Meet The Foresters: Heartland Forest

Heartland Forest is a family owned and operated Northwest Certified Forest of 285 acres up Langlois Mountain in Southern Oregon.

History:

We moved from Tuscon AZ to the Southern Oregon Coast in 1979 and camped at Indian creek campground and eventually found a rental in Nesika Beach and a job building condo's in Gold Beach to hold us over till we found this property for sale in The World Newspaper. Got a job at More Mill in 1980 and learned a bit about milling and lumber while building the house that we raised the kids in and live in today.

The last 1970's and early 1980's were the heyday of lumber production on the South Coast. A guy could make $10 an hour with health benefits and afford to build a house and raise a family on that wage but after they broke the union and put us on 3 days a week it was pretty much over. The mill (and pretty much all Natural Forest to the Leftthe others in the area) closed down within a few years.

After 1986 forest fire I met Jerry Becker (Becker Ecoforestry) who educated me about the forest and sound sustainable forest management practices. The fire hit Langlois Mountain hard and wiped out 40 acres on the west side of our property but hit the neighbors 800 acres 600 acres on each side, so we were lucky not to lose everything. During the recovery we met up and made a plan for the burned out areas, planting about 20,000 trees in the burned section using mixed species of Red Wood, Port Orford Ceder, Spruce, Hemlock, Maple, Ash, Douglas Fir, Noble fir and let the natural Red Alder spring up where it would. The idea was to allow give multiple local species a start in the burned out areas rather than replanting a mono-species selection so have a variety of grow rates and diversity within the newly planted area -- mimicking a natural forest found in Southern Oregon (see below -- a section of replanted fir vs a natural regrowth post logging).

Salvage Trees: Wood Mizer Sawmill

In the early 1990's George started cutting salvage trees (cedars, firs and the like) for neighbors and turning those logs into lumber directly. Salvage trees present a difficult situation for land owners who might have several fine specimens of various species that need to come down, but do not have enough trees in one area to form a full load worth hauling to a lumber mill (and hire a log truck & loader etc). However, the few trees available might be too fine to justify cutting up for firewood. I got started taking those trees and contracted the milling to Bruce Engdahl and his Wood Mizer Sawmill and learned from him the art of making lumber from a log. Around 2000 I purchased a used sawmill from Steve Kalina at the Hildebrand ranch and after using that for five years I upgraded to a Wood Mizer

What we make:

Heartland Forest does custom lumber orders and we keep dimensional lumber in stock -- and specialty woods like black walnut and redwood. Kiln drying and grading available.