Featuring Joe Landsiedel of JL & Sons Logging
The skills for running and sustaining a firewood bank is multifaceted. We took the opportunity to talk with a Wyoming logger Joe Landsiedel who has partnered with Clear Creek wood bank in sourcing wood for the last 3 years, here’s what we discussed:
How were you first introduced to the wood bank?
“I have known the organizers of the wood bank from the start.” Joe had known the organizers of the wood bank since it was just an idea. He has sold firewood to their small community for years and was invited early on in the planning process to offer expertise to the wood bank. Once the plan was in place he offered his commitment as primary logger, “if you want to do this, I’ll get you the wood
Can you describe how collecting firewood grade logs fits into the harvest of timber?
“Oh yeah, we do it all the time, we take [fallen and precarious] hazardous logs out of the trees too. When we’re taking [green trees] down and producing a product we have to cut different lengths off. We keep the different sized cut of pieces for firewood”
“Some of the jobs we do are all firewood, we’ll go in and clean up areas, the private land has chunky timber that isn’t anything you could really make saw logs out of. The state has quite a bit of that stuff too, more borderline firewood, so we buy [the timber] with the option of making firewood out of it,”
Do all commercial loggers take the extra wood as firewood?
“No, the bigger saw mills are not interested in doing that because they don’t have time for it.” “[It’s] always a problem with the public when they just throw the unusable wood away, nobody likes to see it. The other issue is that there are no sawmills for 200-300 miles from here [central WY].”
“When I first moved here in Wyoming in 1992 between Colorado and western Washington there were 42 2x4 mills, now there are 6. The [sawmill] infrastructure was destroyed” which makes it exceptionally difficult for firewood banks to partner with sawmills and piggyback off of their timber harvest for firewood.
Do you see it as beneficial to the forest ecosystem to harvest the extra firewood?
Yes, he completes thinning projects on private land often to promote forest health. “[Without an industry] There is no way to treat the forest for fire mitigation or disease [at the scale it needs]. This stuff is so old, well past its prime, if we don’t harvest it Mother Nature is going to burn it.”
“We could lose this green forest by trying to do nothing. The bugs are where we will have a problem, the spruce bug worm down on the South end of the Bighorns is spreading when it could be stopped in its tracks”
Would you recommend other loggers partner with firewood banks?
“I would! But if they’re going to start something they’ve got to finish it.”
“I predict some of them would get started then somewhere along the way get burned out by the extra work [which is why financial security from local or federal government should ease the burden]”
Clear Creek wood bank is unique in how they outsource the processing of logs. Due to insurance limitations their volunteers do not operate any machinery, they stack the wood and organize the pick up days. Regarding the firewood side of his business “I normally don’t do the cut and split thing, I typically just supply the logs, I’ve just been doing it for the wood bank” said Joe. “I don’t mind having skin in the game like the land and the time and the wood but somewhere along the way something needs to be paid for.”
Are there any barriers for loggers to supply firewood to wood banks?
In the Bighorns maybe 75% of the National Forest acres are declared wilderness areas (which comes with heightened level of protections and strict disturbance regulation) or no access areas because they have no roads. The remaining 25% rarely permits timber sales and when they do it often faces strong environmental backlash and litigation stopping the harvest of wood. Joe believes, “The contention is setting up the entire forest for massive wildfires.”
On the flip side:
He has had clients to accelerate the reduction of fuels in their privately owned forest to open up more space between trees for grass to grow and knows some state governments are eager to thin timber to decrease wildfire risk. “We go into an area and take all of the wood we can. The positive part about it is it definitely cleans up everything, we specialize in taking all that really small wood, all the crooked and everything else and making firewood out of it rather than throwing it in the brush pile,”
“It’s good public relations, it really helps to show that we’re utilizing it all so that no one can point and say that we’re wasting it.”
Could someone get by with just harvesting firewood grade? Is it profitable?
“Yes but the problem is the marketing, I’ve been doing it in WY for 31 years so I’ve built up a clientele but that’s one person at a time, there is no good place to take it [firewood]”. Which is all the more reason for firewood banks to exist in areas where forests are near. “There are no contractors here so it’s really tough to make it. If someone were to show up here and sell wood they wouldn’t have clients or landowner permission necessary to reach some of the harvestable state land sections”
What is the grading scale for firewood, how do you know what is good firewood in a forest?
“It’s all good firewood, pretty much every species on the mountain is good, some are better than others like Douglas fir and lodgepole pine are good, then spruce and ponderosa work too”
What size of load of wood would someone order?
“Normally I get a truck and trailer load is between 15-17 cords. Just the truck is 8-9 cords. His trucks carry about the same amount of wood but they are short log trucks. Long log trucks can’t carry the same volume as short log trucks because of the weight distribution.”
How do you forecast firewood pricing with the number of loggers available?
“Firewood is going to get more expensive, mainly because of fuel costs” Joe typically charges between $100 and $130 per cord of unprocessed douglas fir and lodgepole pine logs.
Expansion, if a wood bank wanted to expand to like 3 other surrounding wood banks, would it be feasible to get that amount of wood at a wood bank?
“Management is the problem,”
“Who’s going to manage the wood harvesting and multiple banks? “Who’s going to pay for it all? I’m into this wood bank a fortune already,"
“Supplying the wood for the wood bank is a lot, it really is too time consuming and labor intensive to try and cut and split it for everyone [and charge for your time]” he did the extra work to give back to the community and stays with it because he cares about his town. The recently gifted log processor will significantly reduce labor hours that Joe would typically spend processing the firewood harvested for Clear Creek Wood Bank.
“It’s part of owning a business, balancing all of the give and take,” he says and still remembers the first recipient of firewood on their first day Clear Creek Wood Bank issued wood to the public.
Joe estimates $40-$50,000 in costs a year to keep 3-4 wood banks alive with one committed logger. “If we take the heat off the wood bank [by financing elsewhere], we could have a wood economy,” and heat equity in the rural West!
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