hemy cellulose, and then which is like just a different molecular structure, and the last bit is lignan. And the lignin is what is like the tie between cells. It's like an inner cellular like binder. Oh okay for all the woodness. Ah, there's lignin in all kinds of plants. It's just I think the concentration of it in wood, I think is what gives it its.
Makes it tougher. Yeah, I feel like there's got to be a lot in the end of an asparagus stock. You know, when you get to the end of the asparagus stock and you're like, can't count cho that's the that's the cutoff. So to recap Cellulose is a polymer made of glucose, and it gives wood most of its strength, and lignin is a polymer made of phenols, which are
lightly acidic aromatic compounds. Lignin acts as a binder or a matrix for the cellulose and Hemicellulose is also a binder, but it's made of a bunch of different sugar compounds. So I'm sorry, what's happening in asparagus? I almost cut that part of the inner out because I was like, Lord, why are you bullshitting about asparagus right now? But I looked it up and it turns out I'm a genius.
I found a scintillating publication, the Journal of Food Packaging and Shelf Life, which had a twenty twenty sensual study called Longitudinal analysis of lignin deposition in green asparagus by microscopede during high oxygen modified atmosphere packaging, and it confirmed my suspicions, saying lignification is the most important factor that negatively affects quality of fresh green asparagus and limits its
marketability after harvest. Lignin doesn't soften when cooked, so unless you want your dinner guests to gnaw logs at your table, you got to snap the end of the spears instead of cutting them. And in terms of their pee, there's nothing you can do to stop the asparagusic acid from
breaking down into sulfur. But you can keep a candle in the bathroom or encourage your friends to rejoice in having a functioning body with working kidneys, and from more on that you can listen to the Nephology episode, which will teach you that transplant recipients get to keep their old kidneys, and some people just have like a few extra kidneys in the back, like your uncle's old Mustang under a tarp in the driveway that he just can't
seem to get rid of. Just keep it there. I regret wants to know how rare is spalted wood and does it kill the tree? And can you tell a tree is spaulted before you cut it? I want to know what a spalted mean? What is that word?
Great one? So spaulting in a in wood is a fungal characteristic. You'll see they're typically at least around here, black lines in the wood. M h if I have any around here. But there's also spaulting that is, Oh here's some. This is spaulting sycamore right here.
Come on now, Oh so like little like darker, darker lines.
Oh okay, yeah, so that's a typical spalt But there's also like rust colored, spongy looking like you were to take like a sponge painting on a wall kind of thing. There's also hot pink. I know when I first started doing this, I remember like seeing wood that was drying, like who is drawing on the wood. But it's a it's a fungus. I don't believe that these fungi are
harming or helping these particular ones. So a mic horiezal fungi fungi at the root system is like the support network for a lot of different species and interspecies and all that stuff. So those fungi are like, you know, super important, super important for trees. There are other fungi
that can kill a tree really fast. And I don't know the ins and the oils of all that, but spaulting is it happens around here a lot to our sycamores, our silver maple, and I believe it has to do with, yeah, the decay over time, as they're just kind of declining, there's more spaulting happening in the wood.
So is just a little bit of fungus giving a fun pattern. And apparently you can spalt lumber on purpose and shove it into a bag to get kind of moldy. And one website I looked at called Sunketcher Studio advises that ingredients that contain nitrogen or organics and sugar will help speed up the spaulting process. This can include horse manure, fertilizer, and leaves. They continue. I have had a specially good
luck using two cans of beer. One can of beer you pour on the wood, the other can you drink. I like this person. They seem fun to have a spulted log with. We have a question about burrels that Niemeringer wants to know. What's the deal with burrels? As a kid hiking in the woods, I heard stories of majorly cool trees being cut just for their burrels and the rest of the lumber just being left to rot. It made me think of ivory and rhinohorn poaching, and
frankly still horrifies me. But do some species of tree have more burrel? Like walnut has more burrel?
Right?
Is what is a burrel?
They're sprouts? Yeah, there's sprouts, so, and there's sprouts that don't necessarily continue to shoot. So redwoods everybody loves redwoods, no argument there. Everyone loves redwoods everyone. So basically those are ligno tubers. They have those. You ever see at the base of a redwood tree a bunch of little
shits coming out? Yeah, And typically when a redwood tree comes out, the root system or the root ball typically has a huge burl, not typically, but often has a huge burrel at the base of the tree, to which woodworkers are like, save the root system, save it, save it, save it, And yeah, it's a bunch of sprouts that didn't take. And it's the same for yeah, for any species. I had no idea ingrown sprouts.
