"Part of it is my nature:
I like to work," Mr. Leverenz said.
"It’s
a great way on the weekend for me to unwind, do some physical labor, carry
some logs around, smell the stuff." During the week Mr. Leverenz directs
the Easter Seal’s Agribility Program for Wisconsin, which is dedicated
to helping farmers handicapped by accidents or health problems keep farming.
On the weekends, he manages two 20-acre parcels of woods, one of them part
of the family farm. He harvests and saws trees and sells the air-dried lumber,
as well as providing custom sawing services for others. The work has allowed
Mr. Leverenz to keep working
on the family farm, though the cows were sold in 1987, ending his hopes of
becoming a dairy producer. Mr. Leverenz said he spent $7,200 to have a Cook's
Saw 20-horsepower manual bandsaw sawmill delivered to his door in 2000, and paid
extra for the bigger motor while skipping the hydraulics. He’s never
regretted that decision, he said.
The set-up allows him to saw about 1,500 board feet in an 8 or 9 hour day,
with one person helping, he said. "I’ve come to the point where
if I saw for somebody, they’ve got to provide somebody to saw with me.
"Instead of hydraulics, he uses a tractor with a two-tined fork in place
of a bucket on the front end to load the logs onto the mill. "There’s
a lot of things I like about the manual sawmill," he said. "You’re
right next to it. You can hear the motor, see the sawing."
In the last two years, Mr. Leverenz said, he has sawn on average between 25,000 and 30,000 board feet per year. About 40 percent of that came from his family’s
woods, and 60 percent was custom work, he estimated. He averages a total of
18 days a year sawing, and nets $2,000 to $3,000 per year after expenses,
he said. But there is also plenty of time spent in the woods, he added, working
on harvesting, thinning, clean-up, and other management tasks. For these jobs
he recruits friends, family, and deer hunters, he said.
Although he doesn’t hunt deer himself, he allows hunters on the land.
"People don’t understand the real impact that deer are having on
woodlots," Mr. Leverenz said. He didn’t either, until a forester
demonstrated that foraging deer were the reason that no oak or cedar were
regenerating in his woods. Deer hunters not only help control the deer, Mr.
Leverenz said, they are friends who are happy to help out for a couple days
a year in exchange for hunting privileges. "If I had to pay people for
all the time that I put into the woods, I would not be profitable," he
said. "People who are willing to trade off some labor are what make it
profitable."
Niche marketing is another key to staying in the black, Mr. Leverenz said,
and fits with his sustainable forestry practices. "It’s finding
opportunities to use those things that normally would go in the firewood pile," he said. Sustainable forestry means, in part, managing a woodland so that
the best trees are left until last, in order to reach their maximum value.
Trees that are less desirable, either because of their species or their shape,
are harvested first, and harvests are done bit by bit, rather than all at
once.
This results in smaller, more frequent timber harvests, with less disturbance
to the woods, and standing timber that increases in value each year. The trick
is to find a market for the less commercially desirable timber harvested in
sustainable forestry. "So much of it is just being able to help people
understand what the options and opportunities are," Mr. Leverenz said.
And in turn, he said he spends a lot of time talking to others in the wood
business, such as a friend and neighbor that does cabinetry work and helps
Mr. Leverenz "understand what woodshops want." For example,
poppler makes a lumber that can be used instead of pine, and hickory, though
it doesn’t grow big enough to interest commercial loggers, is used by
custom cabinet makers.
Mr. Leverenz was able to sell a too-short cedar log for a fireplace mantel,
and on one happy occasion he cut a slab for a bar top from a tree that a customer
had grown up with. "I got a lot of joy" from that commission, Mr.
Leverenz said. "I respect that people work really hard to bring you a
piece of material that may not look good but may be their favorite tree."
He sells air-dried lumber from home, and he also will sell green lumber to
a friend who operates a kiln, or to others who use it for milling. Another
acquaintance has a laser engraving business, and "he will take really
ugly logs" for use as plaques, Mr. Leverenz said. "Part of it isn’t
being jealous about somebody else making money off of what you’re doing,"
he said. That way, "there isn’t a whole lot that goes to waste."
Mr. Leverenz said he has never advertised, but once he established himself
as turning out good quality lumber, he has never lacked for custom work, though
he won’t take on big jobs. "I’ve had people who call and
say I’ve got 8,000 (board) feet, and I say call somebody who has a big
hydraulic sawmill," Mr. Leverenz said.
But with the growth of his business, he is trying to decide if he should buy
a bigger, hydraulic sawmill. On the other hand, Mr. Leverenz said, "It’s
not about what you get done in a day, it’s about having more money at
the end of a day." But money may not be the biggest motivator for Mr.
Leverenz.
He and his brothers recently remodeled their parents’ home with tongue-and-groove
white ash cut from their woods, and built an outdoor cedar ramp for their
grandfather, "because he couldn’t do the steps anymore," Mr.
Leverenz said. This summer, his mother agreed to watch Rachel, 7, and Erin,
5, so that Mr. Leverenz and his wife, Julie, would not have to worry about
daycare. His mother wouldn’t accept any pay, but wanted a play set for
the kids.
"So a couple of the brothers and dad got together one day, and in three
or four hours sawed up what we needed," Mr. Leverenz said. "We took
it up to the yard and built the playset." "How do you put a value
on that? We’ll always be thinking about the day we built the playset." "I’m really pleased that the mill is paying its way," Mr.
Leverenz said, "but it’s not all about money."
