A Visit To A Small Sawmill In North Carolina

While I was in North Carolina to attend a wedding I kept trying to find someone with knowledge of what all the tree species I was seeing were. The forests in Appalachia contain a large number of trees I could only vaguely recognize and they are for the most part deciduous. These forests are very different from the conifer forests I grew up around in the Pacific Northwest. I did finally meet someone who said he did know the trees because he had a sawmill. Well, this piqued my curiosity and we began talking. Soon Jeff had invited me out to his farm to see the mill he was restoring and to pick up some boards that he had previously milled and had stored in his barn. Well, OK. This is exactly what I was hoping to stumble across so we exchanged contact info and made a tentative plan to meet up later in the week.

A couple of days later, after some navigation issues and a phone call or two, I arrived at Jeff's farm and we immediately set out for a local sawmill, Ritchie Farms and Sawmill,  Mt. Pleasant, North Carolina, operated by Mr. Don Ritchie. Jeff needed to pick up some pine 1X material and I was eager to see what hardwood material he might have. Here is Don's mill set up. He has a nice wood miser mill. In this photo, Don is on the right and Jeff is on the left.

Jeff loaded up the lumber he needed and then Don started opening up various sheds and containers to let me take a look at the material he had available.  There was a lot of tempting stuff. Walnut and Cherry is much less expensive on the East Coast!

I really couldn't fill my truck up. I still had a long drive back to Oregon and didn't want to add too much weight but I did find a slab of spalted Hackberry that seemed unique and not available out west. I also bought a few other pieces of Hackberry so I had material to make legs and/or aprons from.

Don totaled up my purchase and I paid him and left with what I hope will be some special lumber to make a special piece of furniture from. Jeff and I went back to the farm where he showed me the wood miser sawmill he has been restoring. It should cut a lot of wood when he gets it finished. Jeff also gave me 4 nice boards of Pecan which he had milled up. All in all, I had a great day out in the North Carolina countryside visiting with folks who appreciate lumber! The return trip to Oregon was a little hard on the Hackberry slabs. I went from low to high humidity several times and the temp ranged from 80 degrees F. to around 10 degrees F. Some checks have opened up on the ends and I will put this stuff aside for maybe up to a year or more until it looks like it has stabilized. On the other hand, the Pecan came through really well even though it was up on the ladder rack the whole trip home getting rained and snowed on. 

I'm still getting settled after returning home and haven't spent much time in the shop yet. It will probably be another week before I get back to all the projects I am working on. Well, you'll hear about those pretty soon so keep checking in. Thanks for taking a look.