So a burled tree can also mean a stressed tree. Insect infestation, brush fires, and bad weather can make the tree do the dendrological equivalent of panicking, making a ball of sprouts in case its main tree can no longer function. So when you see borldwood, just think about a tree reading about an impending tragedy and making tons of babies. Now burls make me sad. Oops, I thought this was
a great one. Furoria Lily wants to know what classifies a tree as old growth and what can we do to protect old growth forests and why are they important versus young growth? So when you were talking about forests that are just like planted, and then that's the new growth.
Right, Yes, there's a lot of different classifications, and I get confused. There's old growth, there's new growth, there's first growth second growth. I believe that the different growth stages are harvest from a given organism. So if you plant a tree and you cut it down, that's first growth. But old growth, I thinks, as is typically talked about, are trees that were in a forest that was not harvested, that are like and really tight growth rings and are just very old trees.
Yeah, okay, so let's do a quick rundown on that. So old growth forests haven't been logged, and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations says they are naturally regenerated forests of native tree species where there are clearly no visible indications of human activity and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed. That is an old growth forest. About a third of forests in the world are old
growth and they're mostly in Brazil, Canada and Russia. Old growth forests are hanging on to a lot of carbon and species. Now second growth or new growth forests have been harvested and they're growing back. Now, how long does it take for a second growth or new growth forest
to be an old growth. Well, it can take a hardwood forest in the US between one hundred and fifty to five hundred years to regain old growthy characteristics up to thousands of years for other forests, and most forests in the US and Europe are on their second lap, the old growth long gone to practices of colonization. And I was recently visiting my cousin Nate, who showed me a table he built from this densely ringed old growth wood.
And this lost log was cut one hundred years ago but was just recently dredged up from a chili lake by the same timber company. My cousin up in Montana was talking about how logs would fly down the river, old old logs sink, it would be anaerobic enough where some of those logs get dredged up, and then you have this really really compact old growth, old old logs that have just been in water. Does that happen? I mean, because that is can water be a preservative in that case?
Yeah? Yeah, And it's beautiful and it's often like really dark wood. There's also bog logs, I know, like in the UK, like in the bogs in the UK that logs that have been submerged for hundreds of years and then they pull them up and they mail them in a lumber and it's used for like gorgeous, gorgeous furniture and stuff like that.
Also just bog logs, like boglogs. Someone get boglogs dot com. Yeah, totally, No, I think it is because yeah, Feoral Lily submitted a few questions and one of them was what's the deal with bog oak trees?
Yeah, so there you go, there you go.
They had this question too. Are there any tree species that we should straight up avoid buying to stop encouraging logging of that resource? Is there one that it's like, lay off this one.
Everyone because it's such good lumber that kind of thing, Yeah.
Or just its harvest is maybe not done well, or it's like let let these mahoganies or epe or something just like keep chilling in a forest.
Yeah. I think forest management is a whole thing that deserves a lot of brain power to put our minds back on how to do it right. Our current system is again, I think it's a hole over from a post industrial like mindset which is just devoid of our relationship with with forests, with trees. Robin wall Kimer, there you go in bringing sweet grass and talking about the black ash, basket weaving or harvest. You know, there's no like conservationists like don't ever touch the trees or anything
like that. But there's a participation and there's an honor, and there's a dance, and there's a reciprocity, as she would say.
For more on Doctor Robin wall Kimer, see our biology episode about Moss linked in the show notes what an episode. I love her, We love her.
I think until forest management can get back to reciprocity, I mean, I would say all species are in danger, just as any non human being is in danger of what we're up to, you know, I mean, are there certain species of animals that we shouldn't hunt more? But yeah, I mean, just like we need to just overhaul our whole mindset. Yeah again, pre Industrial Revolution, Treeheart was the world over. Indigenous communities the world over for millennia and as far back as we can go, people built with wood.
But the way that the forests were managed was like a woodlot. So he would essentially you would cut down a section of a woodlot managed by the community. And this is pre land ownership, so this was not anyone's land to own. This was everyone's land. In the community and they would harvest a section of the forest coppice they've cut at the base and then let it re sprout, and they would do that on twenty fifteen, twenty year increment. So the next year you would go to the next
section cut that while this one's growing back. You go all the way around and you've got woodlots that trees are thousands of years old and they've been participated with There's an incredible book by William Bryant Logan called sprout Lands, and he actually did this whole deep dive into the history of this, and he also talks about how flora and fauna, the ecology of a participated in woodlot just booms and there's like three times the amount of plants, insects,
animals in a forest that is being participated with humans.
