How Much Wood

Do you remember this rhyme from childhood: "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"

Not sure why this floated into my memory banks as I'm mulling over a blog post on our recently milled redwood timber at Struan Farm, but it did. I know, the mind does curious things, at least mine does.

Here's the stack of logs before our timber specialist got to work with his portable mill:

Here's what it looks like now:

Predicably, the hearts of the trees yielded the most beautiful, red, wood:

For those readers who don't know, redwood is a non-native timber in NZ. It grows fast here, as opposed to the U.S., where it is a protected species. So don't stress out and think we're doing terrible things, please! We are serious tree people at Struan Farm. These particular trees were planted years ago by my father-in-law, Maurie. We've left quite a number in the grove at the entrance to our new house site, and are planting rhododendron and azalea beneath those currently as we start to landscape the entrance.

John intends to use some of this timber stash to construct a garage for the new house, probably also a new workshop adjacent to the garage. We'll most likely convert Maurie's workshop down by the Homestead into a spare bedroom--hooray, another renovation project, just what we love. We've got yet another renovation about to commence that I'll blog about in the next day or so too.