Making lumber down on the farm with a Woodmizer LT11

Since our spread has about 50 acres of fine hardwood timber, a one-man sawmill makes an excellent farm machine. Other than a few head of beef cattle and a few sassafras roots, logs are about the only thing I harvest from the farm. I love unspoiled woods and wilderness, but a poor man who builds with wood has to be practical. If I were rich, I guess I'd order my lumber from the dwindling forests of Asia, the Amazon, or the Pacific northwest, and thereby preserve my own woods as a wild and purely natural area. As it is, I am obliged to practice the art of timber management, carefully selecting the trees to be cut, and making sure the woods never have a ravaged appearance. My skidding machinery is relatively kind to the forest when compared to the equipment used by professional loggers. Unavoidable skidding trails make excellent hiking and bridle-trails. Of course horse logging would be much better, but my old Farmall B tractor has so far proven up to the job -- serving as a skidder, in addition to its other more traditional duties for many years. No horse can work for fifty years like old "Short-Stack" has. Of course, Short-Stack hasn't produced any baby tractors either, and may someday yet expire.

Turning a log for squaring up a cant

The Skidder -- "Old Short-Stack"

My little WoodMizer LT25 was made for the job. It turns logs as big as I can handle into fine lumber. "Short-Stack," however, a 1950 Farmall B tractor, really wasn't designed to be used as a log-skidder. But the faithful old machine never gives up. Here it's shown rearing up while straining on a large log. I have to arrange to skid the really big logs all down hill. I've owned Short-Stack for 30 years of its half-century of existence, and it has kept the jungle at bay on 50 acres of pasture during all that time. Ah, if they only made tractors like that in this country today! Long ago I said that if Short-Stack ever died, I'd get me a good team of horses. But I have come to suspect that Short-Stack intends to out-live me, and I won't get my horses!

Sawing first board from a 10" X 10" cant

I recommend a small portable sawmill to woodlot owners. My WoodMizer paid for itself with the building of one barn. Lumber sells for a lot more than logs do. And if you happen to enjoy working with wood, finished wood products can change the value of lumber from $.50 per board to $10.00, or more! (Check out the WoodMizer home page.)