This seemed bonkers to me, so I surfed the bibliography of Sproutlands and then literally a few hours later realized that I had been deep in papers such as Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Forest Disturbance, a high resolution paleo ecological test of human impact hypotheses and the potential role of humans in structuring the wooded landscapes of Mesolithic Ireland, A Review of Data and Discussion of Approaches, both papers from twenty thirteen, which seemed like just a banger year
for publishing stuff about neolithic forest farming. But yes, coppist growth, according to the book Sproutlands is not a single thing, but a synthetic ecosystem in which human participates is a key. Far more species of plants, insects, birds, and other creatures inhabit such a mixed landscape then would live in an untouched woodland. And for more on this you can see
that book Sproutlands by William Bryant. Logan and to pollard is to cut certain trees at about head height so that grazing animals can't reach the young shoots that sprout from that cut surface, while coppassing is cutting closer to the ground so that the new shoots of the tree grow from that stump. And yes, I looked it up, and you can coppice an apple tree, which gives me hope for the giving tree, even though most apple trees,
as we learn from the dendrology episode, are grafted. But if the giving tree just grows into one that makes shitty, malformed apples full of bitterness and worms and gets left to hell alone. I'm happy for the giving tree. I'm happy for.
It plant any species if that's the mentality. But in the current system of commoditizing for commodity's sake, and I get it from a demand standpoint, these would lots. This is when there was half a billion people on the planet. Now there's eight billion people on the planet. It's a different ballgame. But I think we can still get back to that mentality and do forest management a lot differently than we're doing it.
What about reclaimed wood and barnwood that is being you know, taken apart one by one, or even if there's demolitions, the idea of going and trying to take as many beams as possible and reuse it. Are people doing more of that? And it is that lumber.
Accessible to people totally?
Are there good places to look for that?
Yeah, there's places here that are awesome. One of them has gone out of business, the Reclaimer at Tarzana, which is a bummer. There's also a tree line in Frogtown Habitat for Humanity, the Restore. So there are places that do that around here and they're awesome, and I think that is a great idea. But it's all systems. It's all like how we live in anomic system? So how can you from a process standpoint do it viably? And these people have the relationship with a contract, a demo contractor,
they have a schedule. They're like, okay, the demo contractor is like, great, you have these three days to extract all the all the timbers that you want. They go in, they do it. They have a whole facility set up, and that way, by that process being streamlined, it's not crazy expensive. People can like go to that reclaim lumberyard and they do and they use all of it.
I love that, right, I love that.
It's incredible.
Does it ever piss you off? As someone who has a live edge table from you beloved the most cherished piece of furniture in my house from yes, a samilash which I didn't know that was a species of tree. Does it ever piss you off when you see things cut to look like live edge that are not live edge?
That pisses me up feeling? Can I be real right now? Yah? Yeah, that's that's not that's messed up. Can't do that. That's that's what we were about, Like the kind of like, oh, this is how it's supposed to like, yeah, come on, well yeah, like get a get a grip.
Yeah, I know, I figured whenever I see that in the catalogs, I'm like, I've met that fisiness.
Well you get a grip.
Uh. Clara NRK wants to know if you have a favorite smelling wood.
Oh man, that's a tough one. I mean d R cedar is the Himalayan cedar and syandemic to the Himalays. But that's the most common urban seater that we have here. M h boy, oh boy, that's my favorite. I think so smelly, so good, so smelly, so good.
What about the worst thing about your job? What sucks? What's the most frustrating thing? The worst thing?
I sound so annoying, but I really love it. I really really something. I was a disclaimer.
Okay, okay, you must have like one toenail that fell off years ago for under a log or something.
Yeah well yeah, yeah, plenty, Okay, but this one, but this one's more. Actually, I could really use the help of anyone in our community that's listening on this one.
Okay.
I'm all weirs because I can't figure out, so we we get the biggest bane of my existence at my job is we can't use we can. We haven't figured out yet how to use every single mor soul of our trees. So obviously we make lumber. But that's that's roughly eighty percent of a log. That's I don't know if that might be inaccurate, but I'm gonna I'm gonna estimate roughly eighty percent of a log is made into lumber. Well what about the other twenty percent? That's a lot
of what we have. We cut a lot of logs in a year. The sawdust we have solved, thank god, through La Compost. We give them all of our sawdust and they is it for browns for their for their food waste to make for compost, which is awesome. But our slash, meaning the stuff that's kind of like, we don't know what to do with this. We we've started splitting firewood and having it for community like restaurants and wood ovens and stuff like that, but it's not like
a streamlined thing yet. And the rest of it we bring to a mulcha for mulch and we're like, yeah, I guess that's fine, but like, I know, there's a better way to do this, and it just crushes my soul.
Coasters about coasters.
We could do coasters. It's a lot.
That's a lot of coasters.
But they're like pieces of wood like this, they're like weird pieces. Yeah, like I don't even know how do I dry this? How I cut it? What do we do?
There must be carvers whitdlers, Yes, a brigade of whitdlers showing up the Witler brigade. There's gotta be one. But so maybe a little bit of hive mind? Is that that?
Yes, what to do with it?
Yes, that's the worst thing.
Yes, okay, I mean maybe team percent, but.
Yes, okay, follow them an Angel City lumber and give them some ideas. Also you can gaze at their gorgeous stumps and slabs and such. What it's the best thing about the job?
Oh man? Can I give a few couple? Our team is like, there's fifteen of us here and they are like angel people. I don't know, I like this would not what we've accomplished already and we have a long way to go. Is like it's just as testament to like the people that are just like, let's do this. They're so incredible. All every single one of them, and the ones that have worked here that don't any longer
just incredible people. So that's one. But obviously I think the main event is obviously that I feel that we are contributing to a shift and mentality to the more than human world around us. And I think we're contributing to a new sacred and we're contributing to our community. That's the best part is like really communing with a living being and honoring that being as you know, living on and like I mentioned earlier, like to put a
pin in that to the aversion to death. The culture I think we have is like we get to look at death head on and and share it as opposed to like be scared of it or look the other way to it. We deal with death every single day, and we get to deal with it in a way that's really beautiful and reverent. And I think that that's like by far the best part. You know, Mulco smells real good.
Yeah, smells great. Death never smelled so good.
Death never smelled so good.
You can put on the coasters. Thank you so much for doing this.
Thank you so much.
Mash joy and absolute joy. So ask soft hearted people, hard questions because there's a good chance that they've been asked before and they love telling you the answers again. Angel City Lumber follow them on social media linked to the show notes. They only sell locally to LA, but I listed a bunch of other companies that Jeff mentioned, plus studies and books that we talked about at aliwar dot com, slash Ologies, slash Ziology. Happy Wooden Anniversary to
us all, and thank you Jeff for joining us. Thank you to everyone at patreon dot com slash Ologies for supporting from before we were ever even launched. You can join for a dollar a month and some a bit. Questions. Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com and thank you Suzinhale for managing that and so much more. Thank you Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling help. Aaron Talbert admins Theologies podcast Facebook group with This is from Bonni Dutch
and Chhann and felts Us at the podcast. You are that. Mercedes Maitland and Seagred Biggest Thomas of mindcham Media make this Smologies episodes, which are short, twenty minute episodes that are classroom safe. Kelly Ardwyer helps with the website and she can make yours. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. Emily White of the Wordery makes professional transcripts in Caleb Patten Bleeps episodes, and those are up at alleywar dot
com slash ologies dash extras for free. And the man who treats us all so well and edits these episodes is the one and only Jared Sleeper, who had a mullet trim and a birthday this week. Happy birthday to someone who makes the planet better. What a guy. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you secret. And this week tonight, Jarrett decided to make some apple sauce from scratch, and he peeled
the apples like a normal human. And then I asked him to not throw away the apple peels, because I made a salad of just the apple peels with some chunks of cheddar cheese and some walnuts in it. And a few years ago I would have hesitated longer and not had this self assurance to say, please save that garbage. I'd like to eat the garbage, but there's just something about the texture of appeal. I went for it, no regrets.
My favorite part of potato is a skin, but if we're being honest, A potato really only has two parts. It has the inside and the outside. Also, I eat everyone's pizza crust. I don't even care how well I know them. I'm like a dumpster rat.
Who can drive a car. Okay, bye bye.
I respect wood, I revere wood. I'm considerate of wood.